Small Pedalboard Tips For Pedal Minimalism

Small pedalboards are great for home practise, jams or if you just want to simplify a complex setup into something more compact and efficient. Here are some tips on how to free up some space on your pedalboard.

Timecodes:
00:00 - Intro
00:26 - Cables and Jacks
01:36 - Wah Pedal Options
02:20 - Tuners and Power
02:30 - Tips for Using Less Gain Pedals
04:18 - Delay
04:58 - How to Get Reverb From Delay Pedals
05:51 - Modulation Basics
06:58 - Understanding Delay Times to get Different Types of Modulation
07:58 - Flanger as Multi Modulation
08:33 - Chorus as Multi Modulation
09:11 - Integrating Multi Effects

Pedal Brands with Top Mount Jacks:
Boss (Dual pedals only, RE20 etc)
Danelectro
EHX (Vintage pedals only)
Ibanez 5, 10, and 99 series pedals
Line 6 (Larger pedals only)
Ocean EFX - (no website, no longer in business)

[Shiveringpug]

Reformed mothership enjoyer. Been absolutely loving my 4 pedals + tuner board and doesn't limit my noisy and post-ambient sounds that I gravitate to

[kantina]

The short delay reverb trick sounds incredible placed before any kind of distortion. One of my favourite sounds.

[DrHopeSickNotes]

9:14 the Ampero Mini is great for this. I still use my pitchfork and switch out a couple overdrives depending on how I'm feeling, but then all delays and modulation into the Ampero.

[JosephCompton]

You have the best guitar channel on YouTube, I have learned more from you than any of the other channels put together. I hope you get 3 million viewers. You are a great teacher.

[gcvrsa]

The best advice for building small pedalboards is to stop building pedalboards out of "fear of missing out". People often think, "oh, but what if someday I might want to use this type of effect", without regard to whether or not that effect is actually necessary or appropriate for the actual music they are playing. For those of us who play primarily our own original music, this is much easier, as we are not trying to cop the tones of other musicians, the way musicians in cover bands often seem to believe they need to do, rather than developing their own individual sound.

Without being so trite as to say "tone is in the fingers", just try to bear in mind that just because you can add effects, doesn't mean you necessarily should. A lot of really great music has been made with just an instrument, an amp, and a lead, especially if the amp also has built in reverb and tremolo, vibrato, or chorus and two preamp channels. My first amp had two channels, stereo chorus, and spring reverb, and just adding a delay pedal and tremolo pedal to that was all that was really necessary for my music and my sound.

[richardnixon]

Excellent as usual. The tidbit about delay times and what they emulate was super helpful.

[devolution]

The TC Electronics Flashback 2 delay is super versatile. It has 3 extra toneprint slots. In there, you can load delay, flanger and chorus effects. Along with the looper this is definitely a multi pedal. Plus you can get awesome feedback repeat space sounds with the mash/whammy footswitch!

[Cinestudi]

Dude, your knowledge of guitar fx and the simplicity with wich you transmit it, has improve my sound by a mile, and also empty my wallet. alongside with the jhs channel, this is probably the best fx channel on youtube. bravo 👏

[Robsi]

Thanks for the video! I now use a small Pedalboard. 5 Boss and a tiny tuner. The last pedal I bought was because of another video from you - a Flanger. I just hooked up the Wah and on the floor as you recommended. Your videos are very helpful for me as almost a beginner. Thanks again 🙏👍.

[michaelfowler]

Nice one Michael!
I have been using a small board a lot lately and it's been such fun trying to optimize it.
If you are able to see two gain stages in the board, I love having one at the front and one at the end allowing the modulations and such in the middle to glue together. I also find that you can get a lot more dynamic sound from an echo when it's earlier in the chain or before a drive especially - but it can get intense or harder to use traditionally so it's logical to push the delay toward the end especially for a verb impression.
For a small rig to capture ideas I love having a looper and some small but mighty effects that can be coaxed into a wide range of sounds but take time and attention to do so. My large board is where I can afford the space and each effect is specialized like a preset button, and my little board is specifically for endless tweaking. In a gig situation I need to stay off my knees.
I love using flangers for multiple effects but in some styles they can be over the top still. I have been using the Wilson haze to get univibe and subtle vibrato as well as a handy clean gain stage - having a couple volume options in a live show is important but not very fun in a small "explore a board" rig.
Sorry to ramble but love your videos man. Thanks for sharing tips.

