Top 3 Pedalboard Mistakes 

Episode 5: Top 3 Pedalboard Mistakes Welcome to the Chairmen of the Boards Podcast! The ultimate pedalboard podcast with the foremost rig builders in the world: Grant Klassen (Goodwood Audio), Brian Omilion (Omilion Audio), and Mason Marangella (Vertex Effects/The Rig Doctor). We've teamed up to democratize great tone and provide you with our best tricks, tips, resources and hacks so you can build the pedalboard of your dreams! //HOSTS// Grant Klassen (Goodwood Audio) YT - @Goodwood Audio IG - instagram.com/goodwoodaudio Brian Omilion (Omilion Audio) YT - @Omilion Audio IG - instagram.com/omilionaudio Mason "The Rig Doctor" Marangella (Vertex Effects) YT - @Vertex Effects IG - instagram.com/vertexeffects //WATCH// Watch all "Chairmen of the Boards" episodes: RU-vid: bit.ly/3rBohAd //LISTEN// Listen to all "Chairmen of the Boards" episodes on your favorite Podcast App: APPLE: apple.co/3En6baj SPOTIFY: spoti.fi/3jS1kEB

something I always recommend when you bring your pedalboard with you when you're auditioning new pedals, amps, guitars to buy.

Fun, informative show! My hard knock lessons are the jacks of patch cables & pedals eventually oxidize, so need to be cleaned. Also, patch cables do wear out if angles between pedals are severe/changed often, so test them when changing up the board

i love these podcasts. they’ve been very insightful so far

great as usual. these are so helpful.

After troubleshooting crap trying to learn all this I think the biggest improvement for me was having a decent power supply. I made the mistake of buying the hyped up expensive pedals first and then neglecting the power supply since when your starting out you hear a lot about cool pedals but less about the power supplies and the other stuff that makes the board sound and work correctly. I had all these fancy pedals and was running a donner dp1 power supply off Amazon that I bought for 50$ or something. After upgrading to a good power supply I was amazed how my pedals sounded totally different and how I didn’t hear any weird noises. I used to hear phantom pedals sounds when they were off but I could still hear them faintly.

Great info! I made my board stereo, only for at home use. Live I play mono, so now I'm wondering if I should just go back to mono. I've listenned to a lot of what Mason has posted over the past year as I've been slowly building my board. Cables etc, the conductive shield, I had no idea so I'm glad I saw that before wiring eveything up. I built my own board, a tad heavy, so I've been able to modify the interface as needed but smaller would perhaps be the goal of my next build. Thanks guys!

Got my board set up by Grant and Goodwood back in 2014, and though I've torn it apart and redone it myself a few times, I've never had a cable go bad, and the only issue I had he took care of right away... 8 years later! Can't speak highly enough of Goodwood!

11:44 that is a freaking GREAT idea!!!

This is so good. Bravo

I'm using only the basics in my board build. Something you could probably just get off your amp. I did add in a MXR Poly Blue Octave for experiments. I like what Mason brought up about building then finding out sounds and tone after and subsequently being unhappy with the performance after the fact.

Thanks for all the info man

Great info.

Fellow Canadian here, and OCD tone chaser. Been building my own boards for 30+ years, it never ends. I bought a 100' roll of microphone cable way back and dedicated a weekend to soldering cables, I still have the same cable's! I use both conductors and only ground one end of the braid, and mark the cable with colored heat shrink for added strength. I only use Neutrik connectors and never had issues with ground loops. I have one main board with approximately 10 pedals with another satellite board for tuner and pedals to trim the input before the chain. All my dirt is on the front end, stereo amplifier is mostly clean. Time based stuff is in the stereo loop, works well. The journey never ends!

Saw your past video on switchers and now I'm thinking of getting one so I don't have to tap dance around all my pedals. Only problem is, I'm having trouble finding one that is compact enough to fit on my pedalboard, but has at least 5 switches, can accomdoate most of my pedals, can switch the clean/dirty channel on my Mesa Boogie Mark V, and can work with the "4 cable method" of FX In/Out of my amp for my effects and noise gate. My current setup looks like Tuner>Noise Gate>Synth>Digitech>Volume>Wah>Compressor>Big Muff>Phaser>OD>Front of Amp and then Effects Send>Tri-Chorus>Delay>Reverb 1>Reverb 2>Loop Station>Effects Return. Any suggestions?

I’d like to know more about what you said regarding the conductive plastic core and it’s effects on the rigs. Do you have a video dedicated to this matter? I didn’t realise that it could be conductive and darken the tone. I’m also a little confused about how to strip this back. Surely a fraction of an inch of insulation can’t have that much effect, or am I mis-understanding what you are saying. Great podcast by the way, really enjoying it’s informative topics, keep up the good work.

Mistake….. wiring cables and forgetting to put the heat shrink tubing on first!

#tonetown 🤓🤠🤣 Awesome video guys! I tried the solderless cables a while back and it was such a mistake. Friends never let friends use solderless cables 😎

Morning Mason, I highly respect your work and have learned quite a bit from you already; I am also a resent subscriber. I was wondering about your thoughts on wireless lithium battery power supplies? I know eventually they will run out of use, but I have been using a Warwick power LT XL for almost a year now and have had zero problems with it.

this is why i only a few style of pedals, and mostly tried and true clones with a few proprietary builds here and there. i try and think of everything .. for example I like side mounted jacks as they seem to work better putting a board together for me.. i hate top mounted jacks .. i know its not a tone issue

15:20 I advise not run in stereo pretty much ever. Dealing with front of house techs, phasing issues etc etc. Its just more of a headache than its worth long term. Sometimes if a single reverb or delay pedal runs stereo it could work if you're directly in to the PA. Or if you're a bedroom guitar player / home recording artist then you're fine. But if you're a pro musician performing? Running in stereo is a much bigger pain than its worth.

