My pedalboard build project

[GuitarIv]

Hey everyone,

so today my Pedaltrain Classic Pro arrived, this leads me one step further towards the completion of my pedalboard. Now I am still missing the George L cabling, will take at least 1 to 2 weeks till I have the dough to blow on 2 cable kits, but till then I wanted to open up a dedicated thread here to ask a few questions about pedals that still aren't completely clear to me and update this as it progresses until I have it all done. You never know whom it might help :)

Anyway, the box from Thomann was a huge and heavy one, 14 kilos according to the DHL tracking site. I ordered the board with the tourcase instead of the softcase, I might regret it now as it's heavy as f but you never know, might come in handy later if I ever need to put it on a plane. Unboxing revealed a sturdy construction on both the case and the board (which is very light for the dimensions), included are the velcro rolls to attach the pedals and cable fastener.

Now there's not a lot more to say as it's obvious what this thing is supposed to do and there are plenty of cool Youtube videos to help you out on building a board. I will just say that I'm pleasantly surprised by the size of the board, even with a quick testfitting of all my stompboxes it looks like I'll have plenty of space for more (especially if I mount the power supply on the underside).

Anyway, this is a list of my pedals:

Tuner (Boss TU)
Wah (Dunlop Crybaby)
Underdrive (Mad Professor UD)
Fuzz (EQD Hoof)
2 ODs (Digitech Bad Monkey and Ibanez TS-9DX)
EQ (MXR 10-Band)
Delay (Ibanez DE-7)
Reverb (Boss RV-5)
Noisegate (Boss NS-2)
Looper (Boss RC-3)
Masterwitcher (Carl Martin Octaswitch MK-3)
Powersupply (Fuel Tank Chameleon)


Now this has been my usual order of pedals:

Guitar --> Tuner --> Noisesuppressor insert, from loop send --> Wah --> Octaswitch in --> Underdrive (Loop 1) --> Fuzz (Loop 2) --> OD1 (Loop 3) --> OD2 (Loop 4) --> Loop 5 send into front of amp --> FX loop send of amp --> Loop 5 return --> EQ (Loop 6) --> Delay (Loop 7) --> Reverb (Loop 8) --> Octaswitch out into Noisesuppressor loop return, from NS out --> Looper in --> FX loop return of amp


This might seem a bit complicated, but basically all the pedals before loop 5 go into the front of the amp, and pedals after loop 5 are unaffected by the preamp. So EQ, Delay and Reverb are all in the amps loop. Everything apart from the tuner an the looper goes through the Noisesuppressor by the 4 cable method to kill any excessive noise.

Reason why I don't have the Boss RC in the noisegates loop is that as soon as I stop playing the gate kills the loopers playback, basically mistakening it for noise.


Anyway, so far so good. Now I have some questions:


Order of Tuner and Wah:

Now I have seen in a few videos people having their tuner after their wah pedal. I read somewhere that it has something to do with buffering. The Octaswitch has a buffer switch. Can I just ignore my wah and tuner order if I activate the buffering on the Octaswitch or should I go with my wah before my tuner?


Order of Wah and Fuzz:

I have read about the oscillating issues that might arise with the wah before the fuzz and the solution of a buffered pedal inbetween those two. Now if I put the tuner after my wah, would this count as a buffer to kill oscilation? Or can I ignore this by again just activating the buffering on the Octaswitch? The wah isn't in any loop whereas the Fuzz is. Plus I have the Underdrive before my Fuzz, this brings me to my next question:


Order of Underdrive and Fuzz:

With this my train of thought has been: the underdrive works by sucking out some midrange frequencies that let the amp distort more, so I kinda would classify it as a kind of EQ. Now in my mind it makes the most sense to put it in front of my fuzz since it alters my guitars signal first, killing distortion and then applies the fuzz effect. Am I on the wrong track here? The Underdrive is on my board for when I'm playing with single channel amps that are set to a crunchy tone so I can diffuse them back to clean with the Underdrive or push them into distortion with a Tubescreamer. As pointed out in my NPD thread the Hoof works best with a clean amp. If I first fuzz up my signal and then activate the underdrive, wouldn't this mean I'm trying to calm down an already distorted signal? I will try it out before I finish the pedalboard, I'm just curious what your thoughts on this are.


