i downsized my board and it's been the best

[Eivind August]

Yuss, right on.

[sylnau]

I like it Chank style (even if I have a board).
Put the delay into the Glitch Compuer the other day (when I felt like destroying my board).
That was awesome.

I agree with Soni here.

It's great to change things and get the unexpected.
But I like the "straight" idea of having a "straight" board too.

There's no wrong or right setup.

[mathias]

...

For this is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon, long ago

[backwardsvoyager]

I'm not surprised when one of yall freaks out and flips everything to downsize anymore, the weirder thing to me (and especially on ILF) is the amount of people who are live or die by a preset number and configuration of pedals... When did the "board" start to dictate your style or ability or genre or whatever??? Everyone needs to take a deep breath and a step back and just throw your pedals all over the floor Chank style and just plug in stuff and play... We've gotten to the point where we are buying or not buying pedlols based on the power or cable jack locations and we're harassing the builders who came up with this stuff to form their ip to our current whims of fancy without considering the most important thing which is how they sound... Back in the day when guitar wankers started to become rawk gods and started getting paid as such they started to look at their tools and think up ways to better this or outdo so and so and with the small group of mfgrs at the time what we ended up with was Cornish who decided to take their millions an make huge ugly buffers and phase faces in one box so the rawk gods could work their magic... Custom pedals were means to and end not a right of birth but we've forgotten that... Whatever...

Tldr: throw your pedals away...

this needs to be sticky'd at the top of the forum or pop up on the home screen or something

[ChetMagongalo]

I'm going for the simple route lately, bought a small amp today, have been slowly selling pedals over time, it's really fun! It's like starting a new world on minecraft or getting a new job or something.

[phantasmagorovich]

I'm not surprised when one of yall freaks out and flips everything to downsize anymore, the weirder thing to me (and especially on ILF) is the amount of people who are live or die by a preset number and configuration of pedals... When did the "board" start to dictate your style or ability or genre or whatever??? Everyone needs to take a deep breath and a step back and just throw your pedals all over the floor Chank style and just plug in stuff and play... We've gotten to the point where we are buying or not buying pedlols based on the power or cable jack locations and we're harassing the builders who came up with this stuff to form their ip to our current whims of fancy without considering the most important thing which is how they sound... Back in the day when guitar wankers started to become rawk gods and started getting paid as such they started to look at their tools and think up ways to better this or outdo so and so and with the small group of mfgrs at the time what we ended up with was Cornish who decided to take their millions an make huge ugly buffers and phase faces in one box so the rawk gods could work their magic... Custom pedals were means to and end not a right of birth but we've forgotten that... Whatever...

Tldr: throw your pedals away...

this needs to be sticky'd at the top of the forum or pop up on the home screen or something

Really? I don't get the point.
Either Soni's saying we should all be more grateful for the pedals we can have and that back in the days weren't available. Yeah sure, he might be right. I still don't see any consequences of this.
Or he's saying we should ignore the board and buy more huge ass pedals or ones with strange jack placements because it doesn't matter if you throw them on the floor. Yeah, he's right, but a board is so much more practical and if there are several builders that make similar stuff why shouldn't I choose based on factors that are not sound but practicality.
He might be saying JUST PLAY! But who says nobody is? I'm pretty sure there are more people on this board playing actual music in actual bands than guys just dusting off their guitar once in a while to lay it next to the boutique board for an instagram shot. And even those guys - I can only slightly understand their motivation but they're not hurting anyone so who am I to judge?
Maybe he's saying we're all acting too entitled by preferring certain jack placements? Well, to me it's just a matter of business-consumer-relation. The small builders survive by creating a personal relation to their customers. Listening to this sort of stuff is a part of that imo. It might be tedious, but on the other hand you might get it right and start a hype running around your pedals. I don't think we'd be pushing SS/BS whenever someone asks for any sort of dirt pedal if Brian wasn't such a great guy.
Lastly, it might mean that we should all be more creative with our pedals. Yeah, but there's always room for improvement. And if this is referring to people that look to emulate a certain flavour of the month sound, that's just a way of learning things. Mimikry to then develop a personal style. I'm pretty sure everybody starts out covering their favourite songs to learn the tricks of the trade that seem relevant to them. The same goes for sounds. At least that's how I see the never ending stream of threads asking for the "best pitch shifter for Math Rock". I'm guilty of starting threads like that too. I had a sound in my head and wanted to emulate it. The best way to describe that is usually by comparison. "I wanna sound like Steel Panther" might sound lame as fuck, but it's an easy way to make people understand what I want.

