It all started out innocently enough — I mean after all, how hard could it be?? We've always had a bunch of rag-tag Stomp Boxes we dragged around with us, cables and batteries strewn everywhere. So putting together a Pedalboard — I mean a really nice one, with clean cable routing and solid power — that should be a piece of cake, right?

That's the task I was presented with — add a custom pedalboard to an existing piece of AI&S gear. The requirements started pretty simply; a list of stomp boxes and assorted pedals and what-not. Then came the Oh Yeahs...

"...I want two guitars routed through it (an Electric
and an Acoustic), and I want to be able to plug 'em
into a standard interface on the pedalboard."

"...'um, and Oh Yeah..."

"I also want an on-board Tuner — to use with both
guitars, but I don't want it in the signal path all the time."

"...and also, I want two loops to the electric side —
all the distortion stuff before the Pre-amp, and the
rest of the effects after it."

"...and I also want it to be easy to change batteries..."

"Can ya do all that?"

Can we do all that? Sure! Just remember though...

tone, cheap, quiet — pick two.

We can do it, but we wanna do it right!

So we started thinking about it.... hmmmm... What would we need? how big should it be? what materials? what about the signal path? and what about that in-and-out of the Pre-amp requirement? The questions piled up pretty quickly.

The emphasis with this rig to begin with had been to get smaller — in fact, for quite a while, this guy was the development case for our single rack-mounted rig that contains the power-house behind the guitars being employed here. The original idea was to have something small (so it would be easy to lug) and then be able to just show up, load-in, plug-in, and play.

We call it the WRack, and it looks like this...

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The WRack idea is to have all the gear in a 6-space (+/-) rack, and have the rack itself set itself into the top of a single EV monitor wedge — with the top cover of the wedge used for cable and stomp box storage...

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The whole thing, packed up and ready to roll, looks like this...

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The development of the AI/S WRack is another story altogether. If you're interested in knowing more about it, you'll find it posted here (well... as soon as I get time to get it done!)

So anyhow, we got to talking about what the best approach to building the pedalboard for this rig should be. Topics of discussion included...

 material and size

 pedal choices and layout

 power sources and routing

 signal path and sends/returns to the rack

 making the whole mess work for two guitars
(electric and acoustic)

 and including an out-of-path tuner
(and making it work for both guitars)

There were many spirited discussions — some of the folks around here have a completely different idea about what constitutes keeping the whole rig small (check Johnny Flash's MuthaBoard to see what I mean!)

So come along with us, for a look into the 18 month journey of discovery taken to design, fabricate, and implement one sweet pedalboard. We ended up in some considerably different places from where we started, and went through many, many versions getting there. The results were worth the effort, though.

Check it out — we'll show you where the traps and time bombs were for us, so maybe you won't have to get caught by them yourself.