Just curious: 125B vs 1590B?

[derevaun]

If I think a board will work in a 1590b, that's my preference. I have a couple Boss pedals that aren't leaving anytime soon, so no point trying to standardize with top mounted jacks. On the other hand, Boss pedals are taller than 1590b, so the benefits of the lower height aren't complete. Kind of grooving on the random patchwork look anyway.

 

[HamishR]

1590B with top jacks for me. If it doesn't fit into a 1590B it's probably unnecessarily complex anyway.

The exception for me is my dual pedals. Then 1590BB or Gorva equivalent with top jacks is my go-to.

 

[giovanni]

I have built a few pedals in 1590B boxes and it is a bit more tedious to get them to work. Plus I agree that you can’t use pancake jacks which can be annoying. I had to buy some cables with smaller profile jacks.

 

[dan.schumaker]

 

[Feral Feline]

I used to want to make everything as small as possible.
Problem is, are you really saving any pedalboard real-estate doing so? 1590A is not saving any space compared to a 1590B2 with or without topjacks.
1590B with sidejacks? NOPE! Give me an N1

I've got a few 1590B builds left, but I'm moving towards standardising on 120mm Paradigm for Height with whatever width and depth.

That means
1590N1 portrait
1590BB2 Portrait
1590Q square — as tall as a BB portrait, as wide as a BB horizontal
1590XX Horizontal
1590DD Horizontal

Special consideration for the 1590B3, close enough to 120mm that it doesn't look out of place with the assorted enclosures...

EDIT: Link didn't work when I posted this — here's my thread about the 120mm paradigm.

 

[cdwillis]

Once I used a 125b, 1590b was dead to me.

 

[MattG]

Boss style is my favorite.

I did a few 1590B top-mount builds, when I was trying to get the most pedals in the least space. But the inability to use pancake-style jacks was a big turnoff; and I also got a two-tier pedal board which allows me to nicely space everything out, making the whole side-vs-top jack thing moot anyway.

So now I'm defaulting to 125B top-mount, because that seems to be the most common enclosure assumption for retail PCBs (e.g. PedalPCB, Aion, etc).

However, one thing I don't like about top-mount 125B is that it generally adds a fair amount of implicit cable length. That is due to having the switching at the bottom but the I/O jacks at the top; so even in bypass mode your cable length is about 2x the length of the enclosure. Of course there are workarounds: I've seen a few builds here that use a dedicated bypass PCB that gets installed right up by the jacks. And for circuits I really like, I'll design my own PCB with the switching (relay bypass) integrated onto the effect, right at the top to be close to the jacks. Also, with a well-placed buffer or two, it probably doesn't matter (but some of us obsess over these kinds of details!).