My battery powered pedalboard build thread COMPLETE!

Mark Wein

Grand Poobah
Staff member
My summer has exploded gig-wise for a couple of reasons - I have 16 gigs this month alone. Almost all of them are easy to play with my FM9 rig but I have a few where there is either very little stage space or limited stage power so I'm putting together my HX Stomp with a Mission Engineering 529 M power converter and 529p power bank for my "tiny house" rig. I'm getting a Walrus Audio DISO direct box to replace my really cheap DI as well. The first outing for this rig is a steel drum gig on the beach in Crystal Cove. If it works well I might get their 529i power supply which is it's own battery and has 5 isolated power taps for my "normal" small pedalboard. I'll report back next week.

I also bought an Xvive guitar wireless. I've used their in-ear monitor wireless for a year and even though I had a Shure GLXD+ wireless system on loan from the local distributor I opted to buy this to try because I rarely actually need a wireless but I could actually use one at school in the classroom more than anything else. I set up the second input on the FM9 to boost the input gain and EQ the signal from the wireless to make it sound closer to the cable and it worked pretty good on my 3 hour gig yesterday.
 
So I got a call from my Sweetwater guy saying that the power supply stuff was out of stock. I did get my direct box from Amazon, though. The Walrus Audio Canvas direct box and line isolator was a good purchase. I didn't realize how bad my cheapie direct box sounded until yesterday's gig. Totally worth it: https://amzn.to/3MMECvH
 
So I got a call from my Sweetwater guy saying that the power supply stuff was out of stock. I did get my direct box from Amazon, though. The Walrus Audio Canvas direct box and line isolator was a good purchase. I didn't realize how bad my cheapie direct box sounded until yesterday's gig. Totally worth it: https://amzn.to/3MMECvH
Walrus makes some good stuff.
 
Done.

Cutting board courtesy of Target.

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Done.

Cutting board courtesy of Target.

fwiw, I've always used local industrial plastic supply houses for projects.
They usually have scrap from customer job cuts 4x8 sheets of various type of plastics for dirt cheap. Something like standard cutting board size would be $1 - $3 for HDPE
 
So I've played two gigs with this and I think it's just going to be my "Caribbean and small gig" board. Walking in with just my guitar case and a pelican-style briefcase or that and my speaker is kinda nice and it sounds pretty good for these low volume gigs where I literally just need a clean sound and a couple of different leads. I'll use it tomorrow in San Diego and then its back to the FM 9 for the rest of the week.

Saturday was literally in the sand so I had to put it the case to keep it less sandy and I ended up using my wireless to keep from getting all of my chords dirty. Beach gigs without a stage suck.

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Yesterday it was back to the Yacht club. The G&L works great for this gig so I think it's going to be the carribean band guitar to take the wear and tear off my other guitars. It's got brand new frets and I've never really gigged it.

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Also, each gig was 3-4 hours and as long as I've been turning the battery pack off between sets I've never gotten below 55% power. Super quiet even with dodgy power for the PA's, too
 
I do say that if you had told me at the beginning of the summer that I would happily be using and HX Stomp for about half of my playing gigs this summer I would have thought you lobotomized. I might even be using it for the three nights we're playing at the OC fair if I can get a Marshall rhythm sound out if it that I don't hate. The load in for that gig is really hard and it we all bring our smallest rigs and carpool it might make the week bearable.
 
I do say that if you had told me at the beginning of the summer that I would happily be using and HX Stomp for about half of my playing gigs this summer I would have thought you lobotomized. I might even be using it for the three nights we're playing at the OC fair if I can get a Marshall rhythm sound out if it that I don't hate. The load in for that gig is really hard and it we all bring our smallest rigs and carpool it might make the week bearable.
Give the Placater model a try with your fave IR. It was the closest I got to the sound in my head.
 
Give the Placater model a try with your fave IR. It was the closest I got to the sound in my head.
I'm pretty close to matching the 2204 Marshall sound that I use in the Fractal today. I spent part of my day going between the two devices ands trying to match the tones that I know work live on the FM9. I won't have all of my "fancy" sounds but the small rig with a wah pedal in front of it should work ok enough for what is essentialy a gig in a glorified snackbar for a few days.
 
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