DIY Pedalboard - 3d printed & Aluminium Extrustions 400mm x 300mm

[Woodinblack]

It does mount with two bolts through the bottom (note that mine aren't like the ones in the picture, I used the adjustable feet that came with the original board, as I got the power bar separately later, and prefered the other feet.

Can't see what the bolt is offhand, other than it measures 7mm with a caliper across.

 

 

[SpondonBassed]

3 hours ago, Si600 said:

@Woodinblack has one, we could ask him to measure it up....

 

...behind the bike sheds preferably.

[stewblack]

5 hours ago, MichaelDean said:

I keep having intrusive thoughts about integrating one of the Harley Benton PowerBars into one of these. I don't need more power on my pedalboard, I don't even need a new booard. But I'm still thinking about it 😅

 

https://www.thomann.co.uk/search_dir.html?smcs=81f6e8_6233&sw=spaceship power bar&sp=bloomreach&category[]=GIEFNT&cme=true&filter=true

They are absolutely brilliant.

[Woodinblack]

5 hours ago, stewblack said:

They are absolutely brilliant.

 

They are, and really low noise. Wouldn't change mine. Well, I might for the battery one now.

[rwillett]

I got a cheap dedicated compressor pedal a few days ago, a Donner Compressor.  Looked cheap and I thought I'll have a look at that and I'll put it on my pedalboard.

 

Well, what a disaster that was. The pedal is very small, I hadn't quite appreciated how small. It's metal and well made BUT it almost falls between the rails on the pedalboard. Thats not the biggest problem though, nothing I have will actually stick to the bottom of the pedal. So none of the Velcro I have stays on. The rubber appears to be some sort of inert rubber that is very non-slip but at least three different velcro tapes just slide off it as if it had some sort of repulsion built into it. NASA needs to know as this could be cheap way to launch rockets.

 

It turns out that its not just me and other people have the same issue. (https://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/guitar-amps-gizmos/83801-attaching-mini-pedals-pedalboard-velcro-aint-workin.html)

 

So rather than peeling off the rubber from the bottom of the pedal, I designed printed a new base that simple screws in AND is quite large so it spans the pedal board rails. The old base is in the box, I used the same screws that came with it.

 

 

 

I suspect that all of the Donner mini pedals have this issue, nice pedals but a little tricky to fix with Velcro.

 

 

If anybody wants a base let me know and I'll print one out and send it for free. Rather annoying TBH.

Rob

[rwillett]

I took a punt and ordered a M-Vave Pedal Power adaptor AliExpress. At £8 delivered, seems worth trying out.

 

Well it turned up today, just over a week or so from ordering.

 

Its small, seems well made, comes with eight PSU cables for pedals and one USB-C cable. The eight PSU cables alone are worth more than £8 IMO.

 

 

Plugged a power cable in and it at least lights up. The blue LED's are very bright as per normal.

 

I was looking at creating a small 'travel' 300mm pedalboard so this seemed ideal. So I knocked up a quick design

 

 

The Pedal Power unit is the middle khaki bit

 

 

I'm printing the side pieces for the pedalboard and the holder for the PSU now. I'll put some sort of cable lock on the USB-C to protect it as its dead easy to pull thecable out.

 

Rob

 

 

[Richard R]

@rwillett - what do you use for your designs? I am checking out a Makerspace and as I am brand new to all this I'm incluned to use the same software as others there while I learn.

Most people there seem to use Blender, one or two use FreeCad.  Blender is a  different mindset to the CAD background I used to have in the late '90s, but is definitely quick to get going.

[rwillett]

@Richard R

 

I use Fusion 360, most of my designs are parametric. This means I adjust them using a value in a form rather than on the screen. This makes design a whole lot easier. F360 is very good for this type of design.

 

e.g. Here's the width at 25mm.

 

Note that the bolt holes are in the middle of the open section, not the middle of the whole width. One parameter change to 40mm

 

The holes are still spot on in the middle of the open section. So I design with this in mind. It's no programming, but it's having a logical mind to design with change in mind.

 

I don't use Blender though I tried it out a few years ago and didn't get on with it. I'm not a good designer, TBH I'm not even a bad designer yet. FreeCAD was a miserable experience on a Mac so that got thrown. OpenSCAD is very program focussed, but even as a developer, it was too much to learn, so I went with Fusion 360 as it's basically free for non-commercial use. You don't get all the bells and whistles of the paid version, but I never need them.

