My Adventures in Effectsville, Part 3

If you ever buy an SKB PS-55 Stage Five Pedal Board, be prepared for how huge and heavy this thing is! I got it set up last night with only one issue, otherwise, it's ready to rock.

As I suspected, the actual pedal board surface is not as big as I'd like, but it's much bigger than what I did have. I was able to put my amp's channel switch pedal back on the board and give things a little better spacing.

All the power plugs worked just fine including the 9VAC for the M9. Nice to have it all taken care of with one power cord.


The patch bay seems to be working just fine too. Although I'm not sure if it's the change in pedal order, my ears or the patch bay that has pulled a thin blanket over my previous sound. It did not sound as bright, the tone that I was just digging wasn't quite just right. I'm hoping its a bad patch cable or that the way I had the pedal order on the previous board was particularly good. If that's the case, I can remedy that. I'll do more testing in the coming days and get it sorted.

The on-board cable tester works great and is a nice little thing to have around. The on-board headphone amp works perfectly as well. It's a little solid-state-y fizzy sounding but will be a nice thing to have when I want to jam quietly or while travelling, or to just test out connections.

The only real problem I faced was in trying to patch in my amp's pedal through the patch bay. It created a very loud hum. I'm sure it's the amp's fault as my Fender Super Sonic uses a voltage circuit through it's mono 1/4" plug to control the three switches on the pedal. Other than that, the SKB PS-55 introduced NO additional hum or noise to my signal. No matter, it's just one cable to add to the amp input and the power cable and I'm on the road with this excellent case bundled up nicely.

A minor issue was the 1/8" mono plug power lines did not work with my EHX Big Muff or the ProCo RAT 2 pedals. They look identical to the adapters I was using from my One-Spot power supply but did not supply any power to either. I ended up using the grey Boss style wires and the aforementioned adapters on both and they work just fine now.

Several others that have reviewed this case mirror some of the things I've said here, including wishing they had included an interior net or pocket for cords while traveling with it, a longer AC cable would have been nice knowing how musicians on stage are going to use something like this, a little larger board space for pedals and a little deeper channels for wire routing would have been nice as well. The closer to the front you get the harder it gets! Ticky stuff like, why did they do all the DC supply lines in grey instead of black?

All in all, even with the expensive price tag, this pedal board is a good deal. It does everything it advertised, is built like a brick you-know-what and it will retain it's resale value for several years.

Oh and by the way, I masked off the volume and expression pedals with blue painter's tape and sprayed them with a matte finish white spray paint. Lightly misting. I like them and think they add some fun as well as help in hitting the one I want at a moments notice!