God I suck at DIY.

I have three pedals, a multi-fx (about a foot long), a distortion and a wah.

Since my bookshelf collapsed recently and the shelves are the perfect size for these pedals I thought I'd try to make a board.

My first concern is how to keep the pedals still. Pad it out with foam? Use those plastic things that lock together (like the police use when they run out of handcuffs)? Superglue and happy thoughts?

How would you attach the sides? Glue? Nails? Glue and nails? Screws?

Any old hinges or the ones that come apart?

Any help will be gleefully accepted, attempted, ballsed up, cursed, and the pedals will be dumped into an old bag as usual.

buy some velcro. use velcro strips, attach 'em to the pedals and the boards, that way you can always put yr pedals in the same place, you'll have a template, so to speak.get yr velcro stripping from machine mart or something? a hardware store? maplin?

Maplin sells the velcro strips.

I made one like that. be sure to staple the velcro bottoms to the board or the adhesive will give and they'll come off with the pedal. The velcro tops should stick to the pedals just fine.

Here's something i did. get an old briefcase or suitcase from a thrift store. rip out its guts. make the inside as pretty as you want it to be, use the lid as the bottom, attach your pedals to the bottom line the rest with foam or whatever you want and blammo you have a suitcase pedal board. bonus is, when its open on stage the remainder acts as a shield for prying "indie" eyes.

I built two pedals boards. It's really easy. I used 3/4" plywood (I like things to be built to last). I used a simple butt-joint construction method. Go to your local DIY superstore (Homebase etc) and they will cut your wood to the size you want. I'm pretty sure mine are 70cm x 40cm x 12cm high. The board/case is in 2 parts. The base is just one piece of ply, with the outline of where the top would sit if it were attached glued and screwed onto it. This was done by measuring out 4 lengths of square "rod", and gluing/screwing them down so that their outer sides were at the same point as the inside of the lid. The lid is just a box without a bottom. It's easiest to make this in the same way you make the base, and then just glue and screw the sides on and put butresses in the corners, which again you glue and screw.

You can get all the necessary other bits like catches, handles and paint (I used blackboard paint on mine) from Screwfix. I love Screwfix.

Also, just for an extra bit of snazzyness and durability, I put aluminium edging round all the outside edges of my board. This was the most time consuming part of all. Had to use a mitre saw and be totally precise in my measurements. I stuck this down with contact adhesive, and got high off the fumes in the process.

I used velcro to fix my pedals down. This can be a bit of a hassle for pedals like Rats which have rubber feet, but it's not insurmountable. I put a layer of foam on the underside of the lid. I'm happy to answer any more questions you have.

Hope this helps.

ps, Measure twice, cut once.

i second the velcro method, whether affixed to plywood or otherwise (the suitcase method seems cool, i might look into that). Nico Adie is correct in stating the rubber feet of various pedals present a problem, but it's not really much of a problem, as they are easily removable about 95% of the time. just keep them in a baggie somewhere in case you need them for later use (resell, et al.).

When I build pedal boards I always include a door pull handle, one on each end to wrap my cables through. rubber feet are a big help too.

Tape your pedals to the inside of your legs. Activate them by squeezing your thighs. This is not only practical, but cool too.

Ladies will love you.

Anyone got recommendations for power supplies? There must be a cheap-ish why of powering them all from a single transformer.