I'm finally putting my dream rig together.

[GreatRedDragon]

Well Jesus fucking Christ and joy to the world.

My Christmas present to myself is I finally buckled down and finished building the damn cables.

Been building them in batches on and off on the weekends. When I got to my Christmas break I gave myself one fucking goal: Finish it now, or you never will.

For those keeping score, that's 31 cables I had to solder. Why so many? Because I'm clearly a self-loathing fucking asshole that's why.

There's the matter of the nine loops, sure. But only now do I realize how many of my pedals have loops: My signal goes in and out of the NS-2, the MAX comp, the EQ-200 and the IR-200 two times. So I have loops within my loops within - yes, really - my loops.

This is the final signal path:

Patch Input #1 -> Morley 20/20 Lock Wah Input
Morley 20/20 Lock Wah Output -> Boss NS-2 Input
Boss NS-2 Send -> Boss ES-8 Input
Boss ES-8 Loop 1/3/4/5/6/7/8 Sends -> Pedals
Pedals -> Boss ES-8 Loop 1/3/4/5/6/7/8 Returns
Boss ES-8 Loop 2 Send -> UA MAX Comp Input A
UA MAX Comp Output A -> Boss ES-8 Loop 2 Return
Boss ES-8 Vol Send -> Boss EQ-200 Input A
Boss EQ-200 Output A -> Patch Input #2
Patch Input #3 -> Boss ES-8 Vol Return
Boss ES-8 Out -> Boss EQ-200 Input B
Boss EQ-200 Output B -> Boss NS-2 Return
Boss NS-2 Output -> Boss IR-200 Input
Boss IR-200 Send -> UA MAX Comp Input B
UA Max Comp Output B -> Boss MD-500 Input A
Boss MD-500 Output A/B -> Boss SDE-3000D Input A/B
Boss SDE-3000D Output A/B -> Boss RV-500 Input A/B
Boss RV-500 Output A/B -> Boss IR-200 Return

31 cables = 124 solder joints = more time behind a soldering iron than the last 20 years of guitar rewires. By the end I was getting pretty fast and clean, so there's been a definite upgrade to my soldering skills. A nice plus for sure.

Tomorrow's task: Running power and hoping to God I have enough cables and daisy chains. With a little luck I'll be able to power on this space station, start building patches, and maybe even play a little music... cause that's what this is all about right? And once I've confirmed it's all working as it should, I can tear it all apart and start tying down cables because even with cut-to-length cables there's a shitload of spaghetti.

I've already been thinking a lot about how I want to structure the patches on this thing. With the three EQs I have at my disposal I can really sculpt the sound of my 2203, which is a megabeast to begin with. So I should be able to hit a wide range of tones without touching my amp's controls at all, which is just perfect.

I plan on dedicating each bank to a different sound, with each bank having rhythm, clean and lead patches as 1, 2 and 3. So no matter what bank I'm in, I'll always be able to switch "channels" with the same three switches. Since I have a single channel amp, my "channels" will be largely sculpted by EQ, but if I want I can create dedicated patches in the IR-200 to help push that as well. I'm really looking forward to experimenting with using IRs for tone shaping.

And since my modulation and echo effects are MIDI controlled, I can set them up differently for each channel - longer delays for solos, heavier chorus for cleans, etc. On banks where I'm not really emulating true "clean" and "lead" channels and mostly just riding my volume control, like what I've got planned for the early EVH sound, I can still dial it in certain effects - the "lead" patch in that EVH bank will kick in the SD-1, Phase 90 and DM-2w, while the "clean" patch will turn off the SD-1 and turn on a Chorus for that "Pretty Woman" sound. And of course I can go into Manual mode and just kick the loops in and out manually.

Switches 4-6 will primarily be for punching in effects from the board and more specialized tones - for example, the IR-200's JC-120 with the MD-500's CE-1 model - and 7-8 for switching patches on my quasi-rack echo and modulation (triggering things like Cathedral, the delays for Welcome to the Jungle, etc).

It's gonna be a lot to go through and dial in, but it'll be fun.... I hope.

