Well, that was fast....

[DrewJD82]

I got tired of seeing it sitting on a cab going unused; long story short, I got busy at work and forgot to send out the Morningstar loop switcher....after I sent them just an empty box because sometimes I'm a dumbass like that. The company was great in trying to assist me, I just dropped the ball. I shot them a message today and said if there's a chance of a manufacturer return, cool, I'll send it back on my dime but if not, no biggie.

In the mean time, while I'm not gigging and have no need for involved presets or switching multiples things on a moments notice, I threw some more stuff on it. Mostly same principle, VP4 is 4CM, after the Fuzz Face/Wah, before the rest of the dirt pedals. This time I set everything up on the board and just stared at it while playing Fallout, going through a few different setups-

Before sticking with this. I might change my mind again once I make a couple risers.

I'm also considering some A/B and smaller loop switches and maybe doing an EJ-type thing where certain pedals are active all the time and I just A/B between certain tones. I figure I'll wire this up without going apeshit with the zipties at first, I already know I want to wap out the VIbraunaught for an MXR Uni Vibe and if that vibe doesn't do it, a Keeley. Or Violet Sky....

There's just too many cool pedals that weren't getting any use because that loop switcher didn't work out and while it's fun to play the FM9 into a cab, I kinda did all this for a reason a few months back.

 

[Orvillain]

Too much stufffffff.

 

[DrewJD82]

I wasn’t going to wire it up until later today but it only took maybe 20 minutes. Had to make a couple new cables but overall just re-used the same ones from the previous build and the whole solderless aspect came in handy big time here. I kept thinking, “I can only power 8 pedals with the Cioks”, but forgot about the daisy chaining, which worked out perfect.

I’m also cracking up that the whole rig can be backed up, albeit without as awesome effects, via a Valeton GP-5 that is the exact same size as that patchbay in the upper left.

I need to figure out some kind of small riser for the MC6 and Believe (which might get swapped out for a Keeley Comp +, it’s the last pedal before the signal hits the amp and Gilmour’s post-dirt compression use has me curious). We have some splints we use at work for getting doors to fit in the frames after humidity expands/shrinks them, those might work perfect for slipping under the pedals and getting the buttons above the Friedman and NOTADUMBLE.

Too much stufffffff.

I’d imagine most of this shit won’t remain on it, I put the stuff I knew I wanted and then stuck shit wherever I had extra room as long as ‘made sense’ signal chain wise. It was silly to permanently mount everything on it before I’d even had the whole rig at gig volume with each pedal explored at gig volume, most of them I bought just for the board and had zero previous experience with, I put the cart before the horse.

Now I’m gonna take a slow trot in the cart and see what I like/don’t like.

 

[Stone]

Vari Filth and Waaaah Bitch for the win

 

[FuzzyAce]

Smart putting the little !!! reminders! We've all killed many a 9v forgetting to unplug the input.

 

[paisleywookiee]

Too much stufffffff.

Guy. Chief. Weren’t you the dude designing a board with a Stadium XL AND a bunch of other pedals?

 

[Orvillain]

Guy. Chief. Weren’t you the dude designing a board with a Stadium XL AND a bunch of other pedals?

Nah. You got someone else mixed up with me.

 

[James Freeman]

Tidy!

How much does it weigh?
*In kilos please.

 

[DrewJD82]

Tidy!

How much does it weigh?
*In kilos please.

I don’t have a scale to weigh it, but if it can’t be much more than 15lbs (6.8kilos). The board itself is 1/2” ABS material, it’s so much lighter than the 3/4” Baltic Birch board I made for the FM9. I picked it up from a sitting position anyway, I don’t think I’d even attempt that with the FM9 board.

 

[DrewJD82]

Ya know what was great? Turning everything on and it working, right away.

Actually, there was one snag; I didn’t push in a speaker cable all the way and had to sort that out, but the board worked perfectly the first time around. The freedom of not being locked into presets is a welcomed change; even utilizing the Effects layout on the FM9, it’s not the same as seeing a physical pedal and thinking “Oohhhh, I should slap that on!”

Everything is great but the Plexi effects loop is starting to get to me so that’ll be a bug I squash, gonna have to get me a Dumbleator I guess. I get a crazy feedback loop using the Fryette’s effects loop, as well as the Line In/Out, which I assume is a result of the Plexi’s loop just throwing a ridiculous signal at it, in addition to the loopception occurring.

I can definitely live with this for a while! Though I need to figure out something to get the Fuzz Face sounding like a wild n crazy Fuzz Face; the EJ pickups are way too tame to push it hard. I may swap the bridge out for something with more output, we’ll see. It’s fine with my other guitars, but needs to be stacked considerably to get any sustain out of it.

A couple noodle minutes, in order I turn the Tchula on first, then the PastFX TD0-7, the high gain stuff is the Friedman until I switch the Fuzz Face on and then I’m stacking it with random stuff trying to figure out where it’ll sound better.



‘Twas a good day in guitar land. I also put 9.5’s on my Gilmour Strat and I’m pretty sure I hate ‘em.