GearDump

PedalTrain hosts a great pedalboard planner application specifically for their boards.

For those of you who don’t know Pedal Trains offer quick cable routing and professional power supply mounting options. They also come in gig worthy hard or soft cases. They aren’t quite as fancy as trailer trash boards but they are tough as nails and built to outlist most of effects. Quite a few manufacturers have offered images of their pedals for use too. Good Stuff, check it out!

It may seem like a no-brainer to set your guitar effects board up but there are some important rules for players to keep in mind.

First, when gigging the keyword is redundancy. If you are rich have to exact copies of a pedal board so if some effect starts flaking out you can grab the other. For the more budget minded players have some sort of backup device to substitute. Even if it is a podxt live the audience will be much happier if you don’t have to play enter sandman with a clean tone.

Second, to keep noise down in your rig your cables can be just as important as your pedals. Make sure you are using reasonable patch cables first off. I have seen way to many pro players with 25 foot cables connecting pedals on the board. This will kill any presence from your pickups and often introduces mud into the sound as well. Get a power supply with isolated outputs so your effects can be run with less dirty power if possible. When wiring your board avoid running power cables parallel with your quarter inch pedals as this can induce noise as well.

Third, avoid zip ties on your board. Zip ties can make things pretty crappy when you have to sub in an effect. Imagine cutting zip ties with a knife on a darkened stage. It can get hairy fast as you realize you didn’t cut the power to the pedal, but instead sliced your finger.