It all began for me way back when I purchased my first two effects pedals, a big muff and a fuzz face. I suddenly realized that my lifelong obsession had begun, but in this realization I also stumbled upon my first problem - I didn’t know how to make a pedal board. So, my friend and I immediately made our trip to the local hardware store to buy a piece of plywood and Velcro. Even back then this method felt very crude and undignified to me. Through the years I have done numbers of rigs for myself and others, ranging from small to large pedal boards and even large rack systems, and every single time I ran into the same problem - I always had to use the sticky mess of Velcro or in later years, dual loc.

As a professional guitarist, I would show up to gigs and have most of my pedals dangling from their patch cables due to riding in either tour buses or trailers in the sweltering heat for hundreds of miles at a time. I eventually came up with my first idea sitting in a hotel on the road, a “universal tool-less locking pedal system”. I now had a great goal to reach, but no product. It wasn’t until I met my business partner and started throwing around ideas and scenarios that we came up with the first prototype Leprechaun pedal board and pedal locks!

 I immediately took it all home and ripped off all traces of Velcro and dual loc (which takes forever as we all know). I began testing all of my rigs in the working musician environment to see just how well this product actually performed. The board and pedal locks have far out performed my original goals and I have put pedal locks on all of my pedals, downsized my pedal boards, and successfully changed the schematic of my pedal boards on a week to week, gig to gig basis. I am constantly amazed at the flexibility of this product and am truly glad for those early days where I was forced to use Velcro, as it has allowed us to create what will hopefully become the new standard in pedal boards for players all over the world!

Ryan Ridgeway
Leprechaun Pedal Boards