How to plan a pedalboard, with sizes and power draw for 162 pedals

Your new pedal showed up, it doesn’t fit on the board and you’re not sure the power supply can run it anyway. Most pedalboard headaches come down to how big each pedal is, how much current it draws and what order the signal runs through it all.

This guide covers each one in order, then points you to the free planner tools that let you try a layout to scale. At the bottom is a table of maker-published dimensions and current draw for 162 pedals in our directory, because the small makers are exactly the pedals most planners don’t have in their libraries yet.

Step 1: Measure what you have

Start with a list of every pedal you want on the board, including the tuner. For each one you need its footprint (width and depth), its height and where its jacks are.

• Footprint decides how many fit in a row. Makers list it in inches or millimeters, and they don’t agree on which number comes first.
• Height matters if your board has a raised back row, or if a tall pedal sits right behind one you stomp on.
• Jack position is the one people forget. Top-mounted jacks let pedals sit almost side by side. Side jacks need room for the plugs, and right-angle plugs still stick out past the enclosure.

If a pedal isn’t in the table below, the maker’s product page or manual usually lists its size. A ruler works too.

Step 2: Size the board

Add up the widths of the pedals you want in each row, then add a gap between each pair for plugs and so your foot doesn’t hit two switches at once. Do the same with depth if you plan two rows.

A typical 125B-size pedal (the common Hammond enclosure size, used by Hoof, Sea Machine and many others) measures about 2.5” x 4.75”. Big multi-switch pedals change the math fast: a Strymon TimeLine or BigSky is 6.75” wide on its own, and a Chase Bliss Big Time is listed at 5.75” x 6.5”.

Leave space for the power supply too. Many boards mount it underneath, but check the clearance under the board against the supply’s height before you count on that.

Step 3: Set the signal order

The usual starting order, from the guitar to the amp, is:

1. Tuner
2. Wah or envelope filter
3. Compressor
4. Fuzz
5. Overdrive and distortion
6. Modulation (chorus, phaser, flanger, tremolo)
7. Delay
8. Reverb

Treat that as a starting point. Plenty of good sounds come from moving things around, and a few reasons sit behind the usual order:

• Fuzz first: older-style fuzz circuits, especially germanium ones, react to the guitar’s volume knob and pickups. Put a buffer in front of them and many lose that cleanup, so they usually go near the start.
• Drive before time effects: a delay or reverb in front of distortion means the repeats and tails get distorted too. Some players want that. Most start the other way.
• Effects loop: if your amp has a loop and you get your gain from the amp’s preamp, modulation, delay and reverb often sound clearer in the loop than in front of the amp.

Most physical boards run right to left: the guitar plugs into the pedal on the far right, and the signal moves left toward the amp. Lay the board out in that order before you worry about making it look tidy.

Step 4: Plan the power

Every pedal lists three things you need to match: voltage, polarity and current draw.

• Voltage: most pedals in our table run on 9V. Some accept 9V to 18V, and many drives get more headroom at 18V. The Xotic RC Booster V2, Catalinbread drives and Spaceman Explorer Cadet are examples in the table that list a range.
• Polarity: the standard is a 2.1mm barrel with the center pin negative. Nearly every pedal in our table that lists its jack uses that standard. Check anything older or odd before you plug it in.
• Current draw (mA): add up the numbers for every pedal and compare that to the supply’s outputs. A supply output rated at 100mA won’t run a pedal that needs 250mA.

The spread is wide. In our table, most analog boosts and drives list under 70mA, and the Xotic and Catalinbread drives list 2mA to 10mA. Digital pedals vary more. EarthQuaker’s digital delays and reverbs mostly list 70mA to 100mA, while digital pedals from Source Audio, Red Panda and Strymon list 125mA to 500mA, and Chase Bliss lists about 1A for the Big Time. A board with two or three digital pedals on it needs a supply built for that.

Isolated outputs (each output separate from the others) are the safe default, especially when you mix digital pedals with fuzz. A daisy chain off one adapter can work for a few low-draw analog pedals. Noise and hum are the usual price of mixing high-draw digital pedals on one shared output.

Free pedalboard planner tools

A planner lets you drag pedals onto a board to scale before you buy anything. These are the ones that come up most:

• Pedal Playground: free, no account. You can add any pedal or board as a custom item by entering its width and height, which is the fix when a small maker’s pedal isn’t in the library. Layouts save to a file.
• Pedalboard.App: a builder with layers for raised tiers and a public gallery of boards. Its own comparison says it includes power planning and cable space checks.
• BoardPlannerHub: says it has 11,900+ pedals, a mA calculator, patch cable clearance checks and auto-wired signal chains.
• MakeYourBoard: a planner with tabs for pedals, cables, power and export, plus custom pedals.
• Pedaltrain’s planner: web plus iOS and Android apps, built around Pedaltrain boards. Pedaltrain says the library covers over 6,800 devices from 472 brands.
• RockBoard’s configurator: built for RockBoard boards. RockBoard says it accounts for connector types and cable lengths and can simulate signal flow. Saving and sharing need an account.
• Temple Audio’s Temple Planner: for laying out its SOLO, DUO and TRIO boards.

The brand planners are the quickest way to see whether that company’s boards fit your pedals. For a mixed board, start with one of the first four. When a pedal from the table below is missing from a planner’s library, add it as a custom item using the size we list.

Pedal sizes and power draw

Every number below comes from the maker’s own product page or spec sheet, as stored in our directory in Oct 2026. Footprint is listed short side first, so you can see at a glance which pedals are standard 125B size. Height is the tallest figure the maker lists. EarthQuaker includes knobs in its heights, and Analog Man leaves out jacks and the footswitch.

A † after the current means the maker lists a minimum supply rating rather than a measured draw. A ~ means the maker gives an approximate figure. A blank means the maker doesn’t publish that number on the page we pulled from, so check the manual. Click any pedal for its full listing.

Putting the numbers together

Here’s how the math works on a small six-pedal board using numbers from the table:

In one row, the pedals alone take up about 15.6” of width before you add a tuner or any gaps, so we’d plan on a board at least 20” wide or split them into two rows. The four analog pedals together list 65mA, and the two Strymons need 550mA between them. A supply with two outputs rated for at least 300mA and four more rated for at least 100mA covers it, with room to add a pedal later.

The short version

Start with a list of your pedals and their numbers from the table, then size the board and pick the supply before you buy either one. When a small-maker pedal is missing from your planner’s library, add it as a custom item using the size we list. Leave one spare isolated output and a couple of inches of board space, so the next pedal doesn’t mean a new board.

Need a pedal fixed or a board wired up? Find a pedal repair shop near you, or browse more pedals and makers. For specific picks, see the best Klon clones.