I'm mostly a bedroom player, and have been in cover bands recently (and might be again). I have a job that isn't related to music, and I'm married with kids. When I finally get to play guitar - I'm not going to be setting up additional pedals, I just want to turn on the pedalboard and start playing. So yeah, I know my pedalboard is probably too big and with too many things on it - but if I take them off that "occasional use" will drop to zero... Then again - I am happy with all the sounds I can get from it, and I haven't made any changes for over a year, and a fully loaded Pedaltrain Novo 24 isn't THAT huge... But I am stopping myself from getting a switcher and upgrading to a Schmidt Array - I don't need them, as much as I want them.

There's no shortage of opinions? this was an excellent video ☆☆☆. an all you Young Musicians out there practice practice practice it matters !

Nobody wants to hear me play guitar badly enough for ME to spend $2,300 on pedalboard labor 😂. Still, I hear what you guys are saying. Good experience; good advice; Good…. Wood. Thanks for moderating, Grant.

I eventually want to get soldered cables. But for now I’m using creations solderless cables. They’ve been on my board for a while with no issues. But one day I will do the soldered cables.

Andy Timmons is wonderful!! Bringer of McKinney, Tx, Lonestar triple-rectified Tone Water!!

Mine: 1. messy and disorganized. 2. put analog vintage fuzz circuits somewhere other than where it has to be, most of my fuzzes are trash anywhere but right next to the guitar. 3. didn't think about gain structure, and signal levels (too low? too high? just right!). Secret: measure them.

you get what you pay for. that's usually the case. people often want a ferrari on a vw budget. the most important pedal on my board is the bypass switch (( apx. 2" square) that goes straight to the amp! LOL!

What would you recommend if I wanted to build a pedalboard similar to how you guys do it but want some of the pedals to be modular so I can try new stuff.

Once you guys started talking about stereo and “summing” ( I don’t even know what that is) you completely lost me now I’m wondering if I should even bother building my 1st peddle board.. 😢

What is PBC

This might be a dumb question, but how do I know if the patch cables you buy are soldered or solderless?

Say I have multiple pedals on my board, and pedal #1 has a 100 Ω output impedance, if pedal #2 is switched on and has a 5k output impedance, how does that affect the line being driven? After pedal 2 is it at 5k, or does the low input impedance it was given circumvent the issue? Or somewhere in between?

May I make a minor suggestion? Because Mason is looking right and Brian is looking left, it might be nice to swap their positions in the stream layout.

I think the journey in the FUN PART of building your own pedalboard. AND EVERYONE SHOULD EXPERIENCE IT. EVERYONE has to build a pedalboard with 15 pedals and 3 expression pedals and 2 wahs 3 fuzz boxes etc and the rest of the ridiculous pedal out there. Then lift it back and forth to 20 band practicies to then carry it to a gig and argues with the soundman about noisy pedals, bad cables, not hearing guitar in mix then finish the gig and get stiffed by the promoter because only 10 people showed up including your girlfriend and her BFF AND THEN REALIZE "OK Maybe there is a more efficient way of doing this." when you develop a back problem." BEEN THERE DONE THAT. IT WAS AWESOME. My Rig is a BASIC yet powerful rig that can do A LOTTA TUENS. Its a 18"X12.3" Mono board (hoping to get one of the tavel VE boards) with a WAH>Peterson Tuner>Tumnus>Input of MS3. Loop 1 Timmy, Loop 2 Crayon, Loop 3 EFZ Loop to Mesaboogie JP2C OR a Fender 68' reissue (depends on what the gig needs). Les Paul and Telecaster. Drink holder for my Rum cocktail, and a microphone stand... Pedalboard weighs in at 20lbs - ish. Thats my journey more or less but above all.... I HAD FUN... I wanted to be efficient and so i kicked my ego out of the door and my back has reaped the benefits... LOL Great show GRET Topic as usual. nice session lads.

Thoughts on the George L kits for making patch cables? I'm about to invest in a board and now I'm concerned about all these solderless comments. Btw, I'm no pro...and not touring, and not spending huge money on pedals. Hobby player mainly. Shoot, maybe I need to start soldering....

Mogami 2314 changed my life.

I take my old cables and friends cables and make my own... But i have some experience.. a couple hundred thousand dollars in electronics training. Yes i became a flight simulator tech so i could mod my pedals and build my own cables

So aluminum does not shield. I did not know that. Hum........

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I have been using evidence sis plugs and cable for a long time and have never had one fail after I put them together and they tested good, NEVER EVER. Say what you want but I go by personal experience. Sure, any cable, soldered or not, has the capability of going bad but I have never had one go bad and if it did I always have spares. If for some reason one does go bad I can fix it in 5 minutes on the spot no solder needed. Solderless definitely has it's advantages. Evidence isn't cheap but like you yourself said, you get what you pay for. Obviously you think you're the only person in the world that can build a board right doc, I think not. Common sense goes a long way. If you want to solder your cables that's all good but I think you're wrong to bad mouth all solderless cables. One more thing I will say about it is, if it's good enough for Dan, who I might add builds a lot of professional boards and I would bet more than the "doctor", it's good enough for me. This is just my honest opinion and I have built many boards and put together many solderless cables in my 67 yrs. But I do use only evidence sis and am no way affiliated with any company. Thank you very much. Great video

Guilty of many of these..

Olive Garden is trash, other than the breadsticks.