My wife doesn't just want a 30 note pedalboard, she wants one that will fit in a corner without having to move her glass cabinet and bookcases. Wives, I find, are like that. The corner is, of course, a bit too small so buying a new or secondhand board won't work. This is why I am building a compact version. Here's how!
The board has 30 pedals set at 30mm centres, is 1060mm wide and 560mm deep. The layout is parallel, concave, with the sharps laid out on a curve to the same radius of curvature (about 2590mm). This is about the same as you would find on a similar village organ pedalboard, except for the pedal length. That's the tricky bit, and cunningly saving a few millimetres here and there.
If you look at the pictures you will see that the frame is all straight lines, not a curve in sight! Instead, the outer pedals are raised up on a 20mm high step. The individual pedal heights are then set to create the curvature needed. This, of course, means they don't all weigh the same and so I have made the spring force on each of them adjustable. The toe end of each pedal runs between Teflon (Polyethylene, PTFE) guides so the pedals do not twist. Why this way? Because allowing for curved heel and toe boards needs more width.
The heel end of the pedals is where it all happens. The hinge point has to be as far back along the pedal as possible, otherwise the player will find the pressure under the heel too great when 'heel and toeing'. This is a problem with short pedals. But placing the hinge right back at the heel means that a classical flat heel spring cannot be used - it takes too much room. A toe spring can be used but I found it was easier to specify and get coil springs made up to the correct force. By putting the spring close to the heel hinge, the pedal action stays constant throughout its range of movement. A coil spring under the toe tends to get heavier as you press down upon it.
You can see in one of the pictures that I made up a prototype pedal to test out the forces and movement required. It shows the layout and all you then have to do is repeat it 30 times! The spring actually applies about 6-8 kg when the pedal is unplayed. The maximum force available is about 10kg. The base of each spring rests on a screw adjuster to allow for the various weight differences between naturals and sharps, lighter pedals and heavier.
I am the first to admit that the heel hinge looks a bit strange. It is a vertical screwed stud running through an insert in the upper surface of a thick beam, then through the heel and into a threaded cross dowel. There is actually a small gap between the pedal heel and the top of the beam. If you stand on the pedal heel, the pedal drops a millimetre or two onto the beam, which then safely takes the weight. In normal playing, the beam and insert support the studding and keep the pedal from moving fore and aft. The hinge is actually pulling the pedal heel downwards against the force of the spring. Under the pedal board, a lock nut on the stud keeps everything from coming undone or out of adjustment. The cross dowel is a smaller diameter than the copper bush in the pedal so that it rocks rather than rotates, to reduce wear and friction. The copper bush, glued in place, is made from 15mm diameter copper pipe, cut to length on a bandsaw or with a fine-bladed hacksaw.
The frame it all sits in is made of white oak 20mm thick. This is expensive but strong and rigid enough to carry the 240+kg of force produced by all the springs. This force tries to twist the heel board off the fore and aft beams, so these are both glued and screwed to prevent any chance of the board peeling off the beams. The pedals need to be lighter and are made from Shorea with the playing surface protected with several coats of hard varnish over a good grain-filler. The infills need to be of an easy to work timber that can be planed and pared cross grain with ease. They do not need to be hard, the inserts will take the wear and tear and will fit more easily into a softer timber.
The toe end looks complicated! The way I have done it is to make up a set of Teflon sliders, or guides. They are held in slots routed into the cranked top bar and matching infill bars at the base of each guide. The way to make this easily is to rout the slots in a single wide bar, then cut it in two to make sure the slots in the top will line up with those in the bottom. A simple jig is needed to ensure the slots are routed correctly. A simpler and much cheaper alternative would be simply to drill through two bars, one atop the other, and then glue dowels between them to make a kind of ladder on its side. Make the ladder wide enough to allow for the 20mm step up for the outer pedals. (The step is so that the pedals don't get too high and too heavy.)
