Does anyone remember a modular pedalboard from (possibly) late-70s to early-80s?

[edvard]

Many moons ago, probably 1988-89 or so, I was jamming with some friends in their garage, and one of them showed me a pedalboard that belonged to his father.  It was pretty large, but the defining feature was that each "pedal" was just a pedal-sized rectangular panel with a screw hole at top and bottom of the panel, and each one was screwed to one large metal frame, giving the appearance of a flat metal landscape punctuated by footswitches and knobs.  I don't remember if the signal routing was internal (underneath the panels), or by patch cables inserted into jacks on the face of each "pedal". 

He said it used to belong to Santana, but I couldn't find any pictures or articles to back that up.  And it definitely did NOT look DIY; the names and control labels were all obviously quality screen-printed on. The appearance of a fair amount of age (small dings and chips in the powder-coated paint job, a flattened corner or two) suggested maybe 5-10 years old at the time.

Anybody remember anything like that?

[stallik]

Anything like this?
Howe Pedalboard
No knobs though, I think this one controlled a rack

[GGBB]

Yamaha SB series (200, 100, 40)?

[Mark Hammer]

I was going to suggest the Korg PME-40X, but the Yamaha unit Gord links to seems to fit the description more closely.  Looks like a pretty sweet unit, albeit rather bulky.

There were several companies that attempted modular systems in the early '80s.  They all died a horrible death because there were no standards that multiple companies agreed on, and none of the individual attempters of modular systems tended to provide more than one variation on each particular category of effect.  You either had to like all of their effects modules, or else no deal.

[GGBB]

Looks like a pretty sweet unit, albeit rather bulky.

Yes the SB-200 was huge - probably weighed a ton. The 100 was more manageable and the 40 was pretty compact.

I have the chorus pedal from that series. Its built like a tank and has the best feeling mechanical footswitch (DPDT) I've ever known. Proprietary design has some advantages. True bypass as well with - I assume - some type of millennium/RAT bypass setup. Really nice classic chorus pedal - has a direct out for stereo which lets you also use the pedal in vibrato mode that sounds fantastic. Was my co-first pedal (along with a RAT) so I have a soft spot for it.

[edvard]

Yamaha SB series (200, 100, 40)?

Oh man, I think that's the one, only the one I saw had the foot controller on the left side, and I don't remember the patchboard, but it definitely had the gooseneck light.  The patchboard was probably there, just my memory has gotten quite fuzzy since then.  Thanks!

[stallik]

Santana was a Yamaha SG player early on so perhaps some kind of connection isn't impossible. Whether he ever used one on stage however...

[edvard]

I was going to suggest the Korg PME-40X, but the Yamaha unit Gord links to seems to fit the description more closely.  Looks like a pretty sweet unit, albeit rather bulky.

There were several companies that attempted modular systems in the early '80s.  They all died a horrible death because there were no standards that multiple companies agreed on, and none of the individual attempters of modular systems tended to provide more than one variation on each particular category of effect.  You either had to like all of their effects modules, or else no deal.

That Korg looks like the grand-daddy to the Korg G-3 I used to have.  I wish I had another, those were not-bad sounding units for what they were, and it was the only thing that put my '83 Bullet's weak single-coils into Metal territory without hissing like a cobra.

[edvard]

Santana was a Yamaha SG player early on so perhaps some kind of connection isn't impossible. Whether he ever used one on stage however...

Crap, now I gotta look up '80s Santana concert stage shots. >_<

[edvard]

Does anybody know if any of the modules have been reverse-engineered/cloned?  It would be interesting to see if they used any unusual circuit stunts, or if they just tweaked "cookbook" circuits.  That Distortion unit sounds rather interesting, like a real "overdrive hitting the front end" kind of sound.

[GGBB]

Oh man, I think that's the one, only the one I saw had the foot controller on the left side, and I don't remember the patchboard, but it definitely had the gooseneck light.  The patchboard was probably there, just my memory has gotten quite fuzzy since then.  Thanks!

I believe its completely modular - 2 rows of 8 "sockets" - so you can position the pedals anywhere including the foot controller. Maybe even the patch bay and bypass/headphone module too (not sure).

[Rob Strand]

Does anybody know if any of the modules have been reverse-engineered/cloned?  It would be interesting to see if they used any unusual circuit stunts, or if they just tweaked "cookbook" circuits.  That Distortion unit sounds rather interesting, like a real "overdrive hitting the front end" kind of sound.

If you didn't know already the board used Yamaha pedals of the era.

Yamaha produced service manuals for these but they aren't readily available on the web.  A few pedals have been traced manually and have appeared and disappeared on the web at various times.   So the web doesn't accurately document these pedals at this time.

I think a few pedals may actually be like the Korg pedals of the era.

I'm pretty sure the circuits are fundamentally *similar* to common pedals but have slight differences in filterings, voicing with minor changes in topology (like tone control ckts).

IIRC the distortion was similar to a Korg unit.   There was an (old style) official schematic on the web.  However there were some possible ambiguities or errors on the schematic. Also it used a funky old opamp which was hard to get detailed data for.  One of those layout sites had a layout, which is probably based on the schematic alone. I'm pretty sure the project got shelved because of those ambiguities/errors.   What is needed it for someone to trace a real unit to clean-up the schematic.
[EDIT: the circuit error is only minor.  The lack of details regarding the internal schematic of the "opamp" is the key thing missing.]

Another thing to be aware of is some of those Yamaha pedals went through different versions.  For example I think the overdrive is available as OD-01, OD-10, OD-100.

It's a while since I've looked at these but that's what I can remember.

[Rob Strand]

I've created a separate thread on the Yamaha DI-01 Distortion/Korg DST-1 Distortion:

https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=133022.0