REVIEWED
Unique Pedal Boards UNIQUE Pedal Words: Hayden Hewitt
You’ve got your Custom Shop axe, boutique amp and exotic stomp boxes all sorted…but what about your pedal board? Martin Thompson at Unique Pedal Boards might have just what you’ve been looking for…
The Unique Pedal Board is a bespoke pedal board created entirely around your rig. The idea came around after company founder Martin Thompson spent years carrying his various pedals and cables around as a gigging musician, watching his pedals get gradually more distressed. After trying various off-the-shelf pedal boards but fi nding himself dissatisfi ed with the common method of sticking Velcro to the bottom of his beloved stomp boxes Martin set about designing a custom pedal board that he believes solves this and other issues via some very interesting design points.
Stomper room
Looking at the general construction there is no doubt that we are dealing
UNIQUE Pedal Boards
SRP from £250.00
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with a very well built unit. The pedalboard itself is constructed from wood, aluminium and steel in a two-tiered format and at fi rst glance everything appears reasonably conventional: the pedals mount on aluminium slats with the patch cables snaking away beneath. Finished to a very high standard and cutting no corners in the construction, the Unique Pedal Board has a very old-school, almost over engineered feel to it and that’s certainly no bad thing. We also really like the bespoke fl ight case, which certainly seems more than fi t for purpose. Just rock up to the venue, pop off the top, attach four cables and you are good to go.
Attaching the pedals to the aluminium slats is no longer a Velcro affair. The stomp boxes original baseplates are replaced by matching pedal bases that bolt straight onto the slats, using the bolts or screws that originally came with the pedal, although in some instances longer screws might be necessary. The replacement base plates allow you to put your original pedal bases away for safe keeping without any modifi cations. Martin is planning to carry a range of pedal bases to cover most generic designs but additional base plates could cost anything from £5 to £20 on average depending on the complexity of the design,
something worth bearing mind in the case of stomp boxes like the Pro-Co Rat or older Electro Harmonix pedals that have an integrated chassis rather than separate removable base plates. The base plates attach to the aluminium slats using two bolts – to prevent twisting – and sprung washers help to guard against vibration or movement issues. There is no argument that this presents is certainly a more stable method than Velcro or cable ties but it could require deep pockets if you regularly change your set up.
Beneath the aluminium slats are steel supports ensuring there is no bowing or bounce when you stomp on your pedal mid gig. Even with heavy use of the wah we couldn’t detect any undue movement. There is also a cradle for a mains power supply slung beneath the lower tier and all cable connections snake out of sight giving the board a very tidy appearance. When it comes to hooking up your
board to your rig no corners are cut here, either. The board we tested came with four Neutrik connectors: a guitar input, effects loop in, effects loop out, and the main output. A very nice touch here is that the connectors are mounted vertically at the rear or the unit rather than horizontally where they are within easier breaking range of an excitable
lead singer stomping around the place. George L’s cables are also supplied for patching the pedals together and connecting the effects loop send/returns and main I/Os, but Unique Pedal Boards insist that the customer is welcome to supply their own connectors if they prefer. PM
SHOULD I BUY ONE?
There’s no doubting that the Unique Pedal Board is a serious, professional piece of kit and none of this comes cheaply. For the board reviewed you would be looking somewhere in the region of £600 which, and there is no way of getting around this, is a lot of cash to spend on a pedalboard. Having said that, prices start from around £250, including a good quality fl ightcase, which would certainly help to justify the cost for the regular gigging or pro touring musician. If you want to keep your hand painted stomp boxes in tip top condition this bespoke, high quality pedalboard is a sensible option.
Boards
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