3D-Printed Pedalboard - GP-5 Edition

About two years ago, I built myself a 3D-printed guitar pedalboard. It’s been my trusty sidekick ever since—living in my home studio, joining me at band practice, and rocking out with me on stage. For a while, I was over the moon with it… until I wasn’t.

https://blog.rossbrigoli.com/2023/07/3d-printed-custom-guitar-pedal-board.html

The problem? The very thing that made it great—its super clean, easy-to-use interface—came at the cost of versatility. I could only get so many sounds out of it.

Now, I’ve never been a fan of those tiny LCD screens you see on most guitar pedals. They’re fine if you’re sitting down and squinting, but useless when you’re standing up in the middle of a gig trying to see which patch you’re on. So I based my pedalboard’s interface on the Mooer Preamp Live, where a quick glance at the halo-colored LED rings around the buttons tells me exactly which patch is active. No squinting, no guessing—just pure, stress-free rock and roll.

Enter the $80 Game-Changer

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a YouTube review from Andertons about the Valeton GP-5—a cheap multi-effect guitar pedal that supposedly sounds way better than its $80 price tag suggests. Naturally, I had to try it.

Spoiler alert: it sounds great.

And once I got my hands on it, I discovered a few nifty technical features I didn’t even know it had:

1. A rock-solid tuner – surprisingly accurate and reliable.

2. Smart Bluetooth setup – the app connects via Bluetooth radio, but not over standard Bluetooth protocol, which means the Bluetooth audio channel stays free for other devices.

3. Bluetooth audio playback – you can use one device to edit patches and another to stream audio at the same time. A perfect setup for playing backing tracks over bluetooth.

4. Direct Injection – the output supports both mic and line level, so you can plug into an amp, headphones, or even straight into a mixer without a DI box.

5. Stereo output – I only discovered this when I plugged in headphones, slapped on a ping-pong delay, and had the echoes bouncing between my ears. Total surprise, totally awesome.

In short, it’s almost a complete standalone multi-effect pedal. The only real downsides? You can’t control the virtual Wah with an expression pedal (I hope a future firmware update will allow this), it has only one button and a very tiny LCD screen. But for the price of a decent tuner? Absolutely mind-blowing for the price.

Design Considerations – Why I Didn’t Just Buy a GP-200

After learning all those neat facts about the GP-5, I couldn’t help myself—I had to build a new 3D-printed pedalboard with the GP-5 as the brains.

At first, I thought I’d just slap an old Android phone I had lying around on there as the main interface for editing patches. But the phone’s screen wasn’t big enough, and a full tablet was too big. That’s when the idea hit me: I’ll build my own custom Android “tablet” specifically for this pedalboard.

When I posted about this in a GP-5 Facebook group, people immediately asked, “Why not just buy a GP-200?”
Fair question. I asked myself the same thing for a week before committing to the build. Here’s why I went the DIY route:

• No multi-effect pedal under $200 has a “big enough” screen for my liking. If I’m going to have an LCD display on my pedalboard, I want it big.

• Phone and tablet screen's aspect ratios (dimensions) look weird on a pedalboard. They’re designed to be held by hands, not for something that lays flat on the floor.

• Off-the-shelf devices are full of stuff I don’t need—cameras, GPS, batteries, and a ton of bloatware. Plus, let’s be honest, they’re probably spying on you.

• Phones limit customization. You can’t turn off security prompts, you can’t keep the screen on forever, and you’re stuck with whatever restrictions the OS imposes.

• Modularity matters. With a single integrated multi-effect pedal, you can’t upgrade individual components. With a “hackable” pedalboard, I can swap parts just like I would on a traditional analog pedal board—new GP-5 (or GP-6 someday), bigger screen, upgraded wah, extra buttons… no problem.

So that’s the plan: a custom-built, modular, 3D-printed pedalboard where every component can be swapped or upgraded without breaking the bank. The GP-5 just happens to be the heart of this version.

If you want to build this yourself or if you are interested to know how it's built, continue reading.

