TheGuitarist
Well-known member
So i'm designing an elaborate pedal board for myself because i'm sick of the clutter of single pedals, but don't actually use enough fx and stuff for a multifx unit, plus i like my pedals.
So i figured, get an enclosure bent up, drill some holes and gut my pedals and mount them to a case (probably aluminium for strength/weight reasons.)
But i also figured, while i was at it, i might as well get a bit funky with it. First i thought, hey cool i can add Dual colour LED's for when pedals are on or bypassed (its in all honesty easier to do it that way rather than screw with true bypass 3pdt switches, its elaborate not overly complicated) and i was like hell yeah this is cool! Then i thought, oh and i can paint all the logos and names in glow and the dark paint! And if its not glowing it'll be a whitish colour anyway!
Then i thought... hang on a second... why don't i set up some relays so i can hit one switch and it will activate/deactivate a bunch of things at once. The main use for this being channel + overdrive and channel + reverb, mainly going from high gain to clean +verb or drive settings, i was thinking about doing delay as well but we'll see, my delay pedal keeps on decaying if you hit the off switch on the pedal, and just bypassing defeats the purpose of that feature.
BUT THEN! I remembered that a lot of the switches out there cause popping in audio signals, not big ones, but enough to know its there. Same with relays (or maybe i'm imagining it on my CRM kit). And then i thought... thats line level.... what happens if i step on a switch blasting 60w out of my 100w tube head (lets face it, who ACTUALLY uses all those watts) with full distortion going.... BANG! Not nice. Now i know some of this is dc current building up, but there are ways around that, its more the mechanical switching i'm worried about.
Should i mostly be ok? Or are there certain things i should keep in mind.
So i figured, get an enclosure bent up, drill some holes and gut my pedals and mount them to a case (probably aluminium for strength/weight reasons.)
But i also figured, while i was at it, i might as well get a bit funky with it. First i thought, hey cool i can add Dual colour LED's for when pedals are on or bypassed (its in all honesty easier to do it that way rather than screw with true bypass 3pdt switches, its elaborate not overly complicated) and i was like hell yeah this is cool! Then i thought, oh and i can paint all the logos and names in glow and the dark paint! And if its not glowing it'll be a whitish colour anyway!
Then i thought... hang on a second... why don't i set up some relays so i can hit one switch and it will activate/deactivate a bunch of things at once. The main use for this being channel + overdrive and channel + reverb, mainly going from high gain to clean +verb or drive settings, i was thinking about doing delay as well but we'll see, my delay pedal keeps on decaying if you hit the off switch on the pedal, and just bypassing defeats the purpose of that feature.
BUT THEN! I remembered that a lot of the switches out there cause popping in audio signals, not big ones, but enough to know its there. Same with relays (or maybe i'm imagining it on my CRM kit). And then i thought... thats line level.... what happens if i step on a switch blasting 60w out of my 100w tube head (lets face it, who ACTUALLY uses all those watts) with full distortion going.... BANG! Not nice. Now i know some of this is dc current building up, but there are ways around that, its more the mechanical switching i'm worried about.
Should i mostly be ok? Or are there certain things i should keep in mind.
