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When this week started, the photo above was my pedalboard. Plenty of folks have way more elaborate boards, but mine was hardly on the minimalist end of things. It was fun though. And heavy. It weighed more than a couple of my amps. If I only played at home, that’s no big deal. I’m not a serious gigging player and actually don’t gig at all anymore… but I do leave the house to play with friends. And it’s not often, but just often enough to where hauling stuff out of one basement and into another is annoying. So I figured I should make it a little easier.
As pedals accumulate, there’s usually a mix of thought behind what you get. It goes something like:
- I need all these effects to get the sound I want
- I want something for each major effect type to give me options
- GAS!!! MORE STUFF!!! GIMME GIMME GIMME!!
I think for a lot of us, it’s a mix of all those reasons. So for me, I ended up with a lot of gain pedals. They’re all unique and do different levels of clipping, but my amp that I usually play with has two channels and a wide range of overdrive as well. It’s excessive. The giant expression pedal is mainly used to adjust the number of repeats on my delay, although it can do other parameters, that’s what I mainly use it for. And because of all this crap, the looper switch got added because my size 12s aren’t hitting those bypass switches in the back.
So I said fuck it, let’s tear it apart.
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My board doesn’t use velcro, so when you take everything apart, you get a giant pile of these little guys. Don’t step on them with bare feet!
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These fellas didn’t make the cut. The fuzz is cool, but I barely use it. Reverb in a band setting just gets mushy. The thing to make the board angled is nice but adds weight. And with removing all this stuff, I don’t need the looper switch.
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Planning the layout for the updated version.
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So what did this get me? About 9-10 lbs of weight loss and a slightly less complicated board. That’s probably 20-25% weight loss. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s like carrying an extra guitar. So now if I wanted to carry my 1×12, guitar and pedalboard all in one trip, I could do so without feeling like I’m going to kill myself going down stairs.
Here’s the finished version. Also, some folks are wizards at organizing wires. I am not.
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