A major part of my sound is a pedalboard. The key parts are:

• Four drum pedals, so I can play drums with my feet.

• A few guitar pedals, to play with the sound of my electric mandolin.

• A raspberry pi, which lets me combine aspects of my various electronic instruments to make new sounds.

I've been using some collection of equipment for years, and then about a year ago I made it into a more robust and permanent setup by attaching everything to a board. This was a big improvement, but did have downsides:

• I used adhesive velcro to attach things to the board, but over time it started to fall off.

• A piece of the board is hinged, and I'd used 1/4" MDF (hardboard) for the extra section. This was nowhere near sturdy enough, and had almost completely fallen off.

• The board is a bit hard to pick up, because you can't easily get fingers under it. Angling/rounding the underside would help.

• I fly to many of my gigs, but my full collection of equipment is 41.3lb, which combines with my suitcase to be over 50lb (so some things go in my backpack, and I've been thinking about lighter suitcases).

• Relatedly, it would be great if I could use some of my 50lb limit for clothes, toothpaste, etc. Or just carry a lighter bag.

Here's the current setup:

I took the whole thing apart, weighed everything, and identified a few options for saving weight:

• My four Yamaha KU100 drum pedals are 2.7lb each, of which 1lb is a big metal plate. This adds strength and stability, but since I'm already attaching to a wooden base that's not needed here. So I can save 3.8lb by removing these.

  

• I include DI boxes in my setup, so I'm not asking each dance to provide me with five DI channels. I use Radial PRO D2 DIs: solidly built, but overkill here. The pair is 3.3lb (755g each); switching to four Whirlwind IMP2s (1.8lb; 208g each) saves 1.5lb.

• One of my pedals is a BOSS OC-5, which lets me drop the mandolin down an octave, but I really don't use this enough to justify bringing it with me. Losing this saves 0.9lb.

• Part of the padding I use in my suitcase is an old yoga mat, which turns out to be quite heavy for how much padding it provides. Switching to foam sheets saves 1.5lb.

• The base can be cut a bit smaller around the pedals. I'm guessing this saves about 1lb.

• The power setup is overbuilt, especially a heavy duty 0.8lb 4-way octopus splitter. Reworking this should save another pound or so.

I used four strategies for attaching things to the board:

• In cases where something used a removable bottom plate with standard screws, I removed the bottom plate and used longer screws to attach through the wooden base. I used the bottom plate as a template, and started holes using a nail set as a punch:

  

  I drilled holes through from the front, and then countersunk from the back.

  

• In cases where screws weren't obvious sizes, keeping me from finding longer ones, I drilled new holes through the bottom plates to attach them to the wooden base.

  

  To support inserting the screws I drilled holes through from the other side, large enough to fit the heads.

• For three things I wanted to stack on top of other things (two pedals and a DI) I used higher-quality adhesive velcro (3M Dual Lock). I think there's a good chance this will fail and I'll need to sort out something else.

• For small things I drilled holes through the base and used zip ties.

I also (as with last time) used a zillion zip ties to keep the cables from being a mess. Possibly I should have used cable sleeves for some of this.

It's also hard to see, but I used a router (thanks Rick!) to round the bottom corners. It's much easier to pick up now.

Here's what it looks like:

And attached to the keyboard:

It now weighs 32.0lb, and 44.2lb in the case (9.3lb in weight savings). While I haven't used this at a gig yet, I think this fixes all my issues!