YES. The struggle is real. We have all had those late nights wiring up the pedalboard and swapping out pedals. There are a bunch of different ways that guitarists use to mount their pedals to their pedalboards. With a wide variety of pedalboard manufacturers and styles out there it is impossible to say that there is one right way to mount pedals on a pedalboard so here are the different ways we have used and really liked.
Velcro
It is the old standby but perhaps our least favorite. This is a durable easy way to mount your pedals and it makes for very easy modification and moving of pedals on your board. We hate the glue residue and damage to pedals though. For those using pedaltrain pedalboards this is likely one of only two options you have and is likely the best (second covered later in the article).
Velcro over Painters Tape
Hate the adhesive residue left by velcro and the headache and a half that is caused by removing it? Simply use blue painters tape on the back of your pedal then velcro over top of that. It is simple, durable and saves the back of your pedal. Make sure your pedal is clean and dry otherwise the painters tape will not stick. We also recommend avoiding standard masking tape and frog tape because the adhesive is not strong enough to stick to the pedal.
Zip Ties
If you are like many worship guitarists and use a pedaltrain board you will likely need to use either velcro or zip ties. Zip ties while not leaving adhesive residue will likely scuff and wear away the paint on the edges of your pedals. If you do not care about that this is a good option that allows you to quickly swap/move pedals.
Bike Chain Links
We discovered this method on Instagram a while back. A company called JRig pedalboards were using links from a bike chain to mount pedals on their boards. This is the most durable method we have ever tried and it also is the best pedal mounting method for avoiding damage to the finish of your pedals. Basically in a nutshell here are the steps to install them on your pedals.
- Remove the screws from the back-plate of your pedal.
- Put one end of the bike chain link over the hole.
- Re-insert the screw and tighten down.
- Then use a screw to screw it into the wood top of your pedalboard.
This method works great on carpeted top pedalboards but is not a good option for hardwood tops as the leave holes in your pedalboard. The other downfall to this method is that it takes time to swap out pedals and if you pack your pedals on your board and one goes down you will be out of commission for a good amount of time while you are tracking down the issue. The other downfall is that some pedals do not have long enough back plate screws and some pedals have too much distance from the edge of the pedal to the screw hole.
We hope that this article gave you some good ideas about how to mount your pedals and let us know in the comments if you have discovered any other methods.