Wood Multi-Board? Knoob-less?

Dan0h

Dan0h

Well-known member
The protoboard, thank you again Gift gods, has me thinking.

Since pots are just tweakable resistors, and since 80% of the pedals I like have that magic spot that once dialed in never changes. It would be cool to rebuild a handful of pedals, measuring the pots resistance and using a resistor in place, into a single wood enclosure pedal board with just a volume/level knob and FS per pcb. I’ve seen a lot of you gurus make these custom monster multi boards so the idea is not original at all, what ideas really are anymore… but I think it would be pretty cool and would be a wood project and a pedal project to keep my mind busy for a while. It would have a section to drop one or two normal pedals in because you gotta be able to keep it fresh with the pedal of the month but the basic foundation would be there and I would have all my favorites on tap.

Any tips on noise issues having multiple boards strung together in the same enclosure? Probably should line it with some sort of foil/metal to keep the radio stations out?

Just brainstorming. I might have just enough Walnut left to pull this off and give my cab build a little brother.

37DFE557-DDCA-4697-B3E8-959C25163BA7.jpeg
 
Robert said:
What about an amp chassis wrapped in a walnut "cabinet"?
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I'm working on a tube amp right now with a similar concept:

CASE Mockup.jpg

The Europly shell is just a placeholder, as is the laser etched front panel. One of my luthier friends is going to do a fancy shell with something nicer than butt joints and we've already done several different faceplate treatments with spiffy custom wood knobs too.
 
I've got a wee bit of experience putting doing something like this- my only advice is to just go ahead and dig in.
Maybe use some less valuable stock to begin a prototype- since you're going into uncharted waters, you may not always land on the best solution the first time you run into a problem.

Plan ahead, measure everything, draw sketches and take notes.
Know the priorities of your goals and be deliberate with every decision.
(judging by that cab' build, you know this ☝️)

Most of my time spent trouble-shooting has been due to grounding (or lack thereof.)
I finally got it down pretty good but it took a few tries.
I'm 100% for adhesive-backed copper-shielding foil. I've tried the conductive paint, but it's more expensive and has caused more problems than it's solved for me.
 
I like building multiple pedals into a single box but I use so few pedals when I play that my max has been three pedals, and by far most of them are just two circuits in one box! For example my current board is a tuner > dual overdrive > Source Audio Collider (delay and reverb in one). That pretty much does everything I need. Three pedals, but two of those do a lot of work. Sometimes I'll have a OD + Booster as my dual pedal, sometimes it's just two different ODs. Now that I've worked out that the Hudson Broadcast doesn't really need the transformer I've built a few with the Broadcast as a boost with another OD after it - now that is a cool pedal! The Broadcast by itself is ok, but it makes a fantastic treble-booster kinda pedal.

I recently found a schematic for a Brian May treble booster online and built one of those. That would make a great dual pedal boost too, especially if I added a bass control.
 
Big Monk said:
Want to make me some cabs? :ROFLMAO:
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I looked into making a few but the time involved is always the tricky part. This past year has been crazy with the day job. So many people have left, those of us still here are carrying the load.
 
Passinwind said:
I'm working on a tube amp right now with a similar concept:

View attachment 29432

The Europly shell is just a placeholder, as is the laser etched front panel. One of my luthier friends is going to do a fancy shell with something nicer than butt joints and we've already done several different faceplate treatments with spiffy custom wood knobs too.
Click to expand...
butt with a name like passinwind if you didn’t use butt joints it would be a crime. 🤣
 
HamishR said:
I like building multiple pedals into a single box but I use so few pedals when I play that my max has been three pedals, and by far most of them are just two circuits in one box! For example my current board is a tuner > dual overdrive > Source Audio Collider (delay and reverb in one). That pretty much does everything I need. Three pedals, but two of those do a lot of work. Sometimes I'll have a OD + Booster as my dual pedal, sometimes it's just two different ODs. Now that I've worked out that the Hudson Broadcast doesn't really need the transformer I've built a few with the Broadcast as a boost with another OD after it - now that is a cool pedal! The Broadcast by itself is ok, but it makes a fantastic treble-booster kinda pedal.

I recently found a schematic for a Brian May treble booster online and built one of those. That would make a great dual pedal boost too, especially if I added a bass control.
Click to expand...
Don’t you dare speak Bad words about the transformers in broadcast pedals!!!&$@. Lol. I came to this same truth after building the heavy water. I was like wait a minute there is no transformer but it sounds amazing. The good ole days of blindness are gone, sort of miss them.
 
