Warwick Rockboard

107
February 2019 Guitarist
reviewWarWick RockBoaRd
WARWICK ROCKBOARD
WARWICK ROCKBOARD £VARIOUS
What You Need To Know
What’s this? It doesn’t look
like it makes a noise...
No, but it will help you make a noise
– it’s a pedalboard for easy mounting
of all your pedals.
How is this different from
other brands?
It’s a modular system encompassing
the ’board and all the accessories
(cables, fixings, and so on) that you
need to put a pedal rig together.
So, do I need this?
Well, if you’re still carrying your
pedals, connectors and power
supplies in a Tesco carrier bag and
gaffer-taping them to the stage, it
probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to
take a look.
T
here are many advantages to owning
a pedalboard, not least turning up
at a gig and having all your pedals
in one place ready to go with a minimum
of faffing about. That said, while putting
a pedalboard together can be a labour
of love, it can also be a frustrating and
time-consuming one, too, with plenty of
decisions to be made along the way.
So, how big a ’board do you need – just
large enough for current pedals or with
space to expand? Do you make a ’board
yourself, get a friendly carpenter involved,
or do you go for one of the commercially
available options? What cables are you
going to use, and do you need to cut them
to an exact size for neatness? Do you have a
single power distributor that can power all
your pedals, or do you have to use a couple
of wall warts and, if so, where do you put
them? How do you fix your pedals down –
Velcro or cable ties? Will anything impede
access for battery changes for those pedals
that need them? And on it goes…
Now, Warwick doesn’t claim to have all
the answers, but the company has gone a
long way to take some of the uncertainty out
of the process by releasing the RockBoard
range, encompassing everything you
need to put a functioning pedalboard
together (except the pedals, obviously).
The RockBoard range includes basic
metal pedalboards in seven sizes, each
with optional matched gigbags and flight
cases, modules providing audio and power
connectivity to the ’board, power supply
facilities and a wide range of cabling options.
In Use
Putting together a system starts with the
RockBoard pedalboard itself, which is
available in sizes from 460mm to 1,020mm
in width. The metal ’boards, which sit
firmly on solid rubber feet, are rugged
but not too heavy – the ’board frame is
constructed from a single folded, cold-
rolled aluminium sheet without any welded
seams. Structural integrity and rigidity is
provided by the use of U-shaped support
braces under the mounting surface.
Our QUAD 4.1 model (£121) supplied by
Warwick for the review has one central
brace from front to back, while the larger
ones have two or three.
The sloped top-mounting surface is
covered with slots for running cables
through to underneath, keeping things neat
and tidy, but still has plenty of solid surface
available for mounting pedals. With our
QUAD 4.1, this translates as six 30mm-wide
strips across the ’board with narrower
(15mm) ones at top and bottom, the
suggested mounting method being to attach
the provided 25mm Velcro strip to the six.
Any power distributor that you want to
use can be mounted under the surface as
there is a universal power supply mounting
solution called The Tray (£10) that fixes
into slots below the ’board. There are also
specific mounting kits available for Voodoo
Lab’s power supplies. Warwick has several
of its own power supply solutions, including
the RockBoard Power LT XL (£55), a
rechargeable power supply to keep your
’board independent of mains power.
On the front face of each pedalboard
(except the smallest DUO 2.1) is a slot for
inserting a patchbay module to provide
connectivity – simply run a through
connection from the sockets on its front
surface to those on its rear sitting under the
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2
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ContaCt High Tech Distribution Phone [phone] Web www.rockboard.de
1. While there’s plenty of
solid surface available to
fix a multitude of pedals,
the slots allow options
for running audio and
power cables tidily below
the surface
2. The Power LT XL power
supply recharges via
USB and offers two
independent nine-volt
power outputs to your
pedals with single or
daisy-chain cables
2
The RockBoard
range is a one-stop
shop that easily
facilitates putting a
pedalboard together
GIT442.rev_warwick.indd 107 12/17/18 3:53 PM