Bill of Materials

I sourced the following materials mostly from AliExpress except for the Odroid which you can only buy through their own online store.

1. Valeton GP-5 --> https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009224823196.html
2. LCD Touch Screen --> https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008000569770.html
3. M-VAVE Chocolate Plus foot MIDI controller --> https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007816469866.html
4. Odroid M1S Android Single-board Computer --> https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-m1s-with-8gbyte-ram/
5. Odroid Wifi+Bluetooth Dongle --> https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/wifi-module-5bk/
6. Sonicake Volume + Wah pedal --> https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007218303276.html
7. PedalPower USB-to-9V pedal power supply --> https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005055355118.html
8. USB Power Supply --> https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007603875028.html
9. USB Cables --> https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07G8ZTMYB
10. HDMI Cable --> https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0B6RDSQGS

You can also use a power bank instead of USB Power Supply.

Building the Android Single-board Computer

The Odroid M1S android device is not physically connected to the GP-5. It connect over bluetooth radio just like how your phone connects. This device has a built-in EMMC storage, therefore you do not need a microSD card.

Here's what I followed:

1. I learned more about the Odroid M1S in the following video.

2. I plugged in the Wifi dongle to one of the USB ports. The board does not have a built-in wifi and bluetooth.

3. I connected the device to a monitor via HDMI and plugged it to the included power supply and to the mains.

4. To install Android, I just followed the instructions on first boot. When prompted for OS selection, choose Android. This should install Android OS to the device and will reboot automatically when it;s done.

Installing the Valeton Suite App

The OS on Odroid is a minimal version of Android. It is rooted and it does not have an App Store. To install the Valeton Suite app from a downloaded zip file, you're gonna need an app that can extract zip files.

F-Droid is an open-source appstore for Android. I use F-Droid app store to find and install an app that can extract zip files by following these steps.

1. Using the Lightning browser, navigate to https://f-droid.org/en/
2. Download the APK file and install it
3. Start the F-Droid app
4. Search for an app called "ZipExtract FD"
5. Install It!

Now that you have an app the can extract zip files, you can then install the Valeton Suite app.

1. Using the Lightning browser, navigate to https://www.valeton.net/software/#138-170-wpfd-android
2. Download the Valeton Suite app
3. Extract the downloaded zip file
4. Install the APK file

Setting the orientation of the screen to Landscape.

Now that you have the OS installed and the Valeton Suite installed, you can unplug your monitor and plug the LCD touch screen instead.

The LCD display defaults to a Portrait orientation, so you need to configure the OS to display in Landscape mode.

To do this,

1. Launch the "Odroid Settings" app
2. Navigate to Device Preferences > Display > HDMI > Advance Settings
3. Set the rotation to 90
4. Enable the Fixed rotation, this will set the default orientation to Landscape.

The next step is to make the Valeton Suite app automatically start on boot.

To do this,

1. Launch the "Odroid Settings" app
2. Navigate to Kiosk
3. Set the KiosK mode to ON
4. In the Start Application field, point it to the Valeton Suite app
5. Reboot Odroid

Valeton Suite app will now automatically launch every time Odroid starts.

There are several customizations you can do to make the screen look better. You can adjust the brightness, you can change the font size and the screen size to make it fit better to the screen.

Configuring Chocolate Plus

To control the GP-5 from the Chocolate foot switches, I followed the instructions in this video. 

Once you are happy with the chocolate plus configuration, you can then wire them up together to test all connectivities.

The Pedal Board

After testing all functionalities, I then went ahead and started designing the Pedal board in Adobe Fusion. I first created a model of all the components that will go into the pedal board. Then arranged it in a desired orientation, then design the pedal board around it.

Because of the size of the whole pedal board design, it will not fit in most 3D-printers, so I split them in two 2 parts. The two parts are held together by the screen and the Chocolate plus, with velcro.

One thing to note, the Pedal Power power supply, is attached to the bottom of the Chocolate plus using mounting tape/Gorilla tape.

Finally, here's the final result.

If you wish to 3D print the same design, feel free to download the STL file from https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7112821

Enjoy!