That Pedal Show is in my top 3 guitar tube channels. They have several videos specifically around building a board and what they have to have on a board.

Their Pedal shootouts are always fantastic.

The only drawback to their videos is they can be extremely long because they go deep.

What I've learned through watching them is to don't cheap out on power. Buy a nice Voodoo lab or other nice power supply to provide dedicated power to EACH pedal. Jumping from pedal to pedal on power can cause noise or power issues.

Make sure you go to one of their videos on signal chain. To have the optimum pedal board, you really need to consider signal chain and which pedals HAVE to be at the beginning and which ones HAVE to be at the end. Depending on the size of your board, it may be beneficial to get a signal chain selector switch so you can cut the signal path down but leave the pedals on. Remember, the longer your signal chain, the more of the signal you lose. Some channel selectors have built in buffers, but some pedals don't work well with buffers.

My personal setup is based on my Patch Kommander channel selector. I use the channels for:

Tuner: Dedicated tuner input that cuts the signal completely and only sends it through the tuner. Love this to just cut my signal completely and tune my guitar.

Channel 1: Treble Boosters. A treble boost should usually ALWAYS be your number 1 pedal in the signal chain. I could chain 1-3 on this channel and individually engage whichever one i'm going to use. To be honest, that's really too many, so I only ever have 1 Treble booster hooked up.

Channel 2: Colorful Overdrive Pedals. This is where I personally put my Klon clone, the Tumnus. I would also put any other overdrive pedal that is not very transparent, but adds a certain flavor or color to the tone.

Channel 3: Transparent Overdrives and boosts. I have my D&M Drive here and keep the OD and Boost sides pushing just a little bit. I use this to boost that last bit of signal to get the exact saturation I'm looking for.

Channel 4: Reverb/Modulation/EQ. Always put your Reverb and Modulation pedals at the end of your signal chain. If you have a dedicated effects loop in your amp, you can detach this signal chain from your amp's input signal and send it to the effects loop, which is usually in between your pre-amp and power amp circuits. Some people, even professionals, send those effects into the front of the amp and some send it through the effects loop. Both options definitely sound and feel completely different. Sending it through your effects loop would now require 3 cables running from your board to the amp.

The very last pedal on my board is my Ditto Looper. I always want my looper to pick up everything in my signal, so it exists outside the Patch Kommander network, and is the last thing my signal goes through before going to the amp. Ever since I first bought this looper about 9 years ago, I have never taken it out of my signal chain.

From there, it's just about what you need to do what you are wanting to do. I am generally a minimalist when it comes to guitar. I generally keep my amp on edge of breakup or at a good clear/articulate overdrive, then use my treble booster to push the pre-amp and get me those tones I'm looking for. The other OD pedals I use for particular guitars to get that additional saturation sound like what I hear in my head. I don't generally stack overdrives too much. If you are going to stack overdrives, make sure you aren't pushing each one too hard. Layering overdrives is a very solid tactic, but so many people jack them up too high and fart out their amp.

Great post with a lot of very, very helpful info. Thank you for taking the time to post that.

Thought I'd share my current board. I've swapped out a couple of pedals for others since the last time I shared.

I only have 1 pedal on each channel except for Channel 4, which has the Reverb and analog delay on the chain. I feed that directly into the front of the amp because I don't want to have to move them around between my two amps.

My number of pedals is really limited because of my power supply. I haven't felt like getting a bigger one and rewiring everything.

This green CE24 I sold last spring that almost immediately showed up at a different shop from where I sold it has now shown back up at Guitar Center in Clear Lake. They changed the pickups to something with gold covers, but I was able to see the serial numbers enough to know it's my old one. Told my wife it was trying to come home and she seemed unamused.