Thinking about collapsing my board into a few mega pedals

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skullservant
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Thinking about collapsing my board into a few mega pedals

Post by skullservant »

I've been thinking about it for a LONG time- the possibility of putting all of the boost/od/dirt that I use into a multi-stomp box to save board space and allow for more sweet shit or whatever on my board.

I've come to the point where the dirt on my board is stagnant, IE, I've found the perfect mix of pedals that haven't moved for a while. Even better, I've DIY'd all of them already (except for the Arc Gamut, but I've already built a Rangemaster to know how to get the same thing going).

Thinking I could get a Hammond 1590DD (tall box version of the 1590D, fucking HUGE enclosure) and put all the guts of the stuff on my board into it.

The question popped into my head- do I want it to be a 'fixed' sort of multi-effect that would have each dirt going directly into the next, or would I like to put jacks so that they can be patched any which way? I use a few pedals now that I can't DIY- IE the Ring Thing, so instead of inserting TB loops, I figured it'd be best for me to just have patchable input/output jacks so I could insert new pedals at will.

So I'm thinking it will go something like this: Madbean Afterlife Compressor -> Rangemaster with tone control -> Madbean Egghead -> Super Collider DIY

4 stomps, 13 knobs, 4 LEDs, 8 jacks, and 2 DC jacks (so I can isolate the Rangemaster, unless I build a chargepump for +9V)

Plain aluminum enclosure, probably just use the knobs I've already got on the pedals now. Figure if nothing else I could make room for more stuff

Anyone else made a giant multipedal?
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eatyourguitar
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Re: Thinking about collapsing my board into a few mega pedal

Post by eatyourguitar »

shield them cables and don't crowd the footswitches. smallbear sells shielded cable by the foot. I would use it for almost every connection except power. try to keep the boards as close to the pots as possible. these builds can get really fucked up from long unshielded loud signals and high gain pedals all over the place. try to wire the switches for grounded input and grounded output. you might not want 4 footswitches in 7 inches. put your foot on the box, you'll see. star ground your boards. star V+ too.
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Re: Thinking about collapsing my board into a few mega pedal

Post by greyscales »

Image

Been here before. :thumb:
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skullservant
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Re: Thinking about collapsing my board into a few mega pedal

Post by skullservant »

eatyourguitar wrote:shield them cables and don't crowd the footswitches. smallbear sells shielded cable by the foot. I would use it for almost every connection except power. try to keep the boards as close to the pots as possible. these builds can get really fucked up from long unshielded loud signals and high gain pedals all over the place. try to wire the switches for grounded input and grounded output. you might not want 4 footswitches in 7 inches. put your foot on the box, you'll see. star ground your boards. star V+ too.


I've built a few pedals with 4 switches on the same layout. Wasn't too much of an issue with my feet luckily! check!
Most of the boards have at least one PCB connected pot- so they sit relatively low, check!
Insulated wire is a good idea, I will more than likely have to rewire the input and outputs for everything, so that works for me
Each circuit has grounded input right now, I'll fidget around and look at grounding the outputs to more than the enclosure

Thanks for your help!
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Re: Thinking about collapsing my board into a few mega pedal

Post by skullservant »

greyscales wrote:Image

Been here before. :thumb:


Awesome!!
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Re: Thinking about collapsing my board into a few mega pedal

Post by LaoWiz »

I think about this a lot. I think too many circuits in one box would get too noisy for me but I want to start redoing my favorite fuzzes as 2 in 1's. I'm making a superfuzz / double beat for someone which will be great becomes the sounds are so different and the option to select will be pretty useful. There's some circuits that I also may build that sound great stacked together. Lately, when jamming I have too many options and there's too many knobs that get moved from their last setting so my sound is less consistent. I think streamlining is something I need to do....
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Re: Thinking about collapsing my board into a few mega pedal

Post by skullservant »

Yeah dude. And say I want to go jam but don't want to bring a whole board, I could just bring the mega pedal and a reverb or my TimeFactor and call it a day instead of lugging everything with me!
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Re: Thinking about collapsing my board into a few mega pedal

Post by soldersqueeze »

Thought I'd post these in here as they seem relevant to your interests...

I was thinking along a similar line, and wanted to go fully DIY with my pedal board at the same time. Here are the first two finished pedals in this quest (not my first builds though)-

Image

And guts-

Image
Image

The blue/ green pedal is a Madbean Current Lover (EHX Electric Mistress) -> MB Pork Barrel (Boss CE2) -> 1776 Effects Multiplex in a Hammond 1550E
The red/ orange pedal is a MB Green Bean (modded TS) -> MB Slow Loris (modded rat) -> MB Mudbunny (green russian spec muff) in a Hammond 1550G.

Everything has separate ins/outs to allow a little more flexibility. Each pedal has a single 9v input, with the power daisy-chained internally. Only the CE2 has an isolated 15v charge pump. Shielded wire for all inputs and outputs.

Noise wise, I have no problems. I don't think the shared power/ enclosures causes an issue. I can run both of these from a Diago power supply with no issues at all. When building, the only problem I came across was noise with the current lover when I originally used a 15v charge pump like i did with the CE2. After a few rewires/ component changes I gave up and removed the charge pump, and now I get no noise at 9v, and it still sounds killer.

I'm sure you're a more competent builder than I, but if I can be of any help or answer any questions let me know. Peace
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skullservant
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Re: Thinking about collapsing my board into a few mega pedal

Post by skullservant »

Those look great!

Here is where I am at with the multieffect:

Image

Right now the Afterlife Compressor, and the Egghead Overdrive are dropped into the enclosure. I've got zero noise coming from them, even without shielded wire at the moment.

Waiting on the Rangemaster's transistor and for the Super Collider clone to get back to me so I can drop that in as well. I will probably need to get some shielded wire for the Super Collider since it is so high gain
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Re: Thinking about collapsing my board into a few mega pedal

Post by soldersqueeze »

Looks like you've done all the hard work already! There's enough space left over in both my enclosures for most decent builders to add another 4 or 5 effects, but I don't like working on cramped pedals to be honest.
How are the guts of that bad boy looking?
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