SKB VS-1

SKB finally did something that very few people in the music industry do; they thought ahead. It's common practice among gigging guitar players with medium-to-complex rigs to not only have rack effects but to also use pedals, shelves, drawers, and switching units to allow them to perform much in the way rack effects and rack gear work.

Thus, most players, either doing it themselves or having a professional do it for them, put together a rack shelf or rack drawer to which they affix and wire up different pedals to integrate into their live sound setup. Many times, this involves putting one side of some industrial velcro on a stationary or sliding rack drawer on one side and putting the other side of the velcro on the pedal(s).

SKB has taken the guesswork out of the task by creating a rack shelf that has one side of the velcro already covering the bottom of the shelf. This leaves only half of the work to be done (adding the velcro to the bottom of the pedal(s) and positioning them on the shelf. This is a brilliant time-saving idea and also allows you to re-position pedals at will without having remains of old adhesive "gunking up" the surface of your rack shelf. Better still, with strategic placement of velcro-backed zip-tie retainers, you can route and re-route cables your cables over and over making the shelf outstanding for anyone with a dynamic environment.

The shelf latches into the rack and does not come out the front without the flipping of a releasing latch, so your pedals are secured into the rack by the shelf latch and onto the shelf by the high-quality velcro. For the price paid, the velcro covering on the shelf alone saves sufficient time and effort to justify the cost of the shelf. It comes with all of the mounting hardware needed to fit it snugly into 2U of any standard 19" rack. If you're sick of sticky tape and messy pedal boards, the SKB VS1 is the prescription for what ails you. This product could have been a ten, however the shelf is mid-grade plastic and could be more solidly-built.

I have a competitive sliding rack shelf that neither locks nor is velcro-coated. This is a much better option in my opinion. Try it for yourself.