After recently making the transition from playing rhythm guitar on an electro-acoustic (whilst seated) to now needing to play a full electric set (standing up), I was suddenly confronted with the annoyance of my feet constantly becoming entangled in masses of cables. There was also a lot more gear to cart around and organise prior to plugging in; no longer could I simply strut in with my guitar and a lead and head for the nearest P.A system.
The new set-up consists of an amp (a replica VOX AC-30), a Pandora PX5D, a separate Korg tuner, a footswitch, guitar, and various leads to and from the guitar, the effects box, and the amplifier. It didn't take too long to realise that the nuisance of twice-weekly having to organise this equipment at practices needed to be streamlined, a convenience which would also translate over into gig situations; less time pissing about at my feet meaning more time to concentrate on matters elsewhere.
Having just begun learning how to operate the CNC milling machine at work, this seemed like an opportune project for me to experiment on with drawings and g-codes et cetera.
Here was my initial drawing (with both top and bottom layers visible simultaneously), which makes matters very confusing and of little use to anyone. The offsets are even further off-putting ... but there you go, the original plans.
If you compare the diagram above to the photograph below (which is shown from the same aspect) it all hopefully starts to make a little more sense.
The base was made purposely wider so as to allow room for the four-plug board, as by building this into the design it means that both the Pandora effects unit and the footswitch are always plugged in (meaning two less items to attend to when setting up and less everyday wear and tear on their associated cables).
The small channel that was milled down from the top left of this portion of the base (refer to the original drawing) is where the two adapter cables are fed through into the main cavity of the pedal box. From here, these cables were either shortened and/or simply run back and forth along the space we'd allowed for this between the plug-pack wall and the tuner/footswitch/effects unit - conveniently placed screws and plugs hold these further in place.
The angle in the above photograph might actually display that a bit better.
Several other connecting cables were also fitted down here; the one going from the footswitch to the Pandora as well as the lead going from the tuner to the Pandora. Again, where something needed to be connected on a permanent basis, this was done, although all of the jacks are readily removable and can be re-routed (not as tidily, mind you) if disaster should strike halfway through a set and rearrangements needed to be made.
The Korg tuner isn't actually used very much, but seeing as I had it and there was room for it, I thought it'd be a good idea to have a battery-powered back-up just in case.
Of course, the top of the entire pedal casing unit is merely screwed on, so at any time it's easily accessible for matters such as changing batteries, cleaning, and the like. And, yes, the screwdriver for this is always in my kit bag!
The small rectangular hole that's positioned just left of the yellow tuner is to allow access to the On/Off or Calibrate switch of the tuner itself.
This is of course a view from underneath.
Because the pedal box is constantly being kicked as I stomp on the footswitch to alter the Pandora PX5D settings, the main components which were housed inside of the pedal casing needed to be stabilised. This was done partly by having them fit snugly into the cut-outs (they were under-sized and then manually worked on to get the correct fit) and partly by the slight pressure of the lid squeezing them downwards.
The Pandora actually has some stiff foam holding it in place too - this was originally going to be done with more acrylic but this exuded a little too much pressure on its body, and therefore would stress the electronics inside over time. And, after leaving enough space for my fingers to reach all of the various dials and buttons and whatnot on the PX5D, there wasn't actually very much room left to get that fancy with it.
Some rubber 'feet' were also applied to the base of the pedal casing to prevent it from sliding around the stage.
With access to the engraving tool and a newly-designed logo, it was a fairly logical step to go from there to some proper personalisation. A blue LED was then slotted into the side of the top faceplate to illuminate the design in the dark. Why not, right?
The hole on the wall facing us now is where the lead from my guitar gets plugged in. The yellow tuner is essentially bypassed at this stage (unless, in case of an emergency, it's been manually switched on) and there's a shortened lead that takes it from here into the PX5D (bottom right as shown above) whereupon it exits and heads of to the amp (from the top right). Note: These main leads aren't shown in the above photos
So there we go, from having a multitude of cables and units to piece together each time I wanted to play, to fitting one plug into the mains and connecting my appropriate input/output leads.
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