And of course, I'm already thinking of things I might want to change. Because at this point why the fuck not.

The Metal Zone is probably redundant. Between the 2203 and the IR-200's hi-gain amp sims I doubt I actually need it. We'll see, I do like the pedal a lot. With this rig it will be pretty easy to build an equivalent patch in the IR-200 and A/B it with the pedal. I might swap it for my CE-5 or LM-2, I miss those pedals. And the Harmonizer is definitely in line to be replaced by the HX One as a "catch-all" kind of pedal.

In laying out the board I've also left an open space next to the ES-8 for the RC-10r, that is on the short list before anything else I think.

I'm going to bed.

 

[rsm]

@GreatRedDragon when I read your latest post, I come to two conclusions: 1) damn, that's a complex rig 2) damn, that's a lot of time I could be making music (or in my case noise). Not a criticism, just my subjective observation.

For me, anytime I have to mess around getting my gear together and working, though necessary, it eats into my limited playing time. It's one reason I'm not into building amps or pedals, or getting DIY kits, etc.

Once you get this rig done and working, you'll know you did it yourself, and you'll know how it all works.

With all your efforts, investments in time and money, I hope it exceeds your expectations.

Good luck on the build!

 

[GreatRedDragon]

@GreatRedDragon when I read your latest post, I come to two conclusions: 1) damn, that's a complex rig 2) damn, that's a lot of time I could be making music (or in my case noise). Not a criticism, just my subjective observation.

For me, anytime I have to mess around getting my gear together and working, though necessary, it eats into my limited playing time. It's one reason I'm not into building amps or pedals, or getting DIY kits, etc.

Not only do I agree, it's one of the things that's made me push to get this done, now. The longer this thing sits on my kitchen table, the longer I go without playing.

 

[GreatRedDragon]

Got all the power cables run and booted it up.

I'm using a TrueTone CS-12 for power and even that almost wasn't enough.

The seven digital pedals with big current draws I put on their own outputs. The Flanger went on one of the 18v outputs. Using a 18v to 9v converter I put the Harmonizer on the other 18v output. The delay and wah are on a Y-splitter, and the other pedals are all on a OneSpot Daisy Chain. The tuner has powered by the Gate.

I expect I'll be fucking with the power a bit as I dive in deeper and find pedals that don't like to share.

Booting it up was nerve wracking. First it didn't go at all - the IEC had come loose underneath. Then when I plugged in... nothing. Checked the ES-8, it was setup for Input 1 and I'm in 2. So I fixed that, try again and... nothing, again. A little simple troubleshooting determined the very first cable in the chain, which was the very first one I made, was to blame - simple fix. The rest are golden golden. Checked each loop individually, no hiss or tone suck. Turned the loop on in the IR-200 (using the JC120 sim to test) to check the rack, everything good up there too. And while I was doing it I was futzing with the EQ, compressor, modulation, delay and reverb.... everything functioned very intuitively, and I had a lot of fun jamming on my Esquire just exploring the tones I was getting. I'm hoping that's a good omen of what's going to come.

The one thing sticking in my craw is the UA MAX. I bought it on kind of a whim, and I knew UA has a pretty iffy reputation when it comes to their firmware, app, and pedals themselves. I ran into some of that when I put it through its paces in the store and I kinda put it off, but at home messing with it... as good as it sounds, it's already a pain in the ass and I'd rather have a couple MXR pedals doing the same job. The thing is a pig on power too, and if I do want to add an HX One and an RC-10r I'm gonna need more juice. So I'm gonna dump it and put the money towards an MXR Studio Comp instead, and throw my Dyna-Comp back on as well.

 

[RevDrucifer]

This is awesome, man!!!

I’m currently debating the Boss switcher or an RJM and it’s entirely my “Boss is a mass production company and RJM isn’t” that’s holding me back from the Boss.

 

[Motorboat McCooter]

I'm enjoying following your build @GreatRedDragon

One valuable lesson I learned the hard way when building a huge self contained stereo board was to test each and every cable as you install them. Trying to track a faulty cable after it's all built can be a very frustrating task.

