Right Side Up Please! Boss BCB-60 Pedalboard

Are you a lover of stompers but look on with envy when your mates whip out their plug-and-boogie multi-FX gizmos and are up and running before you've even got your Wah-Wah out of it's incresingly tatty cardboard box? A pedal board may be just what you need, then: the ease of set up of the multi-FX device with the sound quality and flexiblity of individual stomp boxes.

As with any good niche market, everyone and his dog seems to have jumped in with some or another product. Discounting high-end custom products like the Pete Cornish boards (which I would say are multi-FX units anyway), we have a number of broad categories: manufacturer/product specific boards, "controller" boards which aim to get the functionality of a multi-FX board but using stompers and general-purpose boards designed for use with just about anything. This last class is, unsurprisingly I suppose, the biggest and most popular. It's also the class into which the subject of this post, the Boss BCB-60, falls.





Whilst a lot of use-with-anything boards rely on velcro to attach pedals to the board - the board is faced with velcro and strips of the stuff are then stuck on the back of each pedal to allow them to be secured in place - the BCB-60 uses a fairly rigid half-inch thick foam sheet with cut-outs in which the pedals sit. This has the advantage that you're not lumbered with sticking velcro on the back of your prized pedals but the disadvantage that the pedals are not actually attached to the board - they just don't slide about. In use this is absolutely fine, but you will need to remember not to open the thing upside down. I've done this twice now and, yes, it is very annoying.

The supplied foam sheet (actually it's made of three bits which can be independently removed) has pre-cut shapes for Boss pedals, naturally enough, but can be cut to accomodate pretty much anything you like - the board will quite happily accept a Wah-Wah pedal too. Replacement sheets are available should you change layout, but aren't cheap, hence my current set-up uses sheets rebuilt with the aid of considerable amounts of gaffa tape - this works fine, though it's not particularly pretty.



The BCB-60 comes complete with a PSU and both power and signal hook-up cables. I know some people replace the PSU with a beefier device but I've always found it to be perfectly adequate for my needs. The thing doesn't exactly hold hundreds of pedals: it does hold more than enough for your average gigging guitarist though - you may need to give things a bit of thought but how many pedals do you *really* need/use?

So is it worth the money? Yes, I think so. It's flexible, built to survive (though be a *bit* careful with the latches) and is eminently practical. Provided you can avoid opening it upside down you'll soon wonder how you ever coped without it - I've been using one for three years now and am still very happy with it. There are plenty of alternatives out there but this really is an "all there in one box" solution. Recommended.