 

If you want to do the job properly, then get Fusion 360 and learn how to use it. There's loads of videos, and I wouldn't change now at all. Its not perfect, none of them are, but I've done the simple stuff above and the the guitar below. Takes time to learn, but it gives a design idiot such as myself the chance to do a half decent job. I'm sure a proper designer would laugh at my efforts but I've built five guitars so far and four are still playable. The first was quite bad though and is in the garage to remind me how bad I am if I get cocky.

 

 

Feel free to ask questions,

Rob

 

 

Edited January 25 by rwillett

[Richard R]

I get the feeling Blender is fundamentally coming from a creative rather than engineering standpoint. The idea is to start with lumps and then change them. Which will be fine for some stuff, less so for others.

 

I'll check out Fusion, thanks for that.

[rwillett]

That might be spot on. Fusion is based on extruding stuff and taking stuff away. 

[rwillett]

Here's the first pictures of the pedalboard with the Pedal Power strip (click on them to make them bigger). These are 500mm wide, basically I chopped a 1m bar in half.

 

I had gray on the printer so used that. I think it looks quite classy in gray and black.

 

 

The bottom. The little orange bit is the cable tie to keep the USB-C cable connected.

 

 

From the back.

 

 

After wiring it all up a couple of problems are found:

 

1. The wires are too short, they need to be a longer. I had to reverse the Pedal Power as the 300mA outputs were at the wrong end.  I've had to cram the pedal board a bit to get the cable tuns to fit.

2. The Pedal Power can't handle all the devices coming on at once. Specifically the ToneX pedal. This isn't a major surprise or drawback. Pull the power cable out of the ToneX, turn it all on and then put the power cable into the ToneX. I suspect normal pedals would be fine, but I'm sure cleverer people than myself can answer that. Just powered the board from a better plug. my Macbook power adaptor, and it works fine

3. the f$%^^&&*(()ing Behringer pedals having their power supply on the side is a complete PITA. Why? FFS Why?

 

 

However for the cost of a few hours design, a few hours printing and some cheap extrusion, it looks good.

 

Rob

 

 

 

 

Edited January 25 by rwillett

[tauzero]

2 hours ago, rwillett said:

2. The Pedal Power can't handle all the devices coming on at once. Specifically the ToneX pedal. This isn't a major surprise or drawback. Pull the power cable out of the ToneX, turn it all on and then put the power cable into the ToneX. I suspect normal pedals would be fine, but I'm sure cleverer people than myself can answer that. Just powered the board from a better plug. my Macbook power adaptor, and it works fine

 

I encountered this using a medium current power bank - using the super duper one, it coped fine.

 

PS. I think there would be room for a power bank under there too, so you could make it a freestanding board with just input and output wires.

Edited January 25 by tauzero

[rwillett]

13 hours ago, tauzero said:

 

I encountered this using a medium current power bank - using the super duper one, it coped fine.

 

PS. I think there would be room for a power bank under there too, so you could make it a freestanding board with just input and output wires.

 

I tried using a small battery for phone usage but wouldn't work with the ToneX. I have a very large one that was being charged overnight but we've had power cuts on and off all night, so need to check on stuff. At the moment wifi screwed and other stuff not working so suspect the UPS's eventually gave up the ghost.  That's the morning focus 

[rwillett]

As a challenge to myself I wondered what the smallest usable pedalboard could be.

 

After playing about with a single row of pedals (and not being too happy TBH) I remembered an older iPhone11 64GB that my eldest daughter had and no longer used as she has an iPhone14 (a better phone that myself).

 

Putting Amplitube or BiasFX2 on an iPhone or iPad is easy, however you need a digital interface and really a battery as these things all take power. and an iPhone 11 with a dodgy 3rd party battery rather than an Apple battery.

 

I had an iRig 2 HD doing very little and numerous batteries.

 

So I laid all this out and started holding things together to see how small it could be.

 

 

So a single piece of 2040 aluminium extrusion for the base 252mm long, its longer than the iPhone 11 as the battery and iRig 2 fit underneath and are held on by some purpose built clamps.These have wires and the ends take up space. I inserted the iRig into the side clamp so that saved a bit of space.

 

 

The cables might get smaller and neater if I can find the right ones from eBay, AliExpress or Amazon.

 

 

I also had an M-Vave Chocolate four switch MIDI pedal lying around. It has four switches and two options per switch, quick press and long press. Programmed it up to send eight different messages, and using the live section of BiasFX2, I had it to switch between different different pedalboards, but I could have a single pedalboard and have the M-Vave turning individual pedals on and off.