Someone on a message board recommended this cable tester and I bought one after that experience. I can't remember who or where but that person gave valuable info and experience and I'm happy to pass it on.

Here's a link. I'm not affiliated. Just happy with the product.

https://cusackmusic.com/pedals/cable-tester/

Here's the stereo board I had to track down the faulty cable.

I still have this pedalboard intact and stored in the vaults somewhere.

 

[GreatRedDragon]

I'm enjoying following your build @GreatRedDragon

One valuable lesson I learned the hard way when building a huge self contained stereo board was to test each and every cable as you install them. Trying to track a faulty cable after it's all built can be a very frustrating task.

Someone on a message board recommended this cable tester and I bought one after that experience. I can't remember who or where but that person gave valuable info and experience and I'm happy to pass it on.
View attachment 275130
Here's a link. I'm not affiliated. Just happy with the product.

https://cusackmusic.com/pedals/cable-tester/

Here's the stereo board I had to track down the faulty cable.

I still have this pedalboard intact and stored in the vaults somewhere.
View attachment 275142

Damn that is a crazy board! I couldn't imagine having to troubleshoot a cable and sort through all that.

I got lucky because the loops make it really easy to isolate sections of the board.

A cable tester would have been a wise investment on my part for sure.

 

[Motorboat McCooter]

Damn that is a crazy board! I couldn't imagine having to troubleshoot a cable and sort through all that.

I got lucky because the loops make it really easy to isolate sections of the board.

A cable tester would have been a wise investment on my part for sure.

In the front center is a loop switcher that isolated part of the board and made it easier to find the offending cable.

That board turned out super cool. Two separate preamps, two power amp pedals for true L & R stereo with a good mix of effects. Even a stereo boost pedal for solos(Lizard Breath Chameleon). Totally self contained. All you need is two speaker cabinets.

There's two Hughes & Kettner Red Boxes to take both a left and right signal to a mixer or front of house.

It's even got a Sennheiser wireless system on there.

 

[GreatRedDragon]

Couple updates today.

I returned the UA Max and bought the MXR Studio Comp. I'm really happy about it, and not just because the MXR is quite a bit cheaper. There is already a ton of big digital boxes on the board, and the MAX was the least intuitive and least necessary of them all. The MXRs are easy to use, analog, low power and compact. I really like having a couple more traditional pedals on the board, I like that the ground floor is mostly tried-and-true analog classics while the mezzanine is loaded with state-of-the-art pseudo-rack gear.

Now, if Boss had a CS-200 that would be a different story, because that pedal wouldn't just sound great (with the MAX totally did, to its credit), it would have a wider feature-set, including MIDI. The lack of MIDI on the MAX was the real nail in the coffin, I could have made it work if I didn't need that damn app and that damn shitty Bluetooth and that damn shitty firmware to tweak it. And now the CS-200 joins the PS-200, MT-200 and SRV-2000D in the pages of my book of Boss pedals that need to exist.

Speaking of Boss, I think I'm gonna swap out a couple of these pedals. Looking at the board as a whole, I don't need a dedicated high gain box as much as I need a warm boost/transparent OD. I love the SD-1, it does its thing and it isn't going anywhere, but I want a counterpart I can either stack with it or use solo, something that can replace the console preamp boost that was on the MAX The MT-2 is too one-dimensional. I've spitballed a bunch of options - EP Booster, BP-1w, Sugar Drive, Distortion+ - and I've landed on the Blues Driver. It's a classic of course, and every demo I've heard just sounds killer. It can also be had pretty cheaply, which right now is a big upside.

Another swap I've been mulling over is the DM-2w for my DD-7, for one reason: Tap tempo. I've learned that the ES-8 can remotely set tempos to a specific bpm and note value, so I could program a specific delay tempo into each patch. I already have a DD-7, although it's on loan at the moment, and the Analog mode is pretty good, so I may call that one home to give it ago.

