Eliminating pedal enclosures for home studio, ideas?

[BaronWilhelm]

I've built a quite few pedals now and they're taking up a lot of floor space and introducing cable clutter.  The finishing of enclosures is easily my least favorite part of building them, and the most time consuming.  I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about a more compact (but usable) storage solution.  My brainstorm was some kind of metal toolbox with the boards mounted, almost like a card catalog, and an internal  "patch bay" of pin headers to external jacks.  You could slide open a drawer to fiddle with the knobs.  Honestly though, my solution sounds almost as messy and work intensive.  Has anyone built something like this, individual boxes just seems like a lot of waste (of time and $$$) when they never leave my house.  I don't really even need stomp switches, throws would work just fine I think.

[MüThing]

Just having a rack unit in which all the pedals are mounted sounds like a lot less work.

[midwayfair]

plugins.

[BaronWilhelm]

How important are the metal enclosures for shielding?  For example, if I mounted a dozen bare boards to a piece of wood for each effects category (overdrive, etc...) and put that "pedal board" onto a rack shelf or in a dresser or something.  Is noise going to ruin it?  Maybe in some kind of metal filing cabinet shelf-thingy?

[GGBB]

What about building each pedal like a synth module?

[jimilee]

How important are the metal enclosures for shielding?  For example, if I mounted a dozen bare boards to a piece of wood for each effects category (overdrive, etc...) and put that "pedal board" onto a rack shelf or in a dresser or something.  Is noise going to ruin it?  Maybe in some kind of metal filing cabinet shelf-thingy?

As long as it's grounded. The enclosures to offer decent interference protection from nearby sources, but if it's isolated, I don't see why it would be an issue.

[blackieNYC]

Got another for you - recording studios, radio stations, and repair shops are throwing out rack gear by the hundreds. I myself like to make stompboxes out of the "1u" size, with 6-8 pedals within. But they come with rack ears, and many will have some 1/4 jacks or other useful holes on the back. And maybe some other connectors they may prove useful. Like maybe a 25 pin Dsub connector you could use to connect a remote footswitch. I remove the rack ears, you would not. I put my knobs on the top surface, yours would be on the front. A little less room, so maybe you couldnt fit as many pedals.  I throw out the circuit boards within - always looking to repurpose those but I have not.
I have a photo around here somewhere.
There are also electronic recycling facilities which can be found online. Many of them blindly try to sell this abandoned crap for pennies before they gut & shred it.  Used to be one called Cloud Blue.

[cloudscapes]

500 series system

it's like a modular, but for effects

[Jdansti]

How important are the metal enclosures for shielding?  For example, if I mounted a dozen bare boards to a piece of wood for each effects category (overdrive, etc...) and put that "pedal board" onto a rack shelf or in a dresser or something.  Is noise going to ruin it?  Maybe in some kind of metal filing cabinet shelf-thingy?

In addition to what's already been said, it depends on the RF environment of where you're using the pedals. For example, if there are fluorescent lights and other RF emitters nearby, you'll have more trouble keeping things quiet without enclosures. There's also the issue of wiring. The longer your unshielded runs, the more susceptible you'll be to RF.

You could do what Danelectro does with their plastic enclosures. They use a grounded piece of foil to wrap the PCB like a taco.  A paper insulator separates the foil and PCB.  If you did this, you might still need to use shielded cables for the off-board wiring.

[BaronWilhelm]

What about building each pedal like a synth module?

YESSSS!!  This and the comment on the 500 series rack system are GREAT ideas.  I won't be purchasing those enclosures because they're expensive, but that arrangement/orientation is exactly what I was looking for.  If anyone has any DIY/affordable solutions for achieving this I'm really interested, especially because the front panel can be patch cabled to reorder the pedals easily and they'll be at desk chair height.  So cool!

blackieNYC, can you give me some more details on where I might find those recycled bits?  That seems like a great option but I didn't have much luck in my googling.  Maybe I'm just not searching for the right thing.

I imagined shielded cable being necessary for long runs, but I guess I can experiment with the bare boards and try the "taco" method if I get a noisy one.  I've had some pedals bare wires on the floor for a while because I didn't want to do the work to box them up and they didn't have RF problems.  I just wasn't sure if it would be additive with a bunch of boards together.