 

I plugged it into a Yamaha HS-7 monitor speaker and it's really good. I've no doubt an HX Stomp or Quad Cortex is better, but for the an old iPhone 11, an iRig 2, a battery and an pedal switch, none of which were being used, a cheap solution to a pedalboard and a very small one. The iPhone 11 has no issues running anything on BiasFX (so far), Bass sounds fine as does guitar.

 

Its 260mm long and 90mm wide. I can also put an iPad on if I wanted a bigger display. I checked the balance point.

 

I suspect my daughter may claim it for herself, but I'd have no issues taking this out for practise, the battery will provide about eigh hours of use.

Rob

 

 

 

 

Edited February 3 by rwillett

[rwillett]

I can't seem to leave things alone. So I wondered how small I could make a pedal with a battery and a audio interface. So it's now down to 12cm x 11cm x 10cm. So that's a significant reduction from 26cm x 9cm, basically half the size.

 

This new version also allows me to see all of the battery indicator lights and to adjust the iRig input and output controls. It does have a smaller battery than before but it should last 6-7 hours which is far longer than I need it for.

 

It is bigger than a Helix Stomp or a Mod Dwarf or a Line 6 but it's portable and stands me at £15 for a new battery as I had all of the other parts lying around. The iPad display does make it very easy to read and the interface is so easy to use.

 

I can use either an older iPad or an older iPhone 11 that sit on an adjustable rod to get the right angle. The iPad is the easier to use as it's so much bigger display.

 

I have a M-Vave four switch pedal unit which works across Bluetooth. That gives me eight options with short and long presses.

 

It sounds very nice with the Yamaha HS-7 speaker. I tend to use BiasFX2 and I'm experimenting with Loopy Pro.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry no banana for size.

Rob

 

 

 

[SpondonBassed]

41 minutes ago, rwillett said:

The iPad display

 

This is where it would fall down for me.

 

I hate touch screens and panels with an intensity that most folk can't fully understand, myself included.  The display part is fine.  It's the physical buttons and knobs that I miss.

 

Also, ONE set of buttons and/or knobs is easy to learn.  Nested menus with a variety of different arrangements of clicky bits are hard to assimilate.  I don't even bother these days.  If something is nested behind a menu it simply won't be useful to me.

 

I think it is because these devices are not tactile.  I see some touchy keypads offer a vibrate function but that is hardly addressing the issue.

 

I do admire the concept of shrinking hardware but I would need physical knobs and buttons large enough for my large hands to operate by feel if necessary.  Miniaturisation just for the sake of it is a pain in the Adam's apple.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[rwillett]

11 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

 

This is where it would fall down for me.

 

I hate touch screens and panels with an intensity that most folk can't fully understand, myself included.  The display part is fine.  It's the physical buttons and knobs that I miss.

 

Also, ONE set of buttons and/or knobs is easy to learn.  Nested menus with a variety of different arrangements of clicky bits are hard to assimilate.  I don't even bother these days.  If something is nested behind a menu it simply won't be useful to me.

 

I think it is because these devices are not tactile.  I see some touchy keypads offer a vibrate function but that is hardly addressing the issue.

 

I do admire the concept of shrinking hardware but I would need physical knobs and buttons large enough for my large hands to operate by feel if necessary.  Miniaturisation just for the sake of it is a pain in the Adam's apple.

What I do is setup the iPad for what I want. I do this on the desk. This gets saved as a user preset. This was designed as an exercise in packaging and something I could easily take away. I don't tend to change too much from the preset, if I want a slight change, I'll create another preset.

 

The M-Vave foot switch simply moves up and down the presets, plus things like a long press, turns the tuner on and off.

 

Its small, compact and battery powered, easily fits into a small case, and is surprisingly versatile. Is it as good as some of the higher end stuff? Probably not  

 

I do have a Behringer X Touch Mini controller as well but its a fag to setup. 

 

I agree that touch screens are sometimes a pain, my Seat Leon has a touch screen and I hate it for all the reasons you say above.

 

Rob

[SpondonBassed]

20 minutes ago, rwillett said:

I agree that touch screens are sometimes a pain, my Seat Leon has a touch screen and I hate it for all the reasons you say above.

 

You should see my post, this morning, about that on Daily Annoyances.

[LowB_FTW]

8 hours ago, rwillett said:

Sorry no banana for size.

 

Mark