And going full circle... Three months ago my plan was to get an MXR Poly Blue Octave. I ended up putting my Harmonist on. Then Line6 unveiled the HX One and hey, it's a pedal that can be an octaver and a Uni-vibe and a fuzz! Gotta have it! But thinking about having yet another big digital box to configure and buy MIDI cables for (and it has the 5-pin DIN jacks on the fucking side) and find room for, and looking at the simple MXR boxes I've populated my board with ... I suddenly realized that the three effects I'm looking to get the HX One for I can already get with the Poly Blue, for way less money and way less hassle. You know those moments where you realize you were right the first time, and now you've been overthinking it? Yeah.

It's only natural that as soon as I got the thing going I tore it back apart and redid it all. Obviously I had to make room for the two new pedals, but I took the opportunity to shuffle a couple other things around. The Studio Comp is laid out so when the bridge is down you can see the LED meter, a feature that I love. The MT-2 above the Flanger left very little room for cables, so I was happy to get another MXR pedal up there and clear up some space. Speaking of cables, the time finally came to tie them all down. The connections to the patch bay, along with the ES-8's input and output, are run under the board. The underside of the bridge has a couple cross-board connections as well. Getting those cables tidied up and tucked away made it much easier to rout the cables for the loops and get them tied down in a neat yet accessible fashion. As much as possible I used the Temple Board's hole array and it made things really easy to line up. The PS-6 and MT-2 aren't connected because I ran out of pancake plugs, but for now I can just hook them up with some of the solderless stuff I have.

Tomorrow I tackle (once again) power, and then it should finally be done... for now.

 

[Motorboat McCooter]

It's only natural that as soon as I got the thing going I tore it back apart and redid it all.

Great update but I'm just gonna comment on this snippet here.

I was waiting for this and hoping it didn't happen to your build.

I thought maybe I was the only one who no matter how much planning, there will ALWAYS be at least one complete teardown after you thought you were finished.

Sometimes several.

 

[GreatRedDragon]

Great update but I'm just gonna comment on this snippet here.

I was waiting for this and hoping it didn't happen to your build.

I thought maybe I was the only one who no matter how much planning, there will ALWAYS be at least one complete teardown after you thought you were finished.

Sometimes several.

I think it's just the nature of these projects. I was gonna pull it apart anyway to get the cabling done right.

The next teardown, that will be the "aw fuck" one.

 

[GreatRedDragon]

Got my power cables all tied down. I didn't go crazy to the level of those dudes who have tiedowns the whole way, I just went every few inches to keep it neat and tight.

Today I've been sorting through all the MIDI. Boss's documentation is a bag of shit. The RV-500 for some reason is a huge pain in the dick. I've been using it with one of the alternate footswitch configurations: A is on/off, B is patch down, Tap is patch up. But getting it to work with the ES-8 has been tough, the switch interacts in someway with the MIDI. So I've switched back to the stock switch layout and it's been working, but I could still see it fucking with me. Thankfully the other pedals have worked out real well.

I tested all this by making my very first patch on the ES-8. It's based on Zakk Wylde's clean tone on the No More Tears album, which was recorded with a JC-120, and is Patch 6.2 - the entire sixth bank will be dedicated to Zakk's sounds from that era. I'm using the Dyna Comp up front, going into the EQ-200 set for a mid scoop and huge bass boost, going into the JC-120 preset on the IR-200, through the Studio Comp, into the MD-500 set-up with two choruses in parallel (a +/-9 detune and a Dimension D), into the SDE-3000D (a 500ms delay running into a 250ms ping-pong, fairly low in the mix), into the RV-500 with the SRV-2000 "Chapel" preset. Playing with my EMG 81-loaded Kramer Baretta Special, the sound is massive, chimy, deep, iridescent... Being able to recall a tone like this with the push of a button immediately made this entire project worth it.

The MXR Studio Comp was a great investment as well. Initially I thought having a compressor just for my effects loop would be excessive, but once I got it dialed in I knew it was the right call. It adds so much warmth and bloom to the sound, turning it off is instantly noticeable. Just a great piece of "secret sauce."

I haven't brought it to the floor and run my amp through it yet, because I know once I do I'll get lazy and just leave it there. I want everything dialed in first before I can get too distracted by playing the damn thing, but now I think it's time.