The sharps themselves are horn shaped so they overlap the toe bar that carries the sliders and holds down the pedal toes. This is just to enable the sharps to be placed at the very end of each pedal bar and so make full use of the limited pedal length. The player's toe feels the flat side and top 'horn' of each sharp. This arrangement is what keeps the pedalboard short but still playable. The block on the left side of pedal number 30 (F) is because the sliders are spaced further apart for this pedal to allow for some extra spacing between it and 29. It is still less than on a conventional pedalboard but the pedal can have a capping cranked over the right hand end plate if the player needs this. An alternative is to make it 20mm higher so the player can feel it with the right side of the foot and distinguish it from 29.
The pedal design aims to reduce friction to a minimum by making the pedal end slide in teflon sliders. This is important because the player pushes the outer pedals sideways as well as downwards and the extra leverage on the sharps, being higher, has to be accommodated. Except for the centre pedals, all the others will have one side or the other taking the pressure when played. This is the side that should have the veneer strip applied. The thickness is set to enable a smooth action with minimal play but no sticking. It also presents long grain to the direction of travel, which is smoother. It may seem primitive but it allows complete control of the fit for each pedal, allowing for minor errors. It has the extra advantage of being easily pared off and replaced when adjustment is needed.
All that's left is to buy a low voltage MIDI encoding harness with magnets and reed switches from the Midi Gadget Boutique (www.largonet.net) and fit this across the toe ends. Here's how. When you unwrap the package, you will find something that looks like a demented centipede, the 32 feet are the reed switches, which just look like fine bits of rubber tubing, going nowhere. Take a look at Largonet wiring pictures to see what it looks like. The actual MIDI encoder unit is a small circuit board with sockets for power (any AC or DC or AC/DC power supply which delivers 9 - 12 volts at 200ma plus.
What's a bit hard to show is how the reed switches are actually fitted. This is because, when fitted (my way, at least) you can't actually see them anymore. This makes the photography tricky. They sit inside holes drilled vertically in bars of 10mm thick wood, a bit nearer one side than the other. They are fed in upwards from the wiring harness. Along the upper, inner part of the bar, is a saw cut that is deep enough to break into the holes for the reed switches. Either side of each hole is a small hole to let a wire loop go around the reed switch and, when gently pulled tight and folded down (or lightly twisted), to lock the reed switch into its hole. This allows the switch to be positioned exactly in the vertical plane. The saw cut lets the wire grip the reed switch from its inner side. The reed switch is just a miniature set of contacts inside a vial. When a magnet is brought near it, the contacts close, so making a switch.
The toe of each pedal has a tiny magnet glued to it with epoxy resin. To test it all out before actually fitting it all to the pedalboard, or prior to building it, connect the Largonet unit up to something that will play the MIDI notes from the reed switches, a digital keyboard, say, and when you flick a magnet past a reed switch, about 5mm away from its tip worked for me, you will get a note played ... I hope. It worked straight out of the box for me. Remember that the MIDI cable goes to the MIDI IN socket of the digital keyboard or your PC USB/MIDI adapter. You can now proceed with the build happy in the knowledge that you can make it all work. You can also play with all the different ways of fitting the reeds. Some people swear by hot glue guns to fix the reeds to moveable boards. I've made the reeds movable in the boards and can easily remove any reed switch, or the whole harness, without more work than undoing a few screws.
The circuitboard does have hot components on it, so make sure that the airflow will be really good and fit cable clamps to ensure that a tugged cable can't damage the harness or encoder. In my rather airless corner, I am going to fit a small, silent fan to make sure there is good ventilation.
That's about it. The Teflon comes from Rutlands.co.uk and studding, nuts, lock-nuts, cross dowels, threaded inserts (all 6mm) and copper pipe (15mm) from Screwfix.co.uk. You will have to find your own timber supplier but in the UK Travis Perkins and other building supplies merchants will order white oak and Shorea. You can save quite a bit of money by using nylon chopping boards instead of Teflon for the sliders. Not quite as slippery but should do the job OK.
I do recommend drawing out the whole board, full-size and accurately, on a length of plain wallpaper. Make sure everything works on paper, then work out the best way of making things so they are all consistent and match up well. I will provide some guideline drawings with the pictures, later. The design is copyrighted so if you want to make up pedalboards commercially to this design, please email me for terms Mostyn Davies. Feel free to make up your own personal copy but please put something in a charity box, just to please me.