I'm sorry if this sounds belligerent, but it's early in the morning here and I'm a little cranky. I honestly do not understand what Soni's point is.

tl;dr: I'm not gonna let anyone tell me how to paddle my pedals! Not even if he has a sexy salt 'n pepa beard.

[goroth]

I wanna sound like Steel Panther

Quoted for posterity

I've put an awful lot of thought into my board for four reasons:

1) I've got to be able to set it up quickly and pack up quickly at gigs. This necessitates a board, and necessitates only a single board. It also necessitates an i/o interface so that I can have everything plugged in before I even set a foot on the stage. I can then just plug in the power and my cables and roll. I can't afford roadies so I've gotta be able to carry it myself, which puts a limit on size.
2) I play a lot of shit gigs where I have to play on a shared rig. This means it's important for me that my board sounds consistent, which is why I have an output buffer, no finicky equipment, nothing temperature dependent etc.
3) My board is specifically designed with the sounds that I love playing, and nothing extraneous. But it is also designed to be flexible enough so that I can get pretty much any sound out of it.
4) The more modular my board is the easier I can change things up if I want to. So in a way extreme planning, having a batshit looper that takes a heap of space, and being a dick about pedal size etc allows more spontaneity.

I also don't expect anyone else to follow any one of those requirements as they are what I want out of my board. I'd never state that this is how anyone should build a board or think about their rig.

[Mudfuzz]

I wanna sound like Steel Panther

Quoted for posterity

I've put an awful lot of thought into my board for four reasons:

1) I've got to be able to set it up quickly and pack up quickly at gigs. This necessitates a board, and necessitates only a single board. It also necessitates an i/o interface so that I can have everything plugged in before I even set a foot on the stage. I can then just plug in the power and my cables and roll. I can't afford roadies so I've gotta be able to carry it myself, which puts a limit on size.
2) I play a lot of shit gigs where I have to play on a shared rig. This means it's important for me that my board sounds consistent, which is why I have an output buffer, no finicky equipment, nothing temperature dependent etc.
3) My board is specifically designed with the sounds that I love playing, and nothing extraneous. But it is also designed to be flexible enough so that I can get pretty much any sound out of it.
4) The more modular my board is the easier I can change things up if I want to. So in a way extreme planning, having a batshit looper that takes a heap of space, and being a dick about pedal size etc allows more spontaneity.

I also don't expect anyone else to follow any one of those requirements as they are what I want out of my board. I'd never state that this is how anyone should build a board or think about their rig.

Right on! I consider where my board is where it should be.. it only took 7 years...

[albertjq]

I don't want to get too much into the battle, but I see it from both perspectives

Once you start playing live and with a band you inevitability develop more specific and less flexible needs

that said I am anti cork/cocksniffing and do encourage dismantling your boards and trying to do more with less from time to time
(and of course, go direct, and often)

[D.o.S.]

, the weirder thing to me (and especially on ILF) is the amount of people who are live or die by a preset number and configuration of pedals... When did the "board" start to dictate your style or ability or genre or whatever???

That's the relevant bit, for me, anyway.

[zrobb3]

i just went from a pt-1 back to pt mini. definitely the right move for me as far as just playing and not worrying about 12 pedals

[mathias]

I have a hard time getting all the sounds I want out of 12-14 pedals currently, so I'll probably end up with more. YMMV and all that I suppose. At the same time, I'm not into a lot of the pedals that are popular here right now and I was never into the blues lawyer (expensive)transparent overdrive and EQ stuff.

The only thing that really matters at the end of the day is that YOU the creator can use your tools to make the art (SOUNDS) you want. And if you need more paintbrushes than the next person, so what?

[mathias]

Realized that while I was trying to say "Do what makes you happy" in the last post, it came off as a little defensive, as if I read someone saying "I'm happy with my downsized pedalboard!" as an attack on my large pedalboard. Someone having a differing opinion isn't immediately an attack on mine, and it's an immature response for me to read into that. So sorry about that.

Cheers on enjoying downsized boards. Make sure you play some rad stuff on it.