[BaronWilhelm]

I've done some searching and there are some good DIY ideas for building a modular synth rack out there.  Synth patch cables tend to be 3.5mm??  Smaller seems cool, any reason those wouldn't work for this application?  They seem like they would to me.

[GGBB]

For the modules, look into eurorack stuff. The rails and rack ears can be had pretty reasonably and you might be able to DIY them. For the module panels, you can use anything stiff. Apparently 2mm aluminum is common, but wood or plastic will work, probably even pcb.

There have been a few discussions about 3.5mm jacks here in the past which I think can be summed up by saying that the main problem with them is durability over time and use. 1/4" will stand up to being plugged/unplugged much better. I don't see any advantage to 3.5mm other than size, and that probably won't be an issue in this situation.

[blackieNYC]

Finding recycled bits - I haven't had to. I work in an audio facility. But I know that the recyclers we give old crap to will evaluate some stuff for sale.  How they sell it I don't know -but - when you see something on eBay that says "as is" and "unit powers up", it often is a recycler.  Find such a piece of gear, anything,and use this to locate the seller. It may be a recycler. I found a little one online that says they sell stuff on Craig's List, if you have access to that. "Usdewaste" [sic]
The best recycling is re-use. A shame it's not easier to find.
Cloud Blue is a big one.  But I cannot figure out how they sell.

I called a repair shop recently and asked if they had any old guitar amps around because the repair estimate was refused (used to work in one, so I know they do). I offered to take it off their hands. Disposed of the electronics and brought home a combo cabinet with a 12" fender speaker inside. Repair shops will also have a little rack gear lying around - the owners often refuse a $240 estimate on a $400 mic preamp so they don't even pick it up.

[BaronWilhelm]

I agree, the best recycling is re-use.  Thanks for following up, I guess I'll have to do some detective work.  Thanks for the tip!

[MrStab]

They use a grounded piece of foil to wrap the PCB like a taco.  A paper insulator separates the foil and PCB.

wow, really?! never heard of that being done, not actually wrapping a whole PCB anyway. that's pretty crazy. my only experience with gutting Danelectro pedals was a Cool Cat distortion thingy, which just had a baseplate for grounding. talking of cats, i'm far too curious now and have to see this shielding scheme in action

[Jdansti]

They use a grounded piece of foil to wrap the PCB like a taco.  A paper insulator separates the foil and PCB.

wow, really?! never heard of that being done, not actually wrapping a whole PCB anyway. that's pretty crazy. my only experience with gutting Danelectro pedals was a Cool Cat distortion thingy, which just had a baseplate for grounding. talking of cats, i'm far too curious now and have to see this shielding scheme in action

I believe I saw the taco shielding on a Fab Echo, which I modded and placed in a multi effect noise maker box for my nephew. The shield was made of foil and thick paper laminated together and there was a tab on one edge with a screw hole in it. A screw made an electrical connection between the tab and the ground plane of the board. It looked something like this:

[MrStab]

ah, that's a bit neater-looking than what i imagined. i think i've seen something halfway between aluminium sheet and foil being used in some product i unscrewed, but not quite that material. as much as i want to praise the idea, it probably comes at the expense of a sturdy enclosure, aka. more revenue for Danelectro.

thanks for drawing that up, John!

/tangent

[ElectricDruid]

What about building each pedal like a synth module?

...and if you were going to build them in a synth-module format, you could adopt the Eurorack +/-12V supply too, which would give you more headroom, lower noise, and save all that mucking about with single-supply circuits.

There was the Sequential Pro FX back in the day, but that added programmable routing and settings.

Tom

[blackieNYC]

OP - this is not a great shot of it but the long ugly piece you see with 6 stomps on it is a piece of rack gear with the ears removed   Its 1 3/4 high (1u) about 16" long and about 4 1/2" deep. Picture the knobs on the front, in a rack. With perhaps a remote switch panel. This is one of the narrowest pieces of rack gear there is, great for the floor. You may want something deeper, or 2u tall, so your knobs wouldn't be too cramped.
If you want to spend some money, middle Atlantic sells a full 2u rack enclosure. Lotta money, but there have been a lot of competitors lately for cheaper versions of middle Atlantic. Maybe you'll find something.  How many pedals do you want in the box?

[mac]

Zinc sheet and big scissors.
Cheap, and easy to cut, bend and drill.

Mac