Making a Pedalboard

October 24th, 2024
contra, footdrums, jammer, music, tech
A few weeks ago I posted about how I was thinking about a pedalboard. I've now made one!

Before:

After:

It folds up slightly and fits in a standard rolly suitcase:

Not pictured: I later added padding on all six sides.

Here's the pedalboard by itself:

You can see the bundle of wires to the left that go to the keyboard and bass whistle box, and the wires to the right that go to the electronic drumkit's brain.

I really like how much faster I can set this up and strike. I now need less than five minutes instead of maybe half an hour.

What I wasn't expecting before I started this project, though, is how nice it is when playing. My feet can easily reach the buttons, without even stopping playing kick with my left heel. This is way better than when the pedals sprawled all over the floor and didn't stay put.

I started by cutting a piece of 3/4" plywood to the largest size I could fit in the suitcase I usually travel with. Then I played around with pedal layouts:

I realized I could fit the talkbox in the middle, and expand my effective space with a folding panel:

I put down velcro:

And cut away unused parts to save weight:

Here it is all together:

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