Improving a £15 Guitar Pedal Board with simple DIY tools and two bolts!

**Disclaimer: Don’t attempt this yourself unless you are confident using power tools and handling sharp metal. I take no responsibility for people who somehow manage to hurt themselves undertaking DIY tasks.**

I picked up this cheap guitar pedal board from *a popular Internet auction site* for a mere £15, and as one might expect – the build quality is very poor.

It’s not flat, it rattles, and the flat board configuration (i.e. no raised back or two tiers) makes controlling the pedals at the back more difficult (if you want to avoid mashing the controls on the front-row pedals).

In this video I’ll address these issues – by drilling two sets of large holes for some M8 bolts I can shake out the metal swarf that’s rattling around in there, attach some simple height-adjustable legs, and correct the warped geometry by setting one leg ever so slightly different to the other. This will also give me room to attach a pedal power supply underneath, but I won’t do that in this video.

The board came with some hook and loop tape, so I’ll apply that, and then throw on a few pedals to show you how it looks and how many pedals you can expect to reasonably fit on one of these boards.

My recommendation, if you have the cash, is to just buy a good quality board and spare yourself the trouble of messing around with this. In all likelihood the bolts would give way if you started stomping heavily on this thing…

Note the inclusion of some random royalty-free music at the end to cover the high pitched breathing noises caused by speeding up the video so much 🙂

I hope you enjoy the video and that it gives you some inspiration for improving your own boards.

-Matt

Happy 2019!

Happy New Year all!

I recently acquired a beautiful Washburn Maverick BT-9, a fairly rare model unique to the UK market around the turn of the millennium.

At the bottom of this post is a short clip demonstrating its wonderful single-coil tones on a suitably seasonal tune!

Washburn support were quite enthusiastic and helpful in identifying the age and country of manufacture. Here’s a reply I got from Dave Steffen:

The BT9 shows that the Brits were more on the ball than we were! The BT9 was only offered in the UK….ordered with a special maple neck, and a swamp ash body! These were made sometime between 2001 and 2005…the neck plates do not have the origin date. Looks to be Korean….the hardware leads us there and it fits into that 2001 to 2005 timetable. We really like this guitar…..designed by William T Atkins….Billy T….thus the BT designation.

Interestingly enough, the seller told me that he purchased the guitar in around 1998/1999, so we have a bit of a mystery on our hands as to its true age. Based on Washburn’s reply, and the various information I’ve found on the Internet, the guitar certainly does seem to have been made by the Samick factory in South Korea – in my opinion the quality of the build seems to agree with this notion.

I hope that 2019 proves to be a great year for you.
–Matt

A First Foray into Tank Drums

I was fortunate enough to receive a lovely, handmade Tank Drum for Christmas from my partner, and have been almost unable to put it down since. I’ve been wanting one of these since seeing a handpan street performer in Lisbon back in October 2016.
In the spirit of the New Year, here’s my first ever video featuring the drum, featuring the Westminster Quarters chime! — Matt