Anyway, pics are attached. Cheers!

[GuitarIv]

More pics

[Dave Sloven]

I've run a wah before and after the tuner.  Basically it made no difference unless the wah and tuner were both on, which made it difficult to tune.  I have the wah before the tuner because that was it is off the board and I can leave it home if I don't need it.  My Polytune has a power out so I just plug a cable into that and a patch cable from the wah to the tuner and I am good.  Remember to avoid placing your wah too close to the power supply!

[gwEm]

very nice gear you have there for your board! i'm sure it sounds and works very well.
what do you think of Boss reverb?

order of wah and fuzz:
actually I prefer to have a fuzz or distortion both before and after the wah. a light fuzz before seems to add alot of girth to the wah sound, and then a normal distortion afterwards make the effect sound natural. but back in the real world, I tend to minimise the number of pedals I use and only use distortion/fuzz after the wah. Before only sounds a bit weird to me.

order of underdrive and fuzz:
all the fuzz pedals i've used (various muffs, fuzz faces and a fuzzrite) have all been fussy to a greater or lesser extent on what is feeding their input. I would suggest a period of experimentation with what you put on the input of the fuzz. I've spent whole evenings on that before! The pedal on the output of the fuzz also has an effect on the sound, but in my experience its less important. However I have a clone of a russian muff which only really works with specific pedals on the output. There really is an element of unpredictability with fuzz pedals. I've never used an underdrive or eqd hoof so can't comment on specifics. but i do recommend devoting some time to experimentation with what goes before and after it.

[GuitarIv]

Dave: thanks for the tip with the power supply, wouldn't have thought about that! :)

Gwem: I can't tell you all that much about the Reverb apart from the fact that I really like it. It does what it should and has a plethora of different modes to offer, even a modern one which reminds me a bit of that typical modern "djent" Axe FX like shimmering sound, fun to play around with that. I think Boss has a lot of good pedals on offer (and a lot of bad ones as well for that matter) and if you look around you find dozens of those used for a fraction of the price what a high end unit would cost you. For adding atmosphere it works like a charm :)

Well, one way or another I will just go ahead and experiment. I will try different combinations of wah/tuner/fuzz to see how they interact depending on their position, same goes for the underdrive in relation to the fuzz. I didn't even think about putting the UD in the amps loop and see how well it cleans the signal up after the preamp.

I got lucky and sold my Holydiver/Slowhand HSS set today, so order for the George Ls has been placed. Fingers crossed I'll have the cabling by next week friday. So up until then I have plenty of time to try out different combinations of the pedals before I ultimately settle on my final setup for the board. Will keep you updated on my findings, thanks for the input so far. Can't wait to share some more pics, results and maybe sound samples with ya all :D

Cheers!

[Dave Sloven]

Here's a photo of how I set up my wah.  You can see the power supply (a T-Rex Fuel Tank Jr) under the top right corner of the board.

Where I have my wah is far enough away to avoid noise issues.

[GuitarIv]

Doesn't seem like a huge distance haha. Thanks!

[Dave Sloven]

I think part of the problem with mounting them on a board with the power supply underneath is that the bottom of the wah is just a thin sheet of metal, whereas the sides and top are a heavy casting. So placing it to the side of the board the casting is providing some shielding between the wah and the power supply.

[GuitarIv]

Yeah, makes sense. I also found out that cable placement is crucial, before I had shorter cabling one of the long ones was causing hum cause it was too close to the powersupply. I'm really gonna take my time with this and carefully plan every step before I go ahead and put the board together :)

Cash is transferred, as soon as the cables arrive I'll get to work and keep ya updated. Cheers!

