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From Dream to Reality – The Inspiration for the World’s Largest Guitar Effect Pedalboard

Date:2020/1/9 11:21:15 Hits:

How does someone come up with the idea to string together more guitar pedals than anyone ever in history? Well it went something like this…

The genesis of this crazy undertaking occurred when a lightbulb went off over Rob Scallon’s head as he was admiring the “Wall O’ Pedals” in Sweetwater’s Music Store. Rob is one of YouTube’s top-subscribed music content creators, and he was here touring the Sweetwater campus earlier this year. As he stood looking at the hundreds of pedals, he commented to Steve Dwyer, Sweetwater’s Senior Director of Brand:

I’d love to hook all those together and play them on a giant pedalboard.

Rob Scallon posing in front of the pedals he will use for the worlds largest pedalboard

Several seconds of far-flung dreaming and imaginative neuron firing followed, and the seed was planted. Within days it had germinated into a full-fledged and totally over-the-top idea.

“I’ve seen videos of people chaining all these distortion pedals in a row,” recalls Rob, “or using their entire collection — which, at maybe 20 pedals, is totally ridiculous. We wanted to try to do 15 times that.”

Are We Crazy to Try This?

And so the question arose: could you really put together a pedalboard of multiple dozens — or maybe even hundreds — of guitar pedals? Was it logistically possible? Would there be any guitar signal left on the other end of all those cables, switches, and circuits? We reached out to a few of our trusted pedal manufacturers to get their take. Our call attracted the attention of Josh Scott of JHS Pedals, Brian Wampler of Wampler Pedals, and Robert Keeley of Keeley Electronics — all giants in the pedal creation field and sages in the art of pedalology — who graciously agreed to participate in accomplishing this crazy ambitious dream.

Once we got our pedal gurus involved and determined what stomps we wanted to feature, all we needed was a pedalboard system robust enough to accommodate 300+ pedals. “If you’ve ever set up a pedalboard before,” explains Keeley, “there’s a lot of troubleshooting involved. Even just small things, like opening all the boxes, attaching the brackets to the pedals, and attaching the pedals to the boards, ended up taking much more time than expected. Now we have to power up 319 pedals and make sure power and audio flow through them.”

putting together the worlds largest pedalboard

For this challenge, we turned to Ryan Dyck of Temple Audio. Temple’s modular pedalboard systems proved to be the perfect solution. Together, we built 34 standalone pedalboards and equipped each with its own power supply and interconnects, which we then chained and linked together for the final execution.

Question #1: Why?
Why did we at Sweetwater feel the need to build the most expensive pedalboard (about $90,000) ever created in the history of the electric guitar? For the very same reason President Kennedy instructed a team of scientists to put a man on the moon: because we could.

“It’d be like if someone brought me 300+ pairs of shoes to try on,” says Natalie Tauer, our Affiliate Marketing Manager, who was the logistical mastermind throughout this endeavor. “What am I going to say, no?”

But if you ask Rob, there’s more at stake than just the glory of it all. “It’s a lifelong journey, finding the right tone. And I feel like this is the day I’m going to find it.” He jokes, “I think the best way to do that is to throw $100,000 worth of equipment at it.”

Testing the worlds largest pedalboard

Question #2: How?
As far as how this all might turn out, Rob remained optimistic: “Best-case scenario? We plug it in and it works. Worst-case scenario is we plug it in and we don’t get it working for days. Either way: we’re going to crash and burn in an entertaining way, or I’m going to find my dream tone.”

Rob is no stranger to setting records and pushing envelopes. In 2014, he and pal Bryan Bednarek earned a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title for filming the most handclaps (804) in a minute. And just last year, Rob made waves in a YouTube-wide songwriting challenge that culminated in his recording a full 3-minute song in 30 seconds. Yet even Rob is quick to recognize that an undertaking of this scale is on an entirely different level, which is why he called on Sweetwater. “Thankfully, Steve and Sweetwater were up for it.”

one row of the worlds largest pedalboard

“You didn’t go halfway,” says fellow content creator Mitch Gallagher in an exclusive interview with Rob, Ryan, Robert, Brian, and Josh. “You have got 319 pedals from 34 manufacturers on 34 separate boards that are all wired together to create one huge composite board. Pretty amazing.”

“It’s the endgame,” says Rob. “You start out. You get one guitar pedal. And every few months past that, you find yourself with a new one. This [board] is as far as you can go.”

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From Dream to Reality – The Inspiration for the World’s Largest Guitar Effect Pedalboard

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