03-JAN-2009
PB&Jam pedal board almost done
This beast has been taking up room in my shop for like a year. I finally got it plugged in today.
03-JAN-2009
PB&Jam insides
I used Cat5 for each loop's sends/receives between switches and jacks. Mogami for the main I/O, 20 awg for the ground bus and a few other things. I epoxied the LEDs into place in hardboard. This is more of a disasterous prototype and proof of concepts than anything I plan on using.
I made so many "mistakes" and learned so much at each turn I decided to commit to finishing it no matter how heinous. I'm glad I did. I can make a KILLER pedal board now given another year ;)
03-JAN-2009
pbjam_outside1.JPG
At the upper right is the main In from guitar and Out to amp jacks. The switch bypasses the entire pedal board and turns off the main LED. I've found this feature essential for testing/troubleshooting. The whole point of this is that ALL KINDS OF THINGS affect your tone even though they theoretically shouldn't. The only way to know for sure is to be able to switch various components completely out of the signal chain. Also, some things can have their POWER chained together and some can't. Some very odd things behave differently depending on if they are chained to certain other things with BOTH power and signal.
Not anymore!
There is a dedicated tuner out for a tuner to live in the top right corner. Can also plug guitar into tuner and tuner into main In, to use tuner as buffer.
For the bottom row of switches, the right-most switch and pair of jacks is just an on/off switch. For single 1/4" switching functions such as Acoustic 165 reverb, Headbone amp switch, Fabamp channel switching etc. Just two 1/4" jacks, both either open or closed with the one switch, red LED lights up if closed.
The next SEVEN switches and corresponding pair of I/O jacks and green LEDs are your basic loops.
The rightmost two switches and I/O jacks and yellow LEDs are for the amp's effects loop. The effects loop cables come from the amp and plug into the two top leftmost jacks on the board. You can also jumper the main Out into the effects loop input, plug the main output cable to the amp into the effects loop out, then the whole board is just a normal series of NINE loops.
03-JAN-2009
pedals before transfer to board
04-JAN-2009
pedals on board, rough draft
YES WE CAN!
The Teese RMC3 wah is running off a power jack on the right side. Guitar into wah, wah into board.
Not using the first switch yet. It will be switching the Radial Tonebone as soon as I get it back from repair.
The tuner is running off a dedicated tuner out, no input back into the chain. To put tuner in chain for buffering or mute-while-tune, plug guitar into tuner and tuner into board's main input.
The first four loops are my overdrives/distortions. Yeah I want to mess w/ the knobs here and there but mostly these are either on or off so are good for being individually remote controlled. Everything from tubes to mods so it's nice to have them all isolated and on their own isolated regulated power source when need be.
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1 - OLC Eclipse
2 - Fulltone OCD
3 - modded boss MT-2 Metal Zone
4 - Big muff + MXR noise gate
5 - goes through the Pod XT. This allows a post-distortion wah, various other distortions and effects, volume pedal, etc.
6 - unused at this point but used to experiment with stuff in or out of the effects loop.
7 - the final loop. The Line 6 DL4 delay, Boss QE-1 equalizer, and Line 6 Verbzilla reverb are all on this loop. These pedals all at the front of the board since so much is on one loop that is all really going to be used individually. You have to be able to reach the buttons on the DL4 for instance, it has a looping sampler and all kinds of crazy stuff you want to be able to control. I want to turn the EQ on and off all the time no matter what is going on w/ the rest of the loops, same w/ the Verbzilla. Sometimes you want to spank the front of the amp w/ reverb so I leave the Verbzilla at the end of the main pedal chain, but leave the T-Rex RoomMate reverb in the effects loop. Mostly for the V3 which is the only amp I have that doesn't have reverb but does have an effects loop. All my other amps that don't have reverb also don't have an effects loop so there ya go.
Of course it's going to end up absurd to have all this stuff on a loop and I'll end up with some gizmo pedal being after the main output of the board, the FREE NINTH loop! 8-)
03-JAN-2009
pbjam_sw1-io_main-io_ground.JPG
03-JAN-2009
pbjam_efx-io_loops67-io.JPG
03-JAN-2009
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