 

[GreatRedDragon]

Two months in...

I went through a lot putting this thing together, and simply being able to play it has been immensely satisfying as a learning experience.

For starters, one day after getting it together and playing it with my amp, my amp shit the bed. The HT fuse started blowing within five minutes and the amp is still out of commission. But as much as that sucks, it made the extra work I did to make the board function both with and without an amp immediately pay off.

I've also acquired the final piece of the puzzle: a set of KRK Rokits. Until now I've only been playing through headphones - as in, for over ten years - so having the sound come out of those speakers is orgasmic. And the same way my amp shitting the bed vindicated my need to have an amp-less option, playing through the monitors immediately confirmed that stereo is the way to play and made all of the stereo hassles worth it.

Now, what I've learned by playing the board itself...

One thing I discovered almost immediately is a split second signal cut when switching patches on the IR-200. It wouldn't be an issue, except all of the ambient effects are in the loop of the IR-200, so when I switch a patch all of the trails cut out and it is jarring to say the least. So my plan of being able to use the IR-200's JC-120 as a switchable clean channel is a bit of a bust. Luckily, the EQ-200 is able to serve as a substitute: Rather than switching IR-200 patch, I can just disable the amp loop on the ES-8 and run through an EQ patch straight to the IR. It's pretty convincing, actually, especially with a big dollop of chorus.

Speaking of chorus, I had something of a revelation recently. My favorite chorus sound is the SPX90 Symphonic that's all over the first two Zakk-era Ozzy albums, and that's always been a sound I've chased. I dove down a rabbit hole of finding ways to emulate it, and I found a post by Leon Todd saying a flanger set with a 30ms delay time sounds close. Rather than trying to dial it in with the MD-500, I did it with the SDE-3000D. I found a good flanger setting online for the SDE: 1.4/25/85/40/86. As I shifted the delay time upward I could feel it getting more chorus-y. When I hit the sweet spot I stopped, and it was 30ms. Suddenly, I had an amazing quasi-Symphonic patch on my hands. Messing around a bit with phase and filter settings got it dialed right in. It sounds fucking awesome, much better than the patch I'd set up for this sound on the MD-500.

As I've been going I've been making notes of things I want to tweak, and where I want to go in the future.

For a while I was planning to get an RC-10R and sticking it next to the ES-8. But thinking about how I would route it, it's too much of a pain in the ass for something I don't even know if I'll use. The IR-200 has an Aux In port I can use to pipe in backing tracks, so it's not like I need the looper if I want to jam with myself. So the RC-10R is off the table. Instead, I'm going to move the IR-200 to the front left corner of the board, which will open up space in the back corner.

The Metal Zone and the Harmonist are still offline, and the Metal Zone will go. I'd like to get a Morningstar ML5 to stash on the underside. The ML5 can sit in one of the ES-8's loops, and in the loops for it I can have the Sabbra Cadabra, the EQ-200 A Channel and any other boost/drive/dirt pedals I may want - the Blues Driver is on my list, but the Sugar Drive is smaller and real estate is at a premium. The EP Booster is a classic I'd like to have as well. With the ML5, I could use MIDI to get different drive combinations on-board per patch. I could also put the SD-1 in the ML5 as well, which would free up another ES-8 loop, but I like the thought of the SD-1 always been available.

I was considering a 5150 Overdrive to replace the Metal Zone, but now I'm thinking about just buying a 5150 head instead, because that can integrate even more tightly with the board.

One thing I am really noticing is a certain fussiness in controlling the mixes of my post-FX, specifically modulation vs echo. So I'm toying with the idea of getting a Parallelizer to make everything neater. The Parallelizer is itself MIDI controllable, which makes it feasible to use non-MIDI effects. So something I might do is ditch the MD-500 and replace it with the Harmonist, which gets (to my ear) a superior Balance-era Detune effect. And if I put the SDE-3000D and RV-500 in the same loop, it would free up the Parallelizer's third loop for another pedal... and I've always been very curious about the 5150 Chorus (which is a clone of the old Roland DC-30), or maybe the DC-2w, or maybe even my trusty old CE-5.