The client required that the board be no more than 16" in depth, and needed to fit 14 pedal, a power supply, an interface/buffer, and a Boss Tap Tempo unit and only use one Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2+ units. The client also has a specific order for the pedals used based on his experiences with them. Ultimately, the pedalboard ended up being quite wide, but fit everything very tightly and cleanly and sounded fabulous!
For the interface, the client liked buffering best before the OD section, so the interface has a patchable buffer so that it can be put any place in the signal chain, but still have everything plug into the interface.
I also repaired two pedals for the client. I repaired a bad switch on the Retro-Sonic Chorus and grounded the unit a little better because when running it through a high gain amp, some clock speed was bleeding through. I also did a similar thing with the Empress Tremolo because that pedal too was getting some bleed through when paired with a high gain amp. The grounding wasn't the problem, but the Empress isn't a real "True Bypass," but rather more of a pseudo bypass. The circuit is still floating when the pedal is not engaged. I just changed around a few things on the way that things were soldered to the poles on the switch and it fixed the bleed through on the high gain amps.Overall the pedalboard had zero noise, offered a ton of great tonal choices, lots of great OD's and Distortions, and some nice variety of delays. Also, everything on the pedalboard stacked really well in combination (just as the client uses the pedalboard).
The order of the effects are:
INTERFACE IN (from guitar)--> Volume Pedal (with out to Boss TU-2 Tuner)--> BBE Ben Wah--> Pfeiffer Phaser--> BUFFER (patched into interface)--> Wampler Ego Compressor--> Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive--> Cusack Screamer--> Herminda Zendrive--> M.I. Audio Crunch Box--> ZVex Box of Rock--> Retro-Sonic Chorus--> MXR Carbon Copy--> Boss DD-7--> Empress Tremolo--> INTERFACE OUT (to amp)
*Stand Outs: The Retro-Sonic Chorus is amazing! I've played several and some say they are dark, but comparing to the chorus that's in my Roland JC-120, it's really dead-on! The Boss/Roland CE-1 is the same circuit that is in the Roland JC-120 amps, so it seems as thought Retro-Sonic really nailed it. It may be darker than other chorus pedals, but it does sound the way it should. I also love the Voodoo Lab Sparkle drive, one of my favorite TS type pedals out there.
