Build a Durable, ‘El Cheapo’ Pedal board with Bike Chains and Scrap Wood

Photos and words by Arthur Francis Diaz Piccio



We all love pedals. But for the ‘gigging’ musician, setting them up can be a huge pain in the neck without some sort of board to keep them organized. There are plenty of options off-the-shelf, but most of them are either overpriced or overkill. Probably even worse, many of them require you to remove the rubber pads under your pedals in order to attach an often unreliable piece of Velcro. This devalues your pedals for resale and could likely fall apart during transport.

The pedal hack we’re laying out here could help prevent those issues from happening, helping you keep your pedals securely on your board while preserving their value on the secondhand market. This hack is suited for musicians who’ve already decided on their optimal signal chain layout based on both tone and convenience. But if you’re still constantly switching pedals around, this could be more inconvenient compared to the more popular velcro method.

Advantages:

Preserves the resale value of your pedals.

Rock solid compared to velcro. You can even flip the board upside-down if you want.

Much cheaper than any store-bought pedal board.

Much more customizable.

Disadvantages:

Not for the brand-conscious.

Not recommended for pedal newbies, who are still finding their ideal signal chain.

Things you will need:

Pedals

Any available pedal power system and cables

Bike chains (recommended) or shampoo bottles/reusable plastic food containers

Bike chain de-linker

Small wood screws

Screwdrivers

Scrap wood or any suitable board material.

Secondhand briefcase or messenger bag

Cleaning cloth (optional)

Step 1. Lay out your gear and your tools on a soft cloth.

You don’t really have to do this, but doing so will prevent screws from rolling around and falling to the floor, only to be rediscovered by your bare feet when you get up in the middle of the night to pee. A soft cloth will also prevent the scuffs you’re trying to minimize on your pedal.



This is the rubber pad we’re trying to preserve. You could remove it and store it somewhere. But chances are you will lose it because that’s just the kind of person you are.

Here’s a short length of bike chain and a de-linking tool. Together they cost less than P250 (approx. $5) and will provide you with several pedal boards worth of bike links. Many of us already have broken bike chains and de-linking tools, but the lowest of losers have someone they can borrow or beg these from.

Notice there are 5 different parts in a typical bike chain. More on that later.

This de linker is a lifetime investment. This is for P150 (approx. $3)

The de-linker has a puncher and place to set your bike chain in.

Step 2: Set your chain in the de-linking tool

Place the bike chain into your de-linker like so. The pin (also called a rivet) has to be in the center.

Step 3: Remove the pins.

Align the chain pin with the puncher and twist the lever until the tool holds the chain securely.

Position the entire thing over the cloth (more on that later). As you twist the lever, the puncher moves forward, loosening the chain’s pin in the center. Punching the pin out requires a significant amount of force, but thanks to the leverage the tool provides, even a child can do it.

The pin will pop out of the hole at the end of your tool. Having the cloth underneath will catch the pin, so you’ll have less of a headache cleaning up later.

Here’s the extracted pin. Spin the tool lever in the opposite direction to release the chain links.

Step 4: Repeat above as needed

Repeat the above process another time with the inner part of the chain and you should get these parts. Notice that one of the inner links has a raised lip. Depending on your pedal’s design you might want to use or avoid this one. You can discard the pin and the rollers/spacers but keep all the spaces just in case. You could also use them as a DIY spacer for a bass string tree, if you would prefer.

Step 5: Check the pedal screw design.

Unfortunately, this DIY method will not work out “of the box” for Digitech, Hardwire, and TC Electronic pedals that use T5 or similar screws, unless you buy extra-long replacements with the proper heads and flanging. For 90% of other brands though, you should be in business. Take note that you can also do this process with pedal power supplies as well.

Step 6: Unscrew one corner on your pedal.

Use only the correct sized screwdrivers to prevent loose threads and keep screw heads from stripping out.

Step 7: Choose the right links!

Now, we have to select the appropriate links to attach to the board. Notice the screw is a bit shallow, so we need to choose the link that allows the maximum amount of screw thread to remain in the pedal. If the screw hole is slightly recessed like with MXR and Joyo pedals, the link with the lip may be the best choice. With most pedals, this is not a big deal. But with Digitech, Hardwire, and TC Electronic pedals, the issue with them is that their stock screw heads are extremely recessed and are not as flat as standard. You can always buy replacement screws with a longer shaft and a flatter head, but these can be a pain to track down.

A workaround that still preserves value is to use zip ties, but those are annoying – so whatever. You can also use plastic cut and shaped from shampoo bottles and similar containers – especially if your pedal or power brick screw holes are side-mounted rather than at the bottom. More on that later.

Step 8: Check thread depth.

Perfect! More than enough threads to work with. On the off chance that the screw shaft is not long enough to grip onto your pedal properly, you may have to take the screw to a hardware store to find a version with a longer shaft, but the same diameter.

Step 9: Test bike chain link security

Secure the bike link to your pedal like so, but don’t over-tighten. Otherwise, you might strip the threads. If it feels secure, you should be fine.

