In the good old days, when there were no pedalboards, and the fully outfitted musician might have a Hendrix-like arrangement of plugging into a wah, that went to a Univibe, then to a fuzz, none of which was "attached" to any surface other than the floor, and tremolo and reverb were something in the amp, what came first, second, third, etc., was reflected in a physical sequence from right to left on the floor.
As pedal use became more complex and players started to require a pedalboard, not only for portability/setup purposes, but also to organize the many forms of sound modification they might use. Of course, in only very few instances could a pedalboard simply become akin to a piece of floor that the player could simply pick up, with the same 3 or 4 pedals, laid out from right to left, like the old-school floor trio or quarter held together by patch cables. The task became one of creating some sort of rectangular space - perhaps with multiple levels - that could provide a physically accommodating space for all those pedals. And the player had to fit them all into the most compact space, like some sort of Tetris game.
All of which leads to the question that forms the basis of this thread: How much do you need to have your pedals laid out in a physical sequence that corresponds to the way you plan out your tone?
Can you simply stick 'em where they fit, and still be nimble and error-free when selecting them? Or do you wish your pedalboard could be one long right-to-left thing; 10" deep and 12 feet wide?
In short, does your thinking about pedal use lean heavily on spatial thinking, where your pedalboard needs to be laid out like a flowchart?
As pedal use became more complex and players started to require a pedalboard, not only for portability/setup purposes, but also to organize the many forms of sound modification they might use. Of course, in only very few instances could a pedalboard simply become akin to a piece of floor that the player could simply pick up, with the same 3 or 4 pedals, laid out from right to left, like the old-school floor trio or quarter held together by patch cables. The task became one of creating some sort of rectangular space - perhaps with multiple levels - that could provide a physically accommodating space for all those pedals. And the player had to fit them all into the most compact space, like some sort of Tetris game.
All of which leads to the question that forms the basis of this thread: How much do you need to have your pedals laid out in a physical sequence that corresponds to the way you plan out your tone?
Can you simply stick 'em where they fit, and still be nimble and error-free when selecting them? Or do you wish your pedalboard could be one long right-to-left thing; 10" deep and 12 feet wide?
In short, does your thinking about pedal use lean heavily on spatial thinking, where your pedalboard needs to be laid out like a flowchart?