[davemish]

I'm glad you mentioned TC Electronics. Lots of great sounds in a standard form factor. Source Audio pedals are great sounding digital pedals. I'm a huge fan and you can get a lot of great sounds from a regular sized pedal. Pedals like the JHS Bonsai and Muffuletta pack a lot of sounds into one regular sized analog pedal. Drunk Beaver pedals follow a similar idea, and they sound amazing.

[cuinoz]

So many awesome tips especially picking up space by putting the wah on the floor. Thanks for sharing.

[dsholt]

The Electro harmonix Oceans 11 reverb is also very versatile with chorus, tremelo, and flanger onboard.

[theblytonian]

Bought and setting up a new mini pedalboard as an alternative to my primary which is full size and bulky after I rediscovered what a PITA several Velcro backed individual pedals are floating around on carpet. Your pancake backed connectors tip proved useful, notably when two pedals without offset output-input are necessarily adjacent. Swapped from conventional cables. Can now fit a size mix of five pedals mini, std, std+ comfortably without additional solid straight through connectors (no flex) or spacing compromise. Six Minis would fit easily. A perfect size board for home.

[endezeichengrimm]

Tuner, distortion and delay are all I need.

[nikolaki]

Shortly after the Zoom G3n was released I benefited in getting one really cheap off a chap that bought it for his pedal board (for its modulation effects) but he decided to go with discrete pedals.

It continues to serve me well. I've gigged it loads, sounds significantly better than its predecessor, the G3

I recently went on cheap pedal buying spree and when my Boss LS-2 arrives I will be AB-ing the G3n against the pedals it's emulating.

I've been thinking about minimal pedal boards, so this video is timely and very helpful- thank you!

First steps will be to take 3 pedals along to a jam session!

[GoCreateSomething]

I love the Beetronics Zzombee. Four levels of gain (five if you count clean). Glitchy octave down. Trem and cross trem (fading back and forth between the guitar signal and the octave down) with a wave form that fades between sine and square. Volume ramping for the guitar signal or octave down. Filter ramping with control over the high and low points of the filter. LFO control for the filter. Step sequencing for the filter with over 65 k different patterns. Tap tempo. You can control the filter and volume ramping with a footswitch on the pedal or an expression pedal. All the sound processing is analog with digital controls. And it has 5 presets. Another neat feature is you can hold the bypass button down when the pedal is off to momentarily activate the pedal. You throw that on a pedal board with a multi fx for flange, chorus etc and maybe a compressor and job done. And all that in a pedal that is just a smidge bigger than a standard boss pedal.

I also like the dual drive pedal as an option for a small board. Bigger? Yep. But you get four gain levels out of that, eliminate a patch cable and a power supply connection and you also no pedal board space between those two gain stages.

Of course, now you have the Line 6 Pod Express as an option, too. 7 Amp and cab sounds, 4 distortions, 4 modulations, 4 delays, 4 reverbs, a tuner, a looper and a noise gate all in one box that will fit in your gig bag. Long as you're a sound snob and not so much an analog snob you can get a lot of use out of that. Plus it has 21 presets you can save on it.

[Seventysongs]

I've used just one pedal for almost my entire life. A Colorsound overdrive. The most I've ever used at once was maybe five pedals, but for a very short time and I always went back to my Colorsound. I've had three of them plus two copies put together by a friend of mine. I like other pedals like delay, Uni Vibe and wha wha but I wouldn't be lost with just the Colorsound.

[diontes]

I'm in the process of making a semi small board with my Pod Go, SY200, EQ20, Drop Pedal and an Octaver. I got all of the pedals running through the Pod's FX Loop, and hook it all together in 4CM. 5 pedals, but I can do just about anything

[grahamnunn]

On my mini board I have a good Klon Klone and a booster pedal before it. The Nux lacerate has two levels so I can get three levels of drive. I like this as I have the same core drive tone.
Love the Trem on my AC15. With miniboard I just reach over to the amp. On my big board it is controlled by the switching system.