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What if you can't/won't spend a fortune on 3 killer boards, each with a different purpose.

I've got the choice of hauling around a fairly big board to my buddy's appartement even when I'm just noodling for half an hour, and don't use anyhing but the amp's overdrive and maybe a touch of reverb. The same board acts as my bass board, and than I only use one overdrive pedal, an eq, and a compressor. Than there's a bunch of other different projects/bands, a number of other contexts/situation ranging from doom jams to ambienty improv shit to an indie/punk trio thing....

For none of those things I need the big board with all my peds, it's overkill, and it's annoying and plain silly to load/unload a heavy case for no good reason at all.
But a lot of those pedals are needed for more than one job.

So now I found myself tearing up the board every other week, and rewiring the whole thing, so it suits the right goals.

What's the key here? Strategically choose my pedals and buy a couple extra so I can somehow make a compromise and role with two boards?

Just curious how the rest handles this sort of things. 'The rest', being dudes who are in the same boat, and can't afford three dedicated boards filled with their first choices of awesome pedlols

I had one big board with everything on it that I thought I needed but found it unwieldy. Instead I've got four mid-size boards (and one small one) that I prefer to use as "stations" for different projects. I play with a few different groups/configurations and that's worked out nicely for me and it's something I can wrap my head around more easily. Any pedals I own not on those boards I can easily swap out if necessary but it doesn't happen often. Not for everybody I know but works for me. YMMV.

I think the general rule is buy more pedals.

This is why i ditched a board altogether.

Now I just toss whatever I need for the musical situation at hand into the gig bag pocket (or separate bag if it's that many pedals, which it rarely ever is).

I tried to do the single big board thing for a while when I was playing guitar and bass in two very different sounding bands. Found myself getting annoyed by settings and disliking having a huge board for the band where all I use is the tuner and an overdrive for like 1/3 of the songs.

So I gave in and split into a guitar and a bass board. I would have rather kept the elements on both but I leave it on the bass board for convenience and just use other things for overdrive on guitar. This change has made me much more content because I can just grab the right board and leave the house.

So I would say: strategically choose your pedals for two or three boards, which maybe aren't perfect but will happily do the job for each role. No need to buy anything new unless there's something you only have one of that you need on more than one board.

I have two bass boards, a guitar board for my band, and then my at home board. I don’t play in bands that lend to a lot of effected playing, but I need different tones for each thing.

Thanks. Seems like the general consensus is: Split things up for sake of convenience, even if it means sacrifising a couple of pedals that you'd rather have on all your boards. And it's not like swapping out one or two of your go-to pedals now and than is THAT big of a hassle anyway

I'm still taking the "buy more pedals" advice to heart too though

Used to have one big board, trying to cover all sounds I might need with the different bands I was in.

Now I have one main board, with 5 pedals(2 of them always on), and then I add stuff(looper, volume pedal, tuner, extra pedalboard,, etc...)to that depending on what band I'm playing with.

I’ve got a great flight case style board where everything sits on the bottom of the case - I have two different configurations of stuff that I’m always rebuilding and I have the exact same problem as the OP. I’m currently not that active musically with other people but I’d like to be doing more and I’m planning on making two identical cheat “trays” that I can load into the case and take with me depending on what I need.

So basically I have a noise board - for my bass - that’s a bunch of garbage distortions and ring modulators and a delay and another more doom/ambient board with more fuzz/reverb/delay options.

The other issue is power - do I buy another PP2 or maybe just an extra set of cables and use the same PP2 between two boards? I don’t really think I need to buy another power supply since I’ll only be using one board at a time.

Relevant thread to my interests.

What I’ve learned in the last couple years trying and flipping a gazillion pedals...

There are “nearly as good” options for less money.

Right now, I’m just rocking 3 pedals (total); but I only play at home. So , I’ve my first choice for each slot.

But, say Mercury 7 is my top reverb...it’s $299/275 new/used...if I had to get another board I could definitely be good with the Mantic Proverb or Hungry Robot Stargazer...both can be had for $150 ish...

So, maybe have a couple smaller boards and try to find the pedals that are nearly as good as your top choice but more cost effective...there’s gotta be stuff that’ll fit for you.

^ Makes perfect sense. It's just that my top choice pedals are kinda like what most people here would consider their "nearly as good alternatives"

But still, getting a second one of each of those $120-ish pedals would cost me roughly $1K in total. I need a boutique superfuzz clone with ten controls like I need an asshole on my elbow...But on the other hand, behringer/mooer stuff is way too shitty and unreliable imo

In short, the plan at the moment...another HP clone and a verb/delay solution (RE-20, something by Hungry Robot,...?), and I should be able to wire up a small bass board that can double as grab and go guitar board. Still have a one-spot laying around and plenty of dirt pedals, so the two-board approach should be possible without breaking the bank

I’ve found the PT jr to be the perfect size. It’s not annoying and stupid when you only need a couple pedals. It’s big enough that you can get textures of delays for ambience. It’s not embarrassing when the other people have two or less pedals. It’s easy to set up and rearrange between projects. Mine regularly gets completely redone and it’s never more than a 15 minute project. Probably helps that I like setting up boards.

I have one board, normally a PT-Jr. as baseframe. For live situations I find it to be the best pedalboard ever, dimension-wise.
Few pedals are always there, but depending on the project or the sounds I need I swamp some of them to adapt to my needs (like for the ambient stuff I would use a lowpass filter, which is then exanged by a noise-oscillor-fuzz for my noise-industrial setup).

I used to have three separate boards. One for my heavy band, one for my indie bands, and another for bass. It was a dumb amount of gear even if you just looked at infrastructure of cables, power supplies, boards, and switchers. And a lot of the pedal selection between them was arbitrary. Half the time I had doubles for things just to put them on both boards. Now I have one PT2 that I can play 3 ways - just guitar in any band, just bass in any band, and my bass/guitar hybrid rig. Its not overly big and it has all the drive tones, reverb, delay, pitch, glitch, etc... I need for any situation.

with the right big muff and reverb you only ever need one board