u/Rev-DC

I've posted my 'small' board before. But, here's my full collection now that everything is wired and locked in. I was stuck in a pretty GASsy rabbit hole, a lot of it was somewhat related to Covid / Downtime boredom that carried over into 2026, and a lot of project pipe dreams.

I recently sold ~60 pedals, a lot of studio stuff, and a couple of amps. I used the cash for responsible things, but plan on picking up one more guitar and one more amp.

Board #1: Helix Stadium + Footswitch. It's mounted on a Pedalpad 22x11 board and is my primary 'setlist' gig board. If have a standard setlist, I'll program it and it's easy peasy to use.

Board #2: I've posted this one in the past. It's for an amp with a loop, for jamming and plug and play. It's a Tuner -> Phase 95 -> Tubescreamer -> Queen of Crow -> EVH Flanger -> (Amp) -> Starlight -> Pathways.

Board #3: Boss Board. For jams and amps without loops. FZ-1W -> Tuner -> SD-1W -> CE-2W -> DD-8 (Alchemy Mod)

Board #4: Bass Board**.** For simple bass gigs. The Helix does everything this board does and more, but this little guy is a bulletproof gig board, so I'll probably hang onto it.

My goal was to cover most every situation I find myself in.

• Jams with friends or unwind in the office: Grab my little Supro 12" Combo and the Boss board.
• Church or one-off guitar gigs: Grab the Helix board.
• Bedroom / Studio Fun (but don't want to deal with technology) the 'big' board into an amp.
• Trio Gigs (with a couple of friends, we do festivals / lakeside stuff): Bass board.

As I get more comfortable with the Stadium, I may eventually downsize a bit more, but I'm good with everything as-is right now.

I moved from a 10-15-pedal board at any given time to this small seven-pedal board. I had ~90 pedals in my closet, and it was consuming more time than I had. It was an obsession. I committed to selling a bunch of stuff, moving to a Tres 3.0, and spending time on more productive things.

Chain: Tuner -> Phase 95 -> TS Mini -> Queen of Crow -> MXR EVH 117 Flanger -> Amp, with Starlight -> Pathways in the loop.

Thoughts on everything:

• Tuner: Obviously ya gotta have one.
• Phase 95: Replaced my Script Phase 90 from my big board. The 45 setting gets me close enough to Univibe I don't need a separate pedal for it.
• Tubescreamer Mini: Just as good as the fancy tubescreamers for 1/2 the cost. Sounds 90% like my handwired TS808HWv2 which is now on the chopping block.
• Guptech Queen of Crow. Sorry, u/Guptech that I made fun of your pedal with the cat butt art in a thread like two weeks ago. I really do love your stuff. I sat down and did a shootout through my Mesa TC-50 with: Queen of Crow - Browne Protein - JHS Double Barrel - Mythos Herculean Deluxe - DCW Shagbark - Cheapo Kingtone Duellist clone I have, and this thing was straight up the winner through my amp, like it wasn't even close. It could be my only dirt pedal if I didn't need the TS for hard rock on the high gain channel.
• MXR EVH 117 Flanger: I discovered I like subtle flange way more than chorus, and if I need crazy, I can hit the EVH Button. I get tired of chorus pretty quickly, but flanger is just a lot more *fun* to me.
• Starlight: My favorite delay. I love the DMM and EP sounds. As a bonus, in mono, the quarter + dotted eighth does the galloping U2 thing so I don't need anything like a Strymon Dig anymore.
• Source Audio Pathways: To me, it's a flint killer. The tank spring is so ridiculously good, and the trems are on par (to my ears) with the Flint.

I've been running this board for a few days now and honestly, moving to a smaller board is really freeing. Before this week, my board was: Tuner, Compressor, Minimum 3 Mod Pedals, Minimum 3 Drive Pedals + a fuzz, Minimum 2 Delays (or one giga-delay) Ambient Reverb, and Reverb. This is so much easier to manage.