My new pedalboard...

Great looking pedal board Devan. How do you like the Lava patch cables? Any noise or loss of tone? I have heard good and bad about them. I use Mogami but have seen these and making your own length seems appealing but concerned about quality compared to Mogami.
Cheers Ron

Thanks Ron!

Strangely enough, I had the Mogami patch cables on my previous board.  Fantastic cables, but just too bulky for this one which has NO space at all.  Another member I know on TGP was selling their Lava solderless kit for a good price so I picked it up and thought to give it a go.

I am terrible with working with my hands, so I found them quite difficult to make up.  Nothing like the '40 seconds' video that they have up on their site.  With LOTS of experience you could probably do them quickly, but I found it really tricky to get the right strip length, and also to push the centre pin on dead centre.

I wasted about 4 sections of cable when I made errors, but thankfully you can easily reuse the same end connectors as they can be easily removed and reseated on another cable.

There is another video on YT by a gear site where a young lad explains how to put them together, and more importantly, how to test them properly.  I followed his advice in the end and got them working.

As for loss of tone - I don't think there is really any loss of tone there.  I measured the total resistance from input to output of the whole board and there wasn't much extra resistance there, and I couldn't tell a difference from the old board (which had 4 less pedals BTW).

I did get a lot of extra noise when kicking in the Wah pedal, but not sure if that is a 'feature' of the Wah pedal itself.  This is actually the first time I am using a Wah pedal on my board - never used to before.

I only got it finished today, so will do some more play testing and report back...

Awesome board Devan!!! Love the look of the JB wah, you liking it?

Looks like the D's B's.
Yeah a demo would be good.

Very clean!

Do you like the coiled cable?
I had a fender kool-kord and when I stepped on it or it slapped the floor as I walk, it made terrible sounds. What brand is that one?

- Nic from Detroit... posting on JB's Forum since 6-2-2006
Ask me about my handwound Great Lakes Guitar Pickups
Since 2010, Bonamassa fans have taken advantage of my JB friend discount = my cost + shipping.

Thanks again everyone!

Stefan - Haven't had the chance to REALLY play the Wah yet - 25+ years of playing and I never used one before.  It will be an interesting experiment!

Jonny - You should have seen the mess my pedals were in before I decided to organise them on a board! LOL

PSmith and Ges - Uh, my playing skills would make these pedals sound terrible.  I'm not nearly a good enough player to demo them effectively, but I might do a snapshot of some tones and post them up...

Indy - Like the Wah, I never really used a Reverb pedal much before, but my new amp came with a busted reverb tank, and my other amp, a Mesa Boogie MkIIB has NO reverb at all, which is why I decided to get the Room Mate.  It is great, not too springy like some pedals, but I am finding that I tend not to use it when I have the Replica or El Capistan delay running.  When I have delay turned off, such as when doing AC/DC numbers, I have the Room Mate on with just a hint of verb.

Nic - That's a Lava coily cable and it is very good.  Well shielded.  No noise or interference when moved or bumped etc.  Having said that - these are really my practice cables in my home.  On gigs I use Mogami cables like Joe does...   And yes, I like Hendrix!

Nice! Thanks for the heads up re the new cables Joe uses!

I've got the Neutrik ends on my Mogami's too... I love seeing the faces on the sound guys and other players when I go to switch guitars without putting my amp on 'standby', and then they're all.... "Oh... there was no loud POP!"