Thinking About a Pedalboard

October 8th, 2024
footbass, footdrums, jammer, music, tech
As I've been playing more gigs with Kingfisher I've been thinking about how to reduce the time I'm spending on setting up and tearing down. It usually takes me about 35 minutes to get everything plugged in, and 20 minutes to get it all packed away again. Cecilia's been pushing me to make a pedalboard; what would that look like?

I do have a lot of stuff by my feet:

The key things are the four velocity-sensitive pedals that I use for drums and bass. I'm playing these nearly constantly, and they need to be positioned just right.

The other things are all helpful, though I use them much less. The pedals on the right are for modifying the sound of my mandolin, while the talkbox on the left can apply to the mandolin or my keyboard overlays. I need to be able to turn these on and off while playing, but the ergonomics doesn't need to be as good.

Here's what it looks like in context:

There are also other components (usb hub, raspberry pi) that I currently stick to the piano but would move to the floor if I had a good place to put them.

I need to measure to figure out the minimum width I can fit these into, but I think it's about 26". I'd really like this to be something I can check for flying with, probably by packing my clothes around it in a regular (<62 linear inches) suitcase.

My normal default would be to figure out the minimum area that would work and use 3/4" plywood, but that seems like it might be heavier than necessary. It seems like it's common for people to use metal ones but these would add height. Which isn't a total dealbreaker, but then I'd need an even taller seat for playing on. I'm also not sure whether the slight angle (usually ~1" over 1') would bother me.

I think my ideal would be close to something like this but upside down: metal construction for a good strength-to-weight ratio, but with the stiffening edge coming up instead of going down so I don't gain a lot of height.

Suggestions?

Referenced in:

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, mastodon, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Linkpost for July

Effective Altruism

via Thing of Things July 3, 2026

Agentic test processes, LLM benchmarks, and other notes on agentic coding from Galapagos Island

I've been using AI fairly heavily since last November and the whole thing is a funny experience. An agent will do something that, if a human did it, you'd immediately fire them. My reaction, of course, is to act as if this is great and spin up a t…

via Posts on July 3, 2026

Variable fonts aren't universally supported

I make a lot of webpages. I also use Lockdown Mode on iOS and MacOS for a bit of extra security. Sometimes I realize that I forgot to test on Safari and it looks like crap, or I test and don’t notice that there’s been a problem for months (as was the case…

via Home June 27, 2026

more     (via openring)