admiralchew

I’m a pedal obsessive, enjoy putting boards together, and collect pedals as well as use them. That probably puts me in the category of annoying pedal users but it’s something I really love and I’ve met some great people in the bass community all over the world because of it. The boards I put together are used for home recording so have to be fully functional - I’ve seen plenty of boards that look amazing but I’m not sure how easy it is to play a board consisting entirely of fifteen boutique synth pedals - but don’t necessarily have all of my favourites on. I used to have a big board of favourites but deconstructed it when I was moving last year. Since then, I’ve made a board of minis to see whether I could recreate my old big board in small format, a board of Broughton pedals which does basically everything I want a gigging/practice board to do, and most recently built a board with a lot of my favourites on again. Given how much I enjoy messing around with pedals I’m planning to put another themed board together and a couple of crazier boards with some of the collection pieces on. I always enjoy seeing the posts on here though seeing the different boards, seeing what people are using them for, and battling crazy GAS.

That’s great! I really like how clean it is. I’m worried about the answer if I ask how you got them lined up so straight? A ruler?

How do you like the latest MBD? I love the 2.

Probably none or maybe a few? I like pedals as works of art in their own right though so boutique pedals appeal to me. I had a board made up of MXR and Boss pedals that sounded good and I have a board made up of pretty, painstakingly hand built pedals that sounds good too. That said, the Doom 2 is more synthy than any fuzz I’ve tried, the Octabvre tracks superbly well and the deep switch sounds great, and the FX loop in the Chromatron allows for a lot of flexibility not always available on envelope filters. They may not sound so different to anything else live to substantially change how a song sounds but I’m always happy when I use them.

I love that board. EAE and Lusithand stuff is fantastic.

Haha, fair point. I just really like basses and pedals, both for what they do and aesthetically. They can be things of real beauty. That’s one of the reasons I really like @BillyBass’s rainbow collection. With apologies for derailing the thread, on the pedal front, I’m hoping to put together several boards and will put them on Basschat when they’re done. I’ve been periodically adding to this too to keep a record of some fantastic pedals: https://www.instagram.com/admiralchew/ Sadly, basses and pedals don’t make up for my lack of musical talent.

Excellent news on FB and the Cog site. The website already reflects a new model where preorders can be placed for some of the pedals. The T-16 is still out of stock but I think it was mentioned they may be back in December. Hopefully this will give more people a chance to play these brilliant pedals!

That or Cioks need to start making board-suitable reactors.

Thanks (if that was meant for me)! I've spent way too long thinking about pedals over the last few years but it's nice to finally have a big board back up and running. There are a few of my favourites not included on this one but I intend to put them on another board and will add it photos here when it's done.

That’s very helpful, thanks. I like pedals a lot so it’s helpful to know about the high gain. Still very tempting though!

I’m a big fan of the Damnation Audio MBD-2 and NRG Purrer as dual switch drive pedals. The Blackstone Mofset is dual switch and has two different flavours but just isn’t the sound in my head (which is why mine is in the classifieds). JAM’s bass pedals have two switches too.

As I said on a previous post, I’ve been rejigging how I approach pedals and, as a result, I’m selling a lot of them, making boards with others, and collecting a few like a gear-hoarding magpie. I'm hoping to make several boards over the next few months but this is the latest. Since late last year, my main practice board has been disassembled. This was a big miss as it had been set up in the same form since 2020. I'm not sure what possessed me to think that moving the pedals from a flight case into their boxes for a flat move made sense. It meant that I was using only a BBA, tuner, comp and preamp for a clean signal or using pedals on a scattered ad hoc basis. I built a board of minis to help bridge the gap, then most recently a board of Broughtons, but I've been desperate to put a practice board back together. The intention is to have most types of effect on tap and to have some of my favourite pedals constantly ready to go. The signal chain is Broughton BBA (under the board at 18v) > Strobostomp > Cali76 CB (at 18v) > Octabvre > Doom 2 > Heliotropic > Parabellum v2 > MBD2 > Life v3 (with a TRS to the board for off-board expression control) > Rockboard patch bay (I have a patch cable running between two patch bay ports to I can add the JC Wah off board) > Calamity (at 18v) > XD > Empress Bass Comp > SLO (at 12v with Crux) > Element, with the SLO effects loop being Utility Knife > C4 > Echosystem > Reverb. It is ridiculously power hungry. I may also add dual lock to the space underneath to tie a couple of power cables to the underside of the board for easier transport. However, I'm not sure this will be going anywhere as it's intended for home use and weighs as much as a small moon. All of the settings are a bit out of whack because of the faff of wiring up such a heavy monster of a board but I look forward to figuring out the best settings again.

Thanks! They’ve taken a while to assemble and involved a fair amount of gear sales and classifieds scouring, although a few are new and represent career milestones. I was just trying to avoid having basses the same colour but that turned into a bit of a rainbow. How do you find the John East preamp? I’ve been curious. The only non-stock preamp I have is the fretted Fender jazz but I like tinkering. Haha, it’s probably best I don’t see that purple Wunkay. Or any other indigo/purple bass for that matter.

Amazing! I had a similar realisation recently but I’m not quite at that level; you look like you’re getting on for a double rainbow! I have a matte gold bass on the way which will be yellow if I squint and a super-faded black bass that in some lights I like to pretend is indigo. It’s not. This is as close as I get:

I’ve had a few flangers, including a few boutique-ey and renowned ones, but I re-bought a BF-3 within two weeks of selling my original. It’s a brilliant pedal.

I bought a couple of Rockboard 2.0 and 2.1s recently. The 2.0s are travel boards to be stored in the 2.1 flight case with a pair of headphones and cables. I was wondering what to do with the now homeless 2.1s and, owing to my desk now being taken over by working-from-home equipment, I found my answer. I needed a way to quickly move my usual recording set up back and forth so the 2.1s have now been put to use for a clean tone board (Broughton BBA, mini tuner, compressor and preamp), and my pedal testing board. In case anyone is wondering about the gap between the Stomp and the Element, it's to allow me to choose whether to run it as a full board or to take the cables out (which wouldn't be possible with a smaller gap) and run them to another pedal when I'm testing it.

I’ve just checked and the ones on my Rockboard 2.1 board use the 2mm wrench, which I think is the M4.

Yeah, the MXR’s great. I think there’s one in the classifieds too?

The MXR Bass Chorus Deluxe is really excellent, has a small footprint and the flanger is excellent. I used a Boss CE-5 (albeit not the bass chorus) and the MXR offered enough to justify the price different. The Ripply Fall is great but quite a bit bigger than the MXR. The best small box chorus I think is the Providence Bass Chorus (although take that with a pinch of salt as I have one in the classifieds). It’s designed for bass though and does a lovely job of shimmering chorus. At the boutique end the Iron Ether Polytope is brilliant but very rare, and the Horrothia Type One is great but perhaps a bit big if the MXR size is better for your board.

I actually really like the Anima preamp. I put one in a a jazz bass recently and it sounds fantastic. A few of my friends have played that bass too and said positive things about the preamp, so it’s a shame if there’s now negativity around it.

Oh that's interesting! I didn't know that either. These are all Teambuilt/GPS from Andertons or Bass Direct and each of the three came with one, although one was missing the wax in the new car-style pack.

Absolutely amazing! You single-handedly made me want to try the Longsword/Model FET combo. Rockboards for the win too!