One small but important addition to my rig since I last posted. I bought a single level pedalboard flight case from Swan Flight (if you are in the UK and haven't looked up this business, you should. I have had a few rack cases from them over the years, and all have been excellent quality and value.)
It's made from Flightpanel to keep weight down, which was a small up-charge. It is their "size 3", and is just about perfect for an FC-12 and my 2 favoured expression pedals. As it arrived, the pedal mounting panel sat level with the top of the flight case base. I tried it like that before fixing the pedals, and the Mission expression pedal and bottom row of of FC-12 pedals felt uncomfortable high, so I unscrewed the rubber feet on the bottom of the unit to see how much work it might be to lower it.
The surface that the pedals mount on is spaced off the base by 6 hard rubber spacers, and 6 screws pass through the feet of the case, and through to anchor nuts where the pedals mount. So I cut the rubber spacers and mounting screws down by 30 mm (I think you could go a little further, probably lower it by 40 mm). A bit fiddly to reassemble, but all went back together as intended. I also removed the rubber end mounts from the FC-12, and mounted it with 4 strips of wide (2"?) Velcro running vertically. Everything feels like it's at a really comfortable height now, and I can operate the bottom row of FC-12 foot switches with my heels both still on the ground.
Probably only saves me about 3 minutes when setting up or breaking down the gear at the end of the night. However having just one cable to worry about keeping track of, and just one flight-cased thing to sling in the van, rather than box up 2 expression pedals and an FC-12, just makes life simpler and easier. Nice comfortable handle on the boxed unit too.
First gig with it was on Friday night. All worked perfectly. The simplicity of setting up and breaking down the guitar rig really helped, as I was doubling as sound engineer as well as lead guitar. I had a lot of drum and vocal mics and leads, stands, floor monitors, etc. to set up at the start, and get packed down and organised at the end. My own instruments and rig were boxed back up and out of the way in no time.
Liam