[blue]

That's looking great.  I hadn't thought of the idea of using one of the loops to integrate the amp's effects loop, i like that a lot.

[GuitarIv]

Blue: to be perfectly honest, it wasn't my idea or finding. It came as a solution recommended in the Octaswitch manual on how to put pedals in the amps loop. I'm sure I would have figured it out on my own, but this way a quick look into the provided booklet saves ya a lot of thinking and time hahaha 

Soooo, updates! I'm back with some results featuring pedal placement and happy to report the cabling has been sent out today, I already have a tracking number, fingers crossed I get the George L's this week!


Took my fuzz, my tuner, my wah and the underdrive and tried out different placements and combinations. Here's what I observed:

Wah and fuzz: So I went with the obvious combination of running my wah into the Hoof and I'm happy to report I have no oscillation issues. The two of them work together fine that way (apart from the poor sweep range of my cheap Crybaby). Swapped the whole thing around with the Hoof going into the wah. HELL NO. That way all the wah actually did was to work like a broken volume control. On the heel the fuzz became distant and quieter, on the toe position it gained volume back. I see how this might be cool for certain effects on songs but I won't use it that way. So wah into fuzz it is.

Tuner placement (buffering): So I tried the wah with the tuner before and after and even threw it in between wah and fuzz. If there was a difference it was a minimal one, although it seemed to me like the wah sounded better with the tuner after it. But then again the Octaswitch has a buffer button and therefor I don't think it really matters where I have my tuner. So I'll plan out the board first and decide then which placement I will go with. Plus I was using EMGs and I currently don't have a guitar with passives, so that might be a factor as well.


And now on to the really interessting part: Underdrive and Fuzz.

So I put the Underdrive before the Hoof. It worked exactly like rolling back your volume knob. It cleaned up. That's it. That way you can use it as a boost option, play a riff with the UD first in the chain and disengage it to solo. So probably my first train of thought was right here, the UD should always be first in the chain.

I reversed the whole thing. Guess what. Midrange cut. The UD does really work like you have a EQ there, it scooped the fuzz. Not a bad effect, but not what I was going for and the shift knob on the Hoof let's me control the midrange anyway.

Finally, the UD in the amps loop. This was interessting, it basically kept the sound the same coming from the preamp but cut back on volume. Boost option again!


So I guess I'm all set. The Underdrive is a really cool pedal with lots of options to use it. If you crank the midrange and the volume on it, it serves as a boost. If you cut back on the mids it cools down a distorted or crunchy amp. Put it after a fuzz and alter the amount of mids. Put it into your loop and suck out some volume. The Treble and Bass knobs leave additional room for adjustments. Well played Mad Professor! (Although the Pault Gilbert Detox was there first  )

[Dave Sloven]

If you go for another Dunlop wah my suggestion would be the MC404 Bob Bradshaw Custom Audio Electronics model. I wish I got that one instead of the Crybaby From Hell.

[GuitarIv]

Been eyeing different Wahs for a while now and my next one is definitely going to be one that has options for adjustments. Checked out the CAE model, seems cool although the kick switches would require me to leave some more space on my pedalboard between the wah on the other pedals. I'm in no hurry right now to upgrade, something I will spend some time thinking about in the future.

What exactly is it that you don't like about the Dimebag version?

[gwEm]

very interesting to hear your findings with the pedal order. nice setup you have there!

[Dave Sloven]

Been eyeing different Wahs for a while now and my next one is definitely going to be one that has options for adjustments. Checked out the CAE model, seems cool although the kick switches would require me to leave some more space on my pedalboard between the wah on the other pedals. I'm in no hurry right now to upgrade, something I will spend some time thinking about in the future.

What exactly is it that you don't like about the Dimebag version?

The Dimebag version is similar to the CAE, but the CAE has the choice of switching between two different inductors, is around the same price, and doesn't have the ugly camo