VELCRO is the curse of pedalboarding.

Your shiny new pedal gets permanently disfigured and degraded with

industrial-strength adhesive. Maybe there was a signature there,

or an important label, or you just don't like the stuff!

At a recent NAMM show, I saw little dogbone shaped steel clips that

attached to a pedal, using its own screws, and provided a means to

screw the pedal down onto the pedalboard, assuming it's a wood-based

or molded plastic pedalboard.

I couldn't find them for sale anywhere. No music store had even heard of them.

None of the online music sellers knew what I was talking about.

Then I came across a forum where they were all agreeing that the

"bicycle chain trick" worked well. That's what it was!

Here's how you do it...

Get a short length of bicycle chain, and using a "chain cracker",

disassemble the chain into its component parts. You might beg,

borrow or steal a chain cracker from a well-equipped biking friend.

There are also repair links you can buy individually that are already taken apart,

but this is the cheaper, bulk way, so long as you own or can borrow a chain cracker.

Bike shops will probably have a spare fragment of chain they will sell, or even give you...

On the bottom of most standard pedals, there are screws holding the bottom plate on.

Some aren't built this way but have rubber feet that are secured with similar screws.

You remove one screw at a time, put on a clip -like a washer- then tighten the screw

back down. Angle the remaining hole however you like; I prefer it close to the pedal body.

Then small sheetmetal screws are used to fasten the clips to the pedalboard.

The pedal will definitely stay put and the impact on the pedal is almost zero.

Now that's more like it.

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