Four Handy Guitar Pedal Hacks
Four handy hacks that make working with guitar pedals easier.
If you own guitar pedals—and of course you do—you’ve undoubtedly dealt with battery and power-supply issues, bad connections and leftover residue from the Velcro pads used to hold pedals on your pedal board.
In this video, Phillip McKnight demonstrates four handy guitar pedal hacks to deal with all of these issues and make working with pedals easier. All of the hacks are easy to perform, including two that involve same basic knowledge of electronics and wiring.
Phillip demonstrates how to make a convenient battery power supply for pedals that don’t take batteries by using the barrel connector from a wall wart and a nine-volt battery clip. He also shows how to remove glue residue left on pedals from stickers or Velcro pads, and how to prevent the Velcro pads from damaging or removing the manufacturer’s labels on the bottom of your pedal. He wraps up the video by showing how to make a handy diagnosis cable from a cable end and alligator clips that you can use to find shorts in your pedal board’s signal chain, test speakers and much more.
Take a look. And when you’re done, visit Phillip’s YouTube channel for more of his great and informative videos.
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Christopher Scapelliti is editor-in-chief of Guitar Player magazine, the world’s longest-running guitar magazine, founded in 1967. In his extensive career, he has authored in-depth interviews with such guitarists as Pete Townshend, Slash, Billy Corgan, Jack White, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren, and audio professionals including Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott. He is the co-author of Guitar Aficionado: The Collections: The Most Famous, Rare, and Valuable Guitars in the World, a founding editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine, and a former editor with Guitar World, Guitar for the Practicing Musician and Maximum Guitar. Apart from guitars, he maintains a collection of more than 30 vintage analog synthesizers.
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