Quarantine Pedalboard Project

[Benn Roe]

So, over the last few months I've been building this board from scratch.

I have no experience building much of anything, and I'm sure I did lots of stuff the stupid or slow way, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. If I were starting again, I'd have done the tolex a little differently. It's definitely a little sloppy. Overall, though, I think I did okay. I figured I'd document the building process somewhat, in case anyone was interested.

I've needed this board for a long time, but thankfully my last few bands have worked really, really slowly, so I've been able to take my time figuring out the best way to go about getting the right sized board. Active work on the project began a few months ago with this craigslist score:

I had long-since settled on building the board myself, but first I wanted to find a big enough case so I could build to fit a case I knew existed. This was some DJ's gig box, so it was segmented inside and unevenly padded, and I spent a day or two ripping all that garbage out. I wish I had taken pictures of that process, but I didn't. It was frustrating and time-consuming because I didn't have any idea what tools to use. The case still has a few holes on the outside that I'll ultimately need to plug, since I won't be using the board while it's inside the case, just transporting it as such. That's another project. It measures around 45" x 18" on the outside.

[Benn Roe]

The board began with a single piece of pine, from which I cut all four sides of the frame.

[Benn Roe]

The frame measures about 43" x 15".

The pedals fit in the case loose, so I guess that was good news. I did briefly consider that I still hadn't made the damn thing big enough.

[Benn Roe]

The frame fit together well enough. It wasn't like a glove, but nothing that wood glue and filler couldn't fix.

[Benn Roe]

The top was cut from a piece of MDF.

I only had access to four clamps, so I had to glue the frame in two overnight sessions.

I got some brackets to hold the top on the frame.

[Benn Roe]

First shot of the fully glued frame, with enough brackets to dry fit the top.

It's hard to tell from these pictures, but I painstakingly hand-shaved one edge of the top so that when it rested on the brackets it would rest flush with the back of the frame, despite being at an angle. I would later go on to shave down the top edge of the back of the frame to match this angle.

[Benn Roe]

My RM-1N had been lost in the mail for a year at this point, and its replacement had yet to arrive, but this was my first attempt at a layout with the frame and top loosely assembled.

Got the rest of the brackets on there. The ones on the sides were pretty straightforward. They just needed to be mounted at an angle so the top rested flush with the sides of the frame, but the remaining brackets all needed to be bent to adjust their angle before the top would rest on them.

After getting the top fully supported by brackets, I used wood filler to build up the top of the front edge of the frame, so that it would match the angle of the top. This took a few passes, but actually worked out surprisingly well.

[Benn Roe]

Next was drilling holes in the top for the jacks, switch, and LED.

[Benn Roe]

Then the back needed holes, which needed to be much less round and mostly involved hacking away at them with a jigsaw.

And the top holes needed to be countersunk, but without a fancy countersinking tool, I ended up having to just drill bigger holes from the bottom without going all the way through, and then shave away at them with an x-acto knife.

[Benn Roe]

Not everything fit on the first try, but we got there, and everything fit well enough. The power outlet, LED, and on/off switch were a pre-wired harness I bought from West Coast Pedalboard. I built this board to save money and pick up skills, and this decision fought both of those goals, but I was already doing first-time wood-cutting, tolexing, audio wiring, etc., so I figured I'd get a little help with this one aspect the first time around. Next time (for my bass or baritone board), I'll probably try to wire something like this up myself.

[Benn Roe]

[Benn Roe]

[Benn Roe]

Next I wood-filled and sanded the shit out of everything to try to get it as smooth and uniform as possible before applying the tolex, which I decided to do as one piece, a good decision which I Implemented poorly. First I glued the bottom of the frame to the tolex, so it would rest firm for cutting to fit. This was the biggest mistake of the project, as I should have glued it to the top to keep my seams underneath the board. Oh well.

[Benn Roe]

While the bottom of the frame was adhering to the tolex, I glued the carpet to the top of the board, placed gromets in the additional holes (that I apparently never documented drilling) that allow power cables and MIDI cables to travel between the top of the board and the area underneath, and affixed the power supplies to the underside (which I would later temporarily remove to spray paint this part of the board).

[Benn Roe]

I didn't take any pictures of actually gluing the at-this-point cut tolex to the rest of the frame, because I needed to glue it all down pretty quickly after spraying, but I think these pictures give a pretty good idea of how I cut everything to make it fit. What I ended up with was a fully covered frame with seams at the corners on the sides and top, as well as along the inside bottom edge. Some of it turned out a little sloppy. Most of it is fine. Where the wood peeks through a bit, I just painted it to the approximate colour of the tolex, and you can't really tell without very close inspection. I assume this will need to be redone properly at some point, but it should look fine for a good long while.