I have no excuse for being up as last as I am. All the girls are asleep and I really should be, as well. However, I decided I needed to redo my flight pedal board today. I'm a bit of an all-or-nothing sort of guy and I got pulled away right after I tore the whole thing apart. If I didn't have a show today (Saturday) I wouldn't have stayed up, but I did, so here I am.

I have to say, though, I'm pretty excited about how it turned out. I have a couple different boards: a big one that's in two pieces that's for studio/big tour stuff, a couple little ones for acoustic stuff and local fooling around gigs, and then this one that I use when I fly to shows and around town. It's just gotten destroyed from being flown all over the country and has started to randomly turn off or make random loud, and unwelcome, screeches and buzzes.

So I set out to really bulletproof this one. I got rid of all the cheap cables and used only George L., which I should have done last time, and I got out the can of contact cleaner, an electric guitar player's best friend. After cleaning up all the jacks and buttons and replacing worn-out velcro, I mapped out the board. This time I was more careful about heights, making sure that pedals in the second row were easily accessible over what was in the front. It's no good when you accidentally turn a bunch of knobs on your overdrive when you're trying to switch on a delay. This one is a lot better in that regard. Also, I pulled off any pedals I wasn't really using. That meant I lost the volume pedal and another overdrive.

Here was the final set-up...



I decided I was just plain sick and tired of fixing broken pedals, and of resticking them all on the board once I get to Wisconsin, so I took those little plastic tie-down thingies and strapped every pedal onto the board extra tightly. Those thingies plus the velcro should ensure they stay put for a long while. One snip and they're free to move again, so I'm not worried about committing to this exact form, though I do like it. I also tied a bunch of the straggler cables together underneath, so it's all around cleaner and less likely to catch on things and rip out jacks...



So I'm going to sleep now, but I know there are about twelve of you out there who enjoy this stuff, so I wanted to make sure you got your fix.

We rehearsed for tonight's show on Thursday and it was butt-kicking fantastic. If you're anywhere near Nashville tonight, please head on over and check out the show. I guarantee much rock, a little too much volume, and no short-outs during guitar solos (I hope!).

Oh, and my neighbor Stephen told me he couldn't make it to the show because he'll be in Chicago watching the Blue Man Group. So Paul sent him this...



Happy Saturday.