Walnut is hard to come by here - it looks beautiful. Here we have two main timbers for sale - plantation grown pine from New Zealand and locally produced jarrah, a very heavy hardwood. It is beautiful, but a real bugger to work. You wouldn't want to use jarrah for an amp cab unless you liked it planted in one room forever. But it makes for a good table.

This is a simple pine cab I made for a friend. He said he didn't want the typical tweed style cab and he didn't want any covering. This is one of the amps which I finished in a coloured stain and it's interesting how having no tolex changes the sound. I'd do it differently if I was to clear finish a cab again. And I warned him that it will not take knocks very well!

Cowboy Princeton.jpg
 
HamishR said:
Walnut is hard to come by here - it looks beautiful. Here we have two main timbers for sale - plantation grown pine from New Zealand and locally produced jarrah, a very heavy hardwood. It is beautiful, but a real bugger to work. You wouldn't want to use jarrah for an amp cab unless you liked it planted in one room forever. But it makes for a good table.

This is a simple pine cab I made for a friend. He said he didn't want the typical tweed style cab and he didn't want any covering. This is one of the amps which I finished in a coloured stain and it's interesting how having no tolex changes the sound. I'd do it differently if I was to clear finish a cab again. And I warned him that it will not take knocks very well!

View attachment 29482
Click to expand...
Great job on the finger joint mate. Looks amazing.
 
HamishR said:
Walnut is hard to come by here - it looks beautiful. Here we have two main timbers for sale - plantation grown pine from New Zealand and locally produced jarrah, a very heavy hardwood. It is beautiful, but a real bugger to work. You wouldn't want to use jarrah for an amp cab unless you liked it planted in one room forever. But it makes for a good table.

This is a simple pine cab I made for a friend. He said he didn't want the typical tweed style cab and he didn't want any covering. This is one of the amps which I finished in a coloured stain and it's interesting how having no tolex changes the sound. I'd do it differently if I was to clear finish a cab again. And I warned him that it will not take knocks very well!

View attachment 29482
Click to expand...
Just looked up Jarrah, that stuff is twice as dense as Walnut and Walnut is pretty darn heavy. No thanks to an amp made out jarrah, but it does look pretty awesome.
 
Jarrah is also prone to splitting. It would be a terrible tone wood! It's tough on tools but not as bad as wandoo, which is the most ridiculously dense timber! It's so hard they use it for railway sleepers because even termites can't eat it. I know a guy who made a large table out of wandoo. He said he finished in place in his house because once finished there's no way it can be moved!

Sometime jarrah gets some flamey figuring but rarely as consistent as maple. It is a beautiful timber and I have made quite a bit of furniture from it - all the floorboards in our house are jarrah. It's just because that's what grows here. In Melbourne it's considered exotic because it only grows in Western Australia.

You fellas in the northern hemisphere have some beautiful timbers to use.
 
HamishR said:
Jarrah is also prone to splitting. It would be a terrible tone wood! It's tough on tools but not as bad as wandoo, which is the most ridiculously dense timber! It's so hard they use it for railway sleepers because even termites can't eat it. I know a guy who made a large table out of wandoo. He said he finished in place in his house because once finished there's no way it can be moved!

Sometime jarrah gets some flamey figuring but rarely as consistent as maple. It is a beautiful timber and I have made quite a bit of furniture from it - all the floorboards in our house are jarrah. It's just because that's what grows here. In Melbourne it's considered exotic because it only grows in Western Australia.

You fellas in the northern hemisphere have some beautiful timbers to use.
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Yeah we are pretty lucky. Walnut, Maple, Oak, Butternut, Cherry, Cedar, tone of pine. My absolute favorite is Walnut. I love everything about it. A few years ago my wife got me a gift card to a local wood shop. They had this epic 6 foot walnut slab and I turned it into a bench with a waterfall joint. Turned out pretty nice.
0905897B-71D4-4FB1-BC55-54C9D2C06680.jpeg 69469425-89C8-4F9B-AF08-8D8FAEA0D8C8.jpeg F487A6BD-709A-42A4-BEA3-F4F522B650E6.jpeg 071D746E-C23D-4EF3-87FD-B4C0DA095A33.jpeg
 
Wow. I love when the grain wraps around like that. Walnut isn't available in any quantity here. Or if you can get it it's $$. A lot of the local timbers here are just too hard to work, move too much or aren't straight enough to get a decent board out of.
 
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