Gear Update: Nano Metro Pedal Board

Last Board Change?

Yet again (I’m getting tired of this myself to be honest), I’ve made a change to the board setup.

This time I really hope, oh how I really do hope that this is the last change and I can get on with my life without thinking about how I can improve my pedalboard.

In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out I already had my best board setup, which didn’t survive long due to the constant desire to tweak it. Then again I suppose it’s the nature of the beast  for a guitarist to have the feeling of still not having arrived at the perfect setup. I blame the marketing departments of the musical instrument companies myself. It doesn’t help that we now have so many cheap and excellent pedals growing in the garden it seems. They’re just everywhere and too tempting to ignore.

This is the latest chapter in the story of my guitar pedal problem, which I am going to do my best to make the final chapter here and now. I’m sure I’ll try out countless different overdrives, boosts, delays etc as time goes on, but from now on the philosophy must remain resolute and include the following rules:

1. Only one row of pedals.
2. Board must be a maximum of 16″ wide (about 40cm)
3. No overcrowding of the board (determined largely by rule 1)
4. Reduce choice of overdrives and boosts to ONE of EACH.
5. Easily powered by my rechargeable power supply (i.e. low current draw)

In other words, this pedal board is the last one! (yeah right)

These rules are now being adhered to, regardless of whether I decide to swap out my overdrive and/or boost pedal or not (I have a spare TS clone, RC Boost clone and another EP Boost clone all waiting in the wings).

However, soon the EP Boost clone and the TS clone will be rehoused in a new enclosure along with my Joyo American sound (and if it will fit, my spare Palmer PDI-09) for a one-box, amp-less setup to take to fly gigs that even my little amp will be overkill for.

I had to brace myself for this latest board reshuffle because it involved cutting down my Pedaltrain Metro 16. I could have bought a Nano+ back when I got the Metro 16, but the Nano+ is 2 inches wider than my rules allow and it really does make a difference on stage when the board is too wide. The one-row rule wasn’t in force when I got the Metro 16!

I’d already modded the rear of the Metro 16 to raise it up, so my Caline CP-06 power supply would fit underneath. After cutting the front off and attaching two 20mm feet to the new front, I now have something that is inbetween a Pedaltrain Nano and a Nano+

Dimensions now are: 16″ x 5″ (40cm x 22cm). This allows me one extra pedal than my original Nano allowed me to have, so I was able to include my 2nd modulation pedal and a noise gate for when I’ve got my highest gain sounds going. I sacrificed my really cool, “similar to fuzz” lead setting, which is both my EP boost clones on together because they just create another unnecessary choice to make when I want to use either one, but not both together.

Now the board gives me a lot of versatility with less choices of what to use on the fly. With my amp close to me with my new amp setup I can tweak the amp depending on the song and that in itself negated another pedal or two I needed before when I needed a more clean sound at short notice.

The board goes like this (from right-guitar to left-amp):

Wah > Phaser > Chorus > Lead Boost > Overdrive/Crunch > Noise Gate > Delay

There’s enough space around each foot switch to not get too fiddly and hit the wrong pedal, but it’s as compact a rig as I can imagine for the number of options at my feet. All running off a rechargeable power supply with a large power bank backup too for hours and hours of charge.