Finished my pedalboard... Finally.

[Fretless]

So, about forever ago, I started craving a pedal board. I started off by buying pedals that I could use with my synths (since that's what I primarily play these days), and got Strymon's Timeline, BigSky, and Mobius. Great pedals, and they do exactly what I wanted them to do.

Next up on my list of things to get was a compressor and a distortion pedal. I've had a decent amp with my Panama Fuego X, which works well for the price, but I knew deep down inside that it wouldn't do in the long run. So I decided that a flexible distortion would keep me going until I got either a good preamp pedal or a good amp. I ended up with a Strymon Riverside (starting to see a running theme here?). I figured since I've already invested so heavily in Strymon it wouldn't hurt to continue doing so, thus I bought their OB.1 compressor, and man it's sure a thing of beauty.

After I got the distortion and compression figured out, I decided that I wanted some kind of octave pedal, because they're just that cool. I picked up a pog2 for a good price, and I couldn't be happier.

Finally I decided that the Panama was no longer cutting it for me, so I did some research, found that I wanted a good clean pedal platform that also had a good distortion side to it. I found that in an Effectrode Blackbird-SR71. This pedal is glorious, and has amazing clean tones and a wonderful set of distortion channels. I found one that was modded to do stuff in a way I found more practical.

Lastly, since I am primarily a keyboardist I figured I don't need a power amp/cab, so my Torpedo Studio works just fine for the power amp and cab sim. So at the end of the day, I am finally done with my rig, for now. It's taken about two years for me to get everything that I wanted in the rig, but it's totally worth it.

TL;DR: Guitar > Strymon OB.1 > POG2 > Strymon Mobius (pre) > Strymon Riverside > Effectrode Blackbird SR-71 > Strymon Mobius (post) > Strymon Timeline > Strymon BigSky > Torpedo Studio


Pictured is everything before I finished doing a nice job of wiring everything up/finalizing a few connections.

 

[Jeff]

Very nice! But........one is never "done" with a pedalboard.

 

[Fretless]

Very nice! But........one is never "done" with a pedalboard.

Don't let my wife hear that.





it's the truth though

 

[that short guy]

Very nice! But........one is never "done" with a pedalboard.

He's right know.

And I see a distinct lack of wah.... just saying

 

[jerm]

Lots of quality stuff here man! Awesome

 

[ESPImperium]

Very nice! But........one is never "done" with a pedalboard.

That is true, my main 'do it all' one is finished, now i want a second 'country' one with a couple of Strymons, a Wampler Ego and a J Rockett and some sort of tuner somewhere. A total price of my do it all one as it has many pedals i picked up used for great deals.

 

[rexbinary]

Wow very nice! Make sure you have some insurance covering that board as it's quite the investment. Grats man!

 

[Fretless]

Wow very nice! Make sure you have some insurance covering that board as it's quite the investment. Grats man!

Yeah, I really need to. We have insurance for the area where my band practices, but this is my home rig, so I probably need to look into that.

 

[Brutal S]

Nice!

 

[TheWarAgainstTime]

Looks killer I love my Timeline and Big Sky

 

[Tisca]

Expensive board like that deserves some proper cut to length cables with L-plugs =)

 

[Bearitone]

How do you like the blackbird?
You play mostly clean and blues type tones I take it?

 

[downburst82]

Very nice!

What are you using for power? (Sorry if you said and I missed it)

I keep waiting for the next big thing in polyphonic octave shifting before I reinvest....but its taking awhile so I may cave and grab a pog2 at some point, I have the pitchfactor which is great for lots of things but struggles with tracking chords and fast playing.

You said the picture was pre cable cleanup, are you using anything fancy for cabling?

I will have to do a finished my pedalboard thread when I get my king of tone in a few months.

 

[Fretless]

Expensive board like that deserves some proper cut to length cables with L-plugs =)

Yeah, I was waiting on an order of L-plugs when I took that picture. It's all nice and setup now.

How do you like the blackbird?
You play mostly clean and blues type tones I take it?

It's amazing. I actually play a lot of modern metal. It does this exceptionally well with my Riverside + the OB.1. In the next paragraph I will describe my "presets" that I use, but to sum it up, this rig is incredibly flexible, and can do such a wide range of tones, from stoner metal, to ultra-tight djent.

My first gain preset is the ultra-clean setting of using the Blackbirds clean channel with only the OB.1 compressor turned on with the boost off. This gives you that bell like fender clean tone. This is the only mode with the riverside off, and thus does not take advantage of it's noise gate.

My second gain preset involves the Riverside being turned on (not in favorite mode) with the gain in low (knob at 25%), push set to mid. Blackbird set to clean channel, OB.1 turned on with boost optional. This gives me that clean tone with breakup being mostly dependent on how hard you play.

Third, I have the Riverside set to high gain (this is my favorite button patch), OB.1 on but boost turned off (that would be too much gain, though you can get Meshuggah tone this way) still using the clean setting on the Blackbird. It is a really nice rhythm tone for modern metal.

Fourth, turning the favorite button back off, and switching the blackbird into it's distortion channel (now here is a good time to mention that my blackbird has been modded, the bypass knob has been switched with the classic/creamy switch which switches between the two high gain modes, though I leave it on the blue channel, not sure if that's creamy or classic mode, but it works fine. The classic/creamy switch is now a bypass, that I never touch which works well). This mode uses the OB.1 compressor on with the boost being optional to switch it into a lead sound from a rhythm. This is more your classic bluesy sound. I think it's pretty darn good.

Fifth, same settings as above, but instead I switch to the red distortion channel. I don't use this mode much, not because it sounds bad, but because it requires me to adjust the volume as it is considerably lower in volume. I will be doing a mod at some point to adjust this. Then it will be fully useable.

Very nice!

What are you using for power? (Sorry if you said and I missed it)

I keep waiting for the next big thing in polyphonic octave shifting before I reinvest....but its taking awhile so I may cave and grab a pog2 at some point, I have the pitchfactor which is great for lots of things but struggles with tracking chords and fast playing.

You said the picture was pre cable cleanup, are you using anything fancy for cabling?

I will have to do a finished my pedalboard thread when I get my king of tone in a few months.

I have the Zuma from Strymon. It's such a nice power supply, sadly it cannot supply the 12V at 1A that the blackbird needs, but that's really not an issue to me.

As for the cable, i have 4 wire + ground Mogami cable from a previous project. I had 50ft left over, so I used that plus some good Neutrik jacks.