Building a Custom Boutique Guitar Pedalboard

If your effect pedal collection is taking up more and more floor real estate these days, you have probably thought about either buying or building a pedalboard to house them. While a pedalboard can consist of little more than a plank of wood and some velcro, it CAN be a lot more involved..if you want it to be.

Boutique pedalboards can fetch upwards of a thousand dollars or more. Of course these are the Rolls Royces of boards. You can find someone to build you one for a lot less – or you can attempt to do it yourself.

Having been down this road, I can say it is very satisfying every time I look at my board – even though I did have a lot of help. I can barely use a screwdriver, so I had to have a lot of assistance in the area of woodworking and wiring. But I was able to conceive the design, sketch it out, order all of the materials, apply the tolex and finally affix all of the pedals.

If you’re interested in doing this yourself, I can give you a peek inside the process.

Obviously, as I mentioned above, your first step is to actually plan the board – how big do you need it to be? You can lay your pedals out and sort of measure the area. Are you planning any additions later on? You will need to leave some space for those as well. You should also get an idea of the order you want them in, with such considerations as frequency of use, as well as placement in relation to the power supply etc. One thing I found was that my wah needed to be as far away from the power source as possible, to minimize hum. This might just be a problem for my setup, but you should try to figure all of this out before you start the actual build.

Once you have your dimensions, do your best to sketch out a diagram. Since you’re probably not an architect or very skilled in mechanical drawing (as I am not), just do your best. It probably won’t be to scale, but you can try to get it as proportional as possible. Most pedalboards are wedge shaped – almost like a huge doorstop. The low end faces you, the high end facing the audience. This gives you better access to the rear pedals, but boards can also be flat. This is all a matter of personal preference really.

Once you have your diagram sketched out – with measurements noted, it is time to start thinking about what – and who – you might need to move forward. We’ll talk more about that next time.

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