Step 10: Repeat as many times as needed

Most of the time, you only really need two chain links. We recommend putting more, but considering, this is a perfect fit on the Boss Bass Chorus, two shall be fine. With some Artec pedals, its recommended to add more as the threads didn’t seem to be quite deep enough, The screws were slightly flanged. In these cases, you can add plumber’s tape or a drop of nail polish to the screw threads to tighten them. For this example though, it’s not necessary.

Step 11: Pedal Tetris

Hopefully, you already know what order you want your pedals in. Otherwise, test different pedal and signal chain combinations before embarking on this project. This board is an P88 ($2) trivet for casseroles that we bought from a Saizen (a 100 yen store).

Pedals are more durable than most of us give them credit for. However, their power input pins and ¼” jacks can vulnerable to breakage if you apply leveraged force into them, which straight input plugs unfortunately provide loads off.

In the example board, we only have access to a daisy chain with straight plugs and a wall wart. Angled plugs will help keep the board compact, but in this case, we don’t have much of a choice. We have to work with what we’ve got. Notice in the example that the power plug juts out of the board area. We want to avoid this as much as possible to prevent straining the inputs.

It’s best to loosen all the pedals from your board, if you’re attaching a new pedal to an already existing board. This will allow you to maximize your options. This is also an opportunity to fix spacing issues with your old layout.

Notice on the other pedals, we used the plastic cut from cracker boxes and shampoo bottles instead of bike links. This is almost as good, but looks less neat, and you really do need at least 3-4 tabs for security. Plastic tabs are also a viable option if your pedal or power brick screw holes are side-mounted rather than at the bottom.

The conventional layout is unacceptable as the power input will still be hanging outside the board. We want them inside the board as much as possible to minimize damage. Note that we used a pancake plug on the MXR Bass OD audio cable to prevent snagging. But this will be moot, later.

In any case, this is the time to choose and build/buy the correct length power and audio cables you plan to use with your board.

Here we decided that the Boss Bass Chorus’s signal outputs should facing “up”, relative to the board, rather than to the left as is conventional. This will prevent the power plugs from snagging in our pedal case and damaging the fragile power inputs.

If you have pedals with multiple inputs and outputs, be sure to position them so you have clearance to still use them with an angled plug. Here we are testing the clearance for auxiliary output on the tuner, which can be useful for bi-amping.

We also moved the tuner towards the center of the board as the power input used to snag a lot with the old set up, and necessitated removing after every use, which is kind of a pain.

Step 12. Time to screw!

When all your pedals (and pedal power supplies, if available) are aligned as needed and when all your cables have an acceptable amount of slack (so you can do basic maintenance easily), screw the bike links to the wood with a screwdriver you don’t mind getting abused.

Using screwdrivers this way can be harsh on the point bits, especially if they’re used to screw into harder types of wood. The board we’re using is made from pine, so it’s soft enough that our screwdriver won’t encounter much resistance. If your pedal board is made from harder woods, consider drilling first before attaching your screws.

Not pretty, but it works. This same pine board has been though hundreds of practice sessions and gigs in the past three years.

Step 13: Check your handiwork.

Plug in your power supply and test everything to make sure everything works properly. Be sure you are able to easily remove cables without needing to detach your pedals from the board.

We found this bag in a secondhand shop (known locally as ukay-ukays or rilip). It’s a perfect fit for our pedal board. Cheap used laptop bags and briefcases abound, for around P200-P600 ($4-$12). Bring a measuring tape and be sure to account for total depth of the board with the pedals. It’s a bonus if the bag has a space for your cables and other essentials. We got this one for P200($4).

The front of the pedals are pretty darn durable, so even without padding, your gear should be fine and scuff free. But if the setup bothers you, you can stuff a piece of foam in there. Check your power and audio cables aren’t snagging on the edges of your enclosure.

Step 14: Rock and/or Roll

Voila, your DIY pedal board is ready! With this setup, you aren’t restricted to a specific placement like with the popular Boss and Behringer pedal boards.

Other things you can do with this DIY step:

If you know how to build your own power and audio cables, you can give them enough length (at the cost of signal capacitance, aka “tone suck”) so you can thread them under the slats for a neater appearance. Personally, tone suck is less of an issue than convenience and ergonomics in 99% of live settings.





If you are a singer who also plays guitar, you can split your board so you can get closer to the microphone. This would be the case if the venue does not provide boom stands. This way you can keep your gigging layout more ergonomic, as more than two pedals deep on single large boards can result in a pedal-dance cha-cha nightmare.

You can build a separate board for your amp’s preamp and another one for the effects loop.





You can easily build an all-modulation board so you can easily use your favorite modulation effects with instruments other than guitar – even with keyboards and mic preamps – without too the pain of constantly disconnecting your specialized guitar-centric pedals.

( Advanced protip: Your modulation effects will take a line-level signal )





( ) Some may prefer an angled board. You may add a piece of scrap wood under the top part of your board to achieve this.

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