thx Mur.Dock

For a case stop on by http://www.stompin-ground.com/ They have light cases and ATA cases. You can get them with an optional handle, recessed casters, and/or storage compartment for patch cables etc…

Terrific boards. Lifetime quality and flexibility.

Base: 1/2″ plywood scrap from Home Depot. Look in the cut bins. Cost me $1. Spray-canned it seafoam green for good contrast on stage.
Feet, tilt risers: 2-rubber door stops. Gives just the right angle.
Velcro holders: velcro comes with adhesive on the back in 2-3 foot strips, cut it to length. Lay it horizontal on the board and vertically on the pedals. With the spacing right, you can move the pedal up or down on the board and always have 4 points of velcro contact.
Power: just one of those beige surge protectors with 6 outlets, maybe a couple of wall-wart-removers. Next time I’m using an Acoustic Research 8-outlet coz it does power conditioning and surge + ethernet for future applications.
Cable routing: got these snap open/snap closed plastic rings, come in all sizes. Keeps AC cord away and neatly routes instrument cable to guitar + pedals + multi-processor (I like a lot of effect choices).
Handles: I screwed on 2 big door pulls so I can just pick it up with one hand from either end. Velcro really does keep those pedals secure.
Case: I went to WalMart (yes, now I know better…) and found a RubberMaid-like storage box with a secure snap on lid and sized the pedal board to the box instead of the other way around.
Holds 7 pedals (one is a BigMuff Russian) + BOSS PSM pedal power distributor + carrying handles, a power strip & cable retainers.
$36 with the spray can of paint and plasticbox . Lasts…well, it doesn’t have a mark on it since 1994 coz it has it’s own case.
Dan

You can still experiment with the order of your pedals if the pedals are in a fixed position – just patch them in whatever order you like. But you are right, you are then not running them in the order that they are laid out, can get confusing. I bought the cable ties at the dollar store so it’s no bother to just cut one if I need to move a pedal and use another cable tie.

Myself, I just can’t see spending booteek overdrive prices for a pedalboard.

It might be that I’m just inherently clumsy, maybe I dance a bit too much on stage or perhaps my feet are just too big, but I find that having all my pedals arranged on 2 tiers of a single board means that I often make mistakes during a gig (turning 2 pedals on by accident, hitting the wrong button, missing the buttons entirely).

My solution is to use 2 small boards – one on either side of my mic stand. My guitar runs into an ABY box which then sends the signal to either or both boards and then on to one or other of the two channels on my Sound City Concord amp.

Essentially this means I can switch between two effects chains quickly and easily, also it dramatically cuts down on the amount of pedals my signal goes through at any one time. Most importantly though, it means that I have 2 simple boards with 3-5 pedals on each, cutting down on the mistakes that me and my big clumsy feet are prone to.

Since I started using this set up I’ve stopped using my old fancy 2 tier pedal board in favour of 2 planks of wood – left over from when we took the floor up in our studio – and some Velcro strips. Sure, the cabling is a bit messy and it doesn’t have the pro factor that a commercial pedal board has, but it gives me a whole lot less to think about during a show and probably cost less than £5 to build. With the money you save you can go and buy that extra boutique stomp box you want.

Also I would think very carefully about using cable ties to secure the pedals. I don’t think that a guitar signal chain should ever be fixed – it discourages you to experiment with the order of your effects pedals and causes all manor of hooha if you want to swap things round or add a new pedal. Good Velcro is equally secure and much more convenient.

Finally I’d like to echo what DBell says about power supplies & cables- get the best power supplies that you can lay your hands on and don’t worry too much about your patch leads.

Use zip-ties to attach your pedals. With that shelf you can route the interconnect and power cables underneath. For power, Godlyke Power-All, VS OneSpot, or Voodoo Lab’s Pedal Power 2 if you have a lot of modern digital pedals. My current pedal board was $15, I use this one upside-down with zip-ties, all cabling underneath:

http://www.homedepot.ca/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CatalogSearchResultView?D=943568&Ntt=943568&catalogId=10051&langId=-15&storeId=10051&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntx=mode+matchall&recN=112821&N=0&Ntk=P_PartNumber