making stuff

I am returning to making solid objects. The world of tech has long since lost its shine, but so much of what we seem to value now resides in that imaginary space that it’s easy to get stuck there.

I’ve stepped in and out of playing in public several times over the last decade. I have acquired the odd pedal, but never really used them, because dragging along bits and pieces and hooking them up and figuring them out was ultimately more trouble than it seemed worth.

I’ve thought for ages about setting up a pedalboard. And about a year ago I even did a bunch of research. In the end I decided that the basic setup was more money than I wanted to spend and didn’t look that attractive except if you’re into hardware. So, I made myself a pedalboard. Fairly uncomplicated, but reasonably attractive, it has made it much easier and more appealing to start to use the pedals I have.

I cut a piece of 1/8″ plywood with a decent veneer finish on the top to size for the layout I imagined. I stained it, put feet on it, wired it and attached the pedals. I’ve taken it to play once and it worked well. My pedals are very basic, but good enough for my current experiments and level of play. I really like my Corona chorus pedal and my switch pedals, but my tuner and reverb are kinda meh. If I could figure out how to actually hit the Ditto looper in time to the music, it might actually be useful instead of just a thing that taunts me.

It was nice to build things and I’ll be doing more. I have a backlog of thoughts and ideas that I’ll share as they come to fruition.