Finally Got A Pedalboard

Nomad

After spending ages using a bit of plywood as a pedalboard with most of the pedals just sitting loose on top, powered by a motley collection of wall warts, I finally got a pedalboard and a dedicated power supply. Been connecting it up and trying it this evening, although there is stuff still to be done...

The Strymon Zuma power supply has worked out really well. Finding a single supply to power the pedals has been a bit of a challenge: the Zoom G3X is 9V but wants 500mA, and the two TC Nova pedals (drive and delay) are 12V and want 380mA and 300mA respectively, while the tremolo can run on 9V (and low current) but apparently works better on 18V. Everything else is 9V and low current. The Zuma has seven 9V 500mA outlets, plus two that are switchable between 9V at 500mA, 12V at 375mA and 18V at 250mA. I reckoned the 5mA shortfall for the 380mA Nova Drive would be okay, and it is. The plan for the tremolo is to sort out a voltage doubler cable and use two of the normal 9V outlets. That would leave me with one 9V outlet spare (or two if I keep the tremolo at 9V).

The footswitches at the front will be changed out for a single enclosure (that fits better) covering all of those functions (amp channel & reverb, three Nova Drive patches, and wah) plus some additional switching for the G3X (scroll left/right at least), and I plan to put a small patch bay at the top right to make hooking it up easier. The wiring is a mess at the moment, but I'll leave that until I have the switch array and patch bay sorted out.

The board itself is the 80cm Palmer one and seems to be well made - all feels nice and rigid.

The Zuma doesn't really fit underneath. It doesn't quite fit between the two lateral bars, although one can be adjusted to make room. Even with that, the IEC connector is partially covered by the adjacent bar (whether it's fitted right way up or upside down), so it'll stay on top. It would have been better if the IEC was on the end of the enclosure. Can't have everything, I suppose, but this is close enough. I dare say it could go under a riser, but I'm unlikely to add more pedals (there are several sackfuls of stuff I can play with in the Zoom if I really want to try stuff I'd otherwise regret buying as discrete boxes), and that space is pretty dead anyway due to the height of the G3X.

The signal chain is...

wah (buffered when off) -> Nova Drive -> amp preamp in

amp FX send -> G3X -> tremolo -> volume pedal -> delay -> reverb -> amp FX return (followed by amp reverb)

The tuner is connected to a dedicated tuner-out on the volume pedal.

The G3X is stereo out, and all pedals after it are stereo in/out, and I'd like to have a stereo/mono switch at the final output to sum any ping-pong effects when used with a mono amp (had to pull a couple of patch leads for now).

What a difference it makes having a proper pedalboard.

shuikit

Not sure if this will be useful or not, but you can run the nova delay at 9v if you can live with less head room.  There's a post on the tc forum from years ago confirming it, I can dig it out if you want

EricTheWeary

Having to take your word for it there is a board underneath there !