Well, had some extra time during Christmas holidays and my old pedal board had some issues. So let’s make a new one. Old pedal board was put together maybe in an hour, without too much planning. This time I wanted to make a pedal board that would be bit bigger, and easier to move around if I want to take it to guitar lesson, band practice, etc.
Here’s a picture of my old pedal board
So my plan was to make pedal board that can fit into this type of tool case. These have removable dividers inside that I can just simply pull out.
Plywood would probably be better option, but I had some glulam board that I bought for previous project, so I ended using it instead.
I put extra piece of wood to the top edge of the board. This was simply to have more material where to drill, since the board was little too thin to mount the adjustable legs (shown later).
After that I painted the whole thing. Didn’t want to get creative with colours so I used cheapest matte black spray paint I found from the store. And yes, paint job is horrendously uneven. That’s also the plan since now I don’t need to worry about the paintjob getting scratches etc.
Plus I think the uneven paintjob looks kinda nice.
This was the reason why the top edge of the board needs to be thicker. I was debating which type of threaded inserts I should use for the adjustable legs. I ended up with the left one, since it was just easier to get into place.
I accidentally used slightly too large drill bit, so the thread insert didn’t sit tight in the drilled hole. I used some regular wood glue to keep the insert in place. If it fails I can try epoxy glue or something similar.
I also put some rubber thingy’s that are meant to be mounted under the cabinets under the board (no idea what these are called in English). I did this to prevent the board from scratching the floor and also to keep the board from sliding away when stomping on pedals. Without the rubber feet the board would just slide around on smooth floor surfaces.
Last thing to do was to cover the top side with Velcro. I also found some left over cabinet handles from my dad’s spare parts bin so I put one to the top edge of the pedal board. Just to make carrying this thing little easier.
After I got the top surface of the pedal board covered in Velcro I put my pedals back on and, well damn this actually looks much better than I initially expected.
Height difference with and without those adjustable cabinet feet.
And to continue the music themed DIY stuff, I also sanded the neck of my electric guitar smooth. It used to have this glossy finish, but I didn’t like it. It made sliding my hand up and down the neck more difficult than it needed to be.
I simply used some 800, 1500 and 2000 grit sanding paper to sand the glossy finish to matte. I finished this by rubbing the neck with kitchen scrubbing sponge.
It’s not perfect, and professional luthier would have done better job, but I’m fine with the result.
And let’s finish the guitar maintenance with fresh set of strings.