Holeyboard History of Innovation in 1 minute, VERSA Sale, and a bouncing Module 3!

Closeout Sale on the VERSA

Greetings, I missed posting last week as I am working on something new and I think cool, so I was consumed. On that note to make way for new things The Holeyboard Versa  is stepping down from the lineup. I have a nice sale on The Versa on Reverb, Amazon, and scroll down below to get one right here. Note the two pack and the single Versa’s are on sale 🙂 So get them while they last. Also last time I mentioned a discount code forthcoming for readers of this pedalboard blog…well, I actually do most of the work myself on my website and my current store is not setup to do this…so, if you read this shoot me an email at chris@holeyboardpedalboards.com with your Holeyboard pedalboard of choice and I’ll send you an invoice through PayPal with a 15% discount and free shipping. This will last until the end of September, so fire away and thank you for reading.

The Module 3 does what?

I got a nice email from guitarist Glenn the other day :

Hey Chris,

Did you know that if you drop a module 3 onto the ground and it lands just right, it bounces?

Ha! Thank you Glenn, I’d like to say it was design to do that but it wasn’t. It does however, like all of my Holeyboars have a Lifetime Warranty on breakage, because I make them right here in Minnesota and I believe in them and you can to. Thank you for the note Glenn 🙂

A brief history of the Holeyboard Evolution for your enjoyment:

This is my first ad, January of 2012, back when people read magazines, and this is the original Holeyboard WIDE. Made out of whopping 3/4″ Baltic Birch Plywood with a beautiful maple veneer. It was a bit of a beast, but will last forever.

To innovate as soon as I could I came out with a Triple Level Holeyboard! I actually forgot that I made this. Cool in theory, hmmm, might think on it for the present, the issue was it was very deep to accommodate the shelves and quite heavy. Cool to see though.

Ok, on to 2015, I started using a high-gloss high pressure laminate on top of the baltic birch, it was really durable and beautiful, as you can see 🙂 This was The Standard, with room for one-ish foot pedal, as you can see, the basics of the two levels, damage-free cable-tie, mounting and ergonomic focus has been really at the heart of the Holeyboards since they started.

In 2016 I took a huge leap and introduced Dragonfly to the world. It was the first expandable pedalboard and honestly it was beautiful. There were a lot of hardware parts to assemble though and the top shelf didn’t expand with the bottom. Still, super cool and I have mounted to my wall by my desk to remind me to not accept the status quo and, as Apple used to do, think different. Also I had switched to Aluminum at this point, better consistency in manufacturing (ie. no splinters from musicians emailing me..) and it was crazy light.

Here is Dragonfly 2.0 from the following year in 2017

Around the same time in 2016 I was experimenting with different materials, this thing was amazing, I called it the NEXT Series because it is/was/could be? the future. The material is made in Wisconsin and it is 400 layers of paper compressed under high pressure and impregnated with a polymer resin. I also have one of these on my wall :), crazy cool…crazy expensive to make, just didn’t make sense but for those that are still out there, enjoy it! Very light, very strong.

Then in an effort to be more compact on stage, to fit cases that were easier to carry etc, I took a turn and moved my curvilinear design language to a rectilinear form factor. So, I get requests a lot for the curved Holeyboards today, “please bring them back”, it is not impossible. The reality is that they took up a lot of space and I didn’t think in the end it justified being easier to use. So, meet Zig and Zag:

This was a leap, and is in many ways very close to the Holeyboard 123 I’m making today, the hole pattern was patented and changed, some dimensions adjusted, but the spirit is right there. Modular vs. Expandable, this is an internal debate I think about a lot. I have both and they meet different needs. At the end of the day Modular is more elegant, sooo, that might be a hint for something that is coming soon 🙂 Thank you for reading and have a great day! -Chris