Rack Mixer and Pedal Board Build

[Bruce Weldy]

Talked myself out of going to the gym this morning, so I thought I should do something that makes me look busy before the short blond one starts finding things to occupy my time.

Two outside gigs in three days over the weekend. Temps are around 98 here in my part of paradise. Lots of water and the mighty Lasko got me though both shows relatively intact. Although the stool that I have to park my portly self upon sent me a text asking that I look into getting a prescription for Wegovy. I hate it when you get dissed by inanimate objects.....like stools....and drummers....but, I digress.

Anyway, been doing some projects the last month or so for a friend of mine who is starting his band back up. They decided to bring down the noise on stage by going direct and using in-ear monitors. So of course, he comes to me as I'm the only friend he has with a soldering iron and low enough self-esteem that I'll do about anything to hang with the cool kids.

The build was to include a Presonus 24R rack mixer, 4 in-ear transmitters, a drawer, and a rack panel to bring various outputs forward to keep meddlesome hands away from the back of the mixer where things are the most apt to get screwed up.

If any of this sounds familiar, it's because I built this exact same rack for another band a few years ago.....and I think I posted it here.

First task was to find a suitable 8 space rack that was deep enough and had rear rack rails. Rearrackrails, rearrackrails, rearrackrails.....say that three times fast!

So, my buddy searched through his studio that is littered with racks, guitars, amps, speakers, keyboards, and various other musical gear spanning the last 40 plus years. The 8-space rack he had would have been fine, but there were no rearrackrails.....(you said it three times again, didn't you?)

I could have put the rails on myself, but the way the case was built, there wasn't any way to do it, so that piece of gear went back to the pile of unused gear that will probably never be seen again until his wife has a massive "take what you can haul for free" after his funeral......but, once again, I digress.

Earlier I mentioned that I had built this rack before a few years ago. That band later wanted to add a split snake, so they brought me a much bigger rolling case and moved everthing from the 8 space to the big rack. With my superpower brain, I remembered that they should now have a spare case. Sure enough, that original 8 space rack was still empty gathering dust and I was able to procure it for this build.

So, now I'm not only building a setup like the one I did before, but it's gonna' be in the same case as before.

Ok, time for pictures to prove this actually happened......or Seth will deny the veracity of my story.

One of the things I remembered once I got the case was that the covers were hard to put on since there were no feet to hold the rack up a little, so I scrounged through my used and abused parts and came up with some low profile feet from an old Peavey PA head. One great thing about people bringing me their stuff to fix is that if it is dead, I get to strip it for parts before throwing it away. So, if anyone need all of the knobs for a Yamaha MG series mixer - I've got 'em!

I had previously built a rack for this same band, but with different funtions. It had a drive rack and a couple of in-ear units that never got used. So that was the starting point. Since I typically space all of my rack connectors the same, I was able to add the needed holes and reuse the old panel.

This panel will have 6 Aux outs, Main L&R, RCA L&R, and the RJ45 for the router.

The mixer has 12 Aux outputs. 8 will be used for 4 stereo pairs and there's 1 mono wired output for the drummer. That's 9 outputs needed for monitors, but you'll notice I put 6 Aux outs on the front panel. That gives them flexibility should they ever need the extra auxes or not use in-ears. Aux 5-6/7-8/9-10/11-12 are all hard wired to the respective transmitters. Aux 5-6 are paralleled wired to the front panel and 1-4 are hardwired to the front panel.

To keep the connectors from protruding too much, I used short-barrel TRS for the Aux outs. Here's an example of the connector wiring (solder porn) and the back panel.

The blue tape you see on the bottom of the rack was to give me the spacing so that the wire lengths were correct and could be bundled with out a bunch of wire all over the place.

Once that was all done, it was time to turn to the back of the rack. I don't like having the power cord for the power strip getting shoved in the back of the rack where invariably it will tear something up. So, I always install an IEC connector on the back so that the innards are kept safe. Also on the back are the connectors for the antennas.

While I put the IEC in there, I'd rather not cut the end of the power cord from the power strip - just in case you ever need to access it in a pinch, so I hardwire a female AC connectors to the back of the IEC connector and plug in the power strip there.

At this point, it's coming along nicely.....the In-ear transmitters are in and wired and the rest is about to be installed.

Now more pics available on this post.....so scroll down....

[Bruce Weldy]

Here's the back.... and front....

It's buttoned up, tested, and working just fine. Had it's first gig last Saturday. The report back is that it went well.

[Bruce Weldy]

They not only wanted the rack setup for gigs, but for practice in the studio. To facilitate that, I did a layout for the room whereby the studio drums stayed miked up all the time and xlr leads for the other players stayed plugged into a couple of snakes. So, for practice all they have to do is plug in snakes into the board, plug in their guitar pedal boards and the keys. Microphones for practice stay in the studio also, so all that leaves for a gig is the mixer rack and the pedalboards, guitars, and keys.

To get this as simple as possible, I needed a return at the drum location, so I used an 8x4 snake. Only problem is that the returns on the snake were 1/4" TRS. I could have built a pigtail turnaround to go from 1/4 to XLR, but I'd rather just change out the connectors on the snake. Only needed one xlr, but I went ahead and swapped two of the 1/4 for XLRs.

I've done that on a few snakes in the past. Ususally though, it's replacing some sends for returns. In one venue, I took the 8 channel stage snake that went to the front of the stage and made it a 5x3. 5 inputs was plenty for the front of the stage, and now we had three returns for the powered monitors up front - negating the need for a bunch of long cable runs.

I built all new custom length cables for the drum kit in the studio to try and keep the spaghetti to a minumum.

[Bruce Weldy]

On to the pedal board......

My friend was carrying two pedals (big ones) and had to hook everything up every time. They needed power, and cables going between the two, plus there was the transmitter for his headset mic all on the floor. Took him a while to get setup and torn down. The anal side of me couldn't stand to look at that mess any longer, so I built him a pedal board.

It had to be big as the pedals were each 14 inches long. Turns out he had an old keyboard bag, so I built the board to fit in that bag for carrying.

The design was pretty simple. 1/2" BB all the way around. It should have AC power on top along with a guitar input and two XLR outputs for Vocal and Guitar.

Drilled holes for the XLRs and the slots using a forstner bit. The the jigsaw handled the rest.

I cut some relief in the sides and back for the power cord to be able to exit to either side or the back.

Then it was some flat black as a primer, then roll on the Duratex and let it bake in the sun for a while...

Time to load it up.....

The AC outlets have boxes underneath to keep hands away from the stuff that will light your eyes up. Double strain relief on the AC power cord. I was able to position some of the cable and power supplies underneath.

[Bruce Weldy]

And here's the pedal board in its case....

Some mattress topper to keep it protected.

[Seth]

Mighty fine work, Bruce. I really like how well the pedal board came out.

Excellent writing skills, as usual. Entertaining the whole way through.

... and great photos I never did like books without pictures.

[Tom Smit]

Good story, Bruce, as usual.

[Keryn O'Shea]

Brilliant
Proper custom setups there Bruce.. really enjoyed your story