Wiring/powering multiple guitar effects pedals, and building a pedal board?

Question

2 more questions. The first one is kind of like my first one, but it's different:

1. I've seen a lot of guitarists who have a whole board of effects pedals in front of them. How do you power them wire them together and attach them to the amp? Also, do you need a special kind of amp for pedals, or does pretty much any kind work, even the ones with built-in effects?

2. A lot of pedal boards at concert I've seen look homemade out of wood. How do you make one of those?

Answer 1

Any amp can be hooked up to effect pedals. They all hav in/out slots. Buy short chords (about 6 inches long) and just connect all effect pedals together. Then take a long chord, hook it up to the end pedal and hook it up to an amp. take another long chord, hook it up to the other end pedal, and then into the guitar.

Making a pedal board is easy. Take a few two by fours, nail em into a three sided box with a bottom, nail your pedals to it and youre ready to go.

Answer 2

I have seen many instances where the pedals are running solely on battery power. Because the pedals are being used momentarily, the average 9V battery or pair of 9V batteries will last a few performances. You can also get an AC adapter that will split off to every device but its not really necessary. They are often wired together in a daisy chain pattern by using a short 1/4 phone plug to go out of one pedal and into the next. It may take some time to pick out the order of how you want to arrange the pedals.. possibly putting the reverb one at the end of the chain before it goes into the amp and putting the Wah at the front of the chain so that what ever effect you choose downstream (if you are using multiple effects) can be activated while you work the wah.

So your cable goes from the guitar into your first pedal. Then in one and out the other and so forth until it gets to the last pedal. Then a cable goes from that last pedal and into the amp. The amp will "see" it as being a guitar regardless of how you configure your setup.

They actually have pedal trays that you can get in the guitar store, however, if you want to make it out of wood, whatever looks nice or what ever suits you is the best way to make it. I have seen some guys use expensive plywood and craft it to the point where it looks like a piece of fine furniture when the cover is snapped on it, while I have seen others that were cut round or in a semi circle so that the pedals were arranged in more of an arc than straight across.

Answer 3

Godlyke PA-9 -- it's an AC power cord that can power tons of effects pedals using only one electrical jack. It uses a 9V power line (which is pretty standard -- most pedals use 9V of power).

As for patching them all together -- there are tons of cords designed specifically to plug pedals together. Check out a good guitar store like Guitar Center or Sam Ash and they'll have it. If you see the kind that are just one 1/4" plug mounted to another without a cord -- you'll want to avoid them because the plug gets loose from the mount and it stops working.

As for making a pedal board -- easy. You unscrew the pedals' casings from the bottom. Go to a hardware store and look for the same gauge of screws, only longer. Then drill holes into the pedal board, pop your new screws into the holes from the bottom of the wood. Mount the bottoms of the pedals' casings and then screw the top part of the pedals' casings. You don't necessarily have to mount them onto the pedal board though, it's just more convenient.

You can use pedals with any amp. If the amp has an effects loop it'll be a little easier to modulate the effects if you patch them into the loop instead of patching them into the amp's input, but it's not necessary. As for built-in effects -- unless the effect is gain or reverb, don't use them. They're usually lousy compared to a good pedal that can produce the same effect.

Also -- you didn't ask this, but it's important. Get pedals with true-bypass circuitry. That way when the pedal is turned off you can keep it plugged in and it won't interfere with the guitar sound. Without true-bypass it'll either compress the tone or have faint hints of the pedal's signal processing.

Answer 4

Well the built in sounds on an amp don't compare to the real deal... same goes for multi-effects. They all use digital signal processing, which can sound quite nice if it's high end gear, but the D/A converters in those amps and most multi-effect pedals are usually pretty crappy. High end analog gear sounds WAY better, mainly because it mucks around with the signal less. There are certain things that you can't do with analog technology though, but they make a lot of high end digital stuff that does that too. So what's the point of all those pedals? Well, besides greater flexibility and full control over your signal chain (the order of the pedals makes a huge difference), it sounds better. If you like the sounds you're getting from your amp, fine. It's your call.