Rackmounting a pedal pre

[paul_5]

Hi all, how easy would it be to rackmount a pedal e.g. sansamp type thing? I'm guessing that once I've got the rack case it's just a question of drilling holes in the right place and pushing knobs through. Would probably need some sort of mounting for the PCB too.

does anyone have any experience of doing this, if so, how easy is it?

[icastle]

It's easy enough to do if the controls and sockets that were previously accessible on the pedal are wired.
If they're PCB mounted then it becomes a little more difficult.

[paul_5]

yeah, thought as much. I've got a dave hall VT2 which is a bit big for the board and isn't really getting used. I figured that if I rackmount it then I can get it off the board. I'd probably replace V1 for a 5751 to clean the 'main' channel up a bit and replace the footswitch with a TRS jack to use an old amp footswitch that I've got lying about. I might need to turn the tubes through 90 degrees though to squeeze it into a 1U case...

[icastle]

Well the tubes are already horizontal in the VT2 anyway so you can just use the original mounts for those (a couple of nylon pillars).

All of the little toggle switches and the footswitch are hardwired, but three of the five pots look as though they're PCB mounted (although my picture isn't very clear so they could actually be mounted through the PCB to save some space).

The jack sockets are all wired with unshielded cable which is fine in an enclosed unit like this, but it might be worth using shielded cable if you're going to mount everything in a larger box.

Other than that it doesn't look too difficult.

[paul_5]

Hmm, cheers for that...

[bartelby]

[quote name='icastle' timestamp='1325871822' post='1489224']
Well the tubes are already horizontal in the VT2 anyway so you can just use the original mounts for those (a couple of nylon pillars).

[/quote]


They're vertical aren't they?

[icastle]

[quote name='bartelby' timestamp='1325875483' post='1489303']
They're vertical aren't they?
[/quote]

Nope - if they were vertical then the pedal would end up about 5" tall.

Photo of internal guts is [url="http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y71/Chinese-Democrat/CIMG1456.jpg"]here[/url].

[JakeBrownBass]

I guess it depends on how handy your soldering skills are.

You can pretty much take any pedal and transfer it to a rack mounted box.

A friend of mine had 3 pedals that he used all the time & needed space on his pedal board for more pedals, so rather than buying a bigger pedal board he encased the 3 pedals into a 1u rack mount with all the controls on the front.

I'll try find some pictures of it!

[paul_5]

thanks for the advice guys and gals, I've just pulled the trigger on an Aguilar Tone Hammer DI, so I'm looking at changing the live setup anyway.
I'm starting to think I might be a little bit impulsive...