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09
Nov
Some of the key points you need to know when building your own pedalboard. The type of things you're happy you know when a mistake has been avoided and wish you knew when it's just a bit too late.
Take time on your layout and signal chain. This will pay dividends when your building and using your new board.
Use soldered cables with quality components (none of those $2 bargain bin patch leads at your local music shop)
Get an isolated power supply with plenty of current available for the pedals you want to use (and may switch to in future).
Buddy and I worked through his latest board build together. I hopped on a call with him, we talked through his signalchain, layout (in that order) and how this would fit on his new Mono pedalboard.
We came up with a few priorities and workarounds to make the flow of his signal chain work for him and the gigs he would be playing with this new board. 
1. The first thing we did was remove his Wah.
Buddy's wah is after his fuzz and before his other dry effects in his signal chain. It also takes up a lot of real estate. It needed to come off the board. Due to it's placement in the chain, this meant it wasn't a straight forward 'run it on the ground before the board' type of ordeal. To make this easy we inserted Audition after his fuzz pedals and before his overdrives.
With Audition in the mix, Buddy can now plug his wah into Audition when he wants to use it, and unplug his wah when he doesn't. Audition will take care of the re-routing of the signal based on what is plugged into the Send and Return jacks! It can also power the wah if needed.
2. The next thing was input/output buffers and dual mono outputs.
For this we went to Interfacer TX. This is now where he plugs his guitar into the board (first through the passive input - fuzz - wah - back to Interfacer for a second buffered input). He runs through his pedals and then comes back to Interfacer for his buffered, dual mono outputs. Of course he can mute, isolate (ground lift) and fix polarity as well between amps.
Once we had all this I gave Buddy a few pointers on measuring cables and picking plug types for each pedal, got all the cable specs and lengths and I got to soldering some cables. A week later he had everything in hand and was ready to assemble his board and test.
Buddy does a great job explaining his side of the process through the magic of video.
Check out the link below which will take you to his YouTube video of the process from beginning to end!
Grant Klassen
