Build Your Own Clone Message Board

Here's a small(ish), mostly DIY board I recently finished:



Designed for use with my single channel Marshall-ish head with fx loop. Signal chain as follows:

- Hotone wah/volume
- turbo tuner mini
- Super8 BYOC looper:
L1- K9
L2- comp/chorus combo (orange enclosure)
L3- Zendrive clone (in silver enclosure with following 2...)
L4- BB/KoT/MG hybrid clone
L5- Black 65 clone, with added level control for the gain boost stage
L6- amp's preamp, with a one knob fuzz and mxr microamp boost in front (in the large dark blue enclosure, manually footswitched)
L7- digital dmm-inspired delay (black enclosure) and digital verb (light blue enclosure)
L8- booster pedal based on SDD-3000 preamp (yellow enclosure)

The dark blue enclosure also houses the level knob for the fuzz, the level knob for the MicroAmp boost, a level knob for the signal returning from my amp's preamp, a footswitch for the amp's gain boost, and a footswitch and level control for the amp's onboard solo boost. On the left side of the enclosure are jacks for the connections to the amp.

For clean (or not so clean) blackface-ish tones I run the Black 65 straight into the power amp (i.e., loop 6 of the super8 is bypassed). Add the Zendrive for dumbly tones. I can run the k9 straight into into power amp when I want it as clean as possible.

The Super 8 has been great. No issues at all. I may build another ...just because.

Impressive! Very nicely done.

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“My favorite programming language is SOLDER” - Bob Pease (RIP)

My Website * My Musical Gear * My DIY Pedals: Pg.1 - Pg.2

Interesting! So the silver enclosure effects are wired as "always on" and switched from the Super 8? That's clever.

Correct. I figured 'why waste space and $ on redundant switches?'. I'm about to rebuild my big board (which uses a Musicomlab EFX and Switchblade 8F for switching) and i'll probably do something similar for my most-used fx, and leave a few spots for swapping in independent boxes.

Cool! Well done.

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Scott

My band, Austin Hollow

Very nice. What board is that? Size?

Looks like loads and loads of options in a pretty convenient size. Congrats!

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Go Buckeyes!

Really inspiring!

I was going to do the exact thing for my Effect Blade (ugh), but have been too lazy. Very nice.

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Dog Is Blue - Toronto garage folk duo

I'd also be tempted to try something along the lines of a DIN or D-Sub cable so there'd only be one cable running between the enclosures.

Thanks - board is a PT2

There isn't a practical way to mod the Super8 for a multipin (no room in the enclosure), and therefore didn't make much sense to use one - i.e., since would still need to fan-out to 1/4" for the super8.

I was using a multipin from the large blue enclosure to a breakout box on my amp, but it just wasn't robust enough for live use (bass player stomped on it mid-gig and broke the multipin plug...) - so I switched back to 1/4" fanout on each end of the snake.

For my next board build, I'm planning to build the routing/switching/cabling into a single board/enclosure, and have the individual pedals plug into the enclosure as modular units (with no cabling required to add pedals, just fixed multi-connection plugs). Still working on the protocol/hardware for the connections, but so far it's looking good - just need to build more prototype pedals.