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I didn't take any pictures of actually gluing the at-this-point cut tolex to the rest of the frame, because I needed to glue it all down pretty quickly after spraying, but I think these pictures give a pretty good idea of how I cut everything to make it fit. What I ended up with was a fully covered frame with seams at the corners on the sides and top, as well as along the inside bottom edge. Some of it turned out a little sloppy. Most of it is fine. Where the wood peeks through a bit, I just painted it to the approximate colour of the tolex, and you can't really tell without very close inspection. I assume this will need to be redone properly at some point, but it should look fine for a good long while.

After fitting the carpeted top into the tolexed frame, I installed and wired up all the electronics, as well as installing some straps (without which I would literally never be able to get the board out of its case). I used some pre-grometed tree landscaping straps with luggage handles added to them, and just bolted them on somewhat loosely, with liberal washer usage, so that they can be stored on top of the board when it's in its case (for ease of removal), but tucked under the board during usage. I apparently again neglected to document the pre-drilling of the holes for these straps, but I obviously did all that before adding the tolex. At this point the board was done, so the rest of these pictures are basically just porn.

The end.

whoa - awesome! very impressive, and great to be able to see your process and all the planning and execution that went into this.

Nice job! It looks good. Is it very heavy? Tolex has always sounded like a real pain in the ass to work with, but maybe it's not so bad after all. That's pretty cool.

Thanks, dudes! It is heavy, but it ranges from heavy-but-manageable with the straps to ungodly-unless-you-wheel-it-around-like-luggage while it's in the case. Thankfully the case does have luggage wheels on both sides, so it's fine. I don't think it's any heavier than any other board this size is likely to be, though, honestly. I guess if it were a flat board in a soft case it would be a little lighter, but it would still be crazy unwieldy. The pine frame is super light. The MDF top is obviously dense and a little heavy, but most of the weight is just the power supplies and pedals. The panels on the case are plastic, not wood, so that helps a bit too. The real problem is that it doesn't fit in my car without putting the seats down, and there are normally three of us riding to band practice in the same car, so I wouldn't be able to bring it back and forth between home and the practice space unless our other guitarist found her own way to practice. It's technically my wife's car, and she's our drummer, so she gets to stay.

For those who might be interested, here's the signal path sketch you can see smaller in one of the above pictures. It's a bit much, but, you know, it's a lot of pedals and it was a lot of MIDI capability and expression control to otherwise be leaving on the table.

Wow that's a serious setup and build! Looks clean, but also nightmarishly heavy

Can't imagine the amount of work that went in planning and executing this, but the result is super clean. Amazing work, I wouldn't want to carry it around though, unless i want backache for weeks.

Thanks, guys! I'm definitely a glutton for punishment when it comes to heavy gear.

I missed this the first time round. Cool read! How you liking the behemoth?