Patchbays!

[ncapeci]

Hey guys so I'm making a patchbay that I'm putting on the back of my rack. I have a bunch of 1/4" outputs, 1 midi output, and now I'm trying to figure out power...i just drilled holes in a blank rack space. I'm soldering guitar cables to just normal 1/4" inputs i screwed in. The Midi is just a midi thru with a female inputs on both sides. I want to run two snakes that i want to make with heat shrink tubing. One i want to go to the pedalboard (just a send/receive and MIDI). PROBLEM 1: i have one powered pedal on my board (crybaby). any suggestions on how to power it? I've looked at putting a powercon connector on my board, but then i don't know what type of wire to solder to the back side and what to do with it from there. Basically, how do go from a powercon or something of that sort to like a 9 volt brick? next i want to somehow put the output of my furman in the patchbay. Again, suggestion on how to do this. I want to get ALL of my outputs in this patchbay so i don't have to go searching through my rack when i get where I'm playing. I just started on this rack stuff and learned almost everything i know from the forum. I'm open to any suggestions! Thanks very much guys!

[JohnClark]

One thing you want to be sure of when making a rack interface is that you are not inadvertently connecting the ground of all these jacks together through the metal of the blank rack panel. If you use plastic jack this should not be a problem. You will also want to try to keep AC power or data (MIDI) away from the audio lines and keep any instrument Level audio line away from, well pretty much everything just to play it safe.

Running power out to a single wah pedal seems like more trouble than its worth. A battery will last an extremely long time in a standard Cry Baby even if you forget to disconnect the Input after every gig. If you do want to power it from the rack you can use just about any kind of wire... side by side "zip cord" should be perfectly adequate for this.

Good Luck!

[ncapeci]

Thank you very much!

[dawesy1986]

I'd go battery too if it's just for a single wah pedal, however, if you really wanted to go that extra mile, perhaps John could weigh in on whether this would work or not?

Five Pin Female Midi Connector from your rack to a Five Pin connector your pedal board.

5 pins:
1: rack to wah
2: wah to rack
3: + to wah
4: - to wah

i'm still learning about power stuff and dunno if this would be a wise idea at all.

on the rack, the Five Pin Interface would be on the outside, and inside the rack would be wired to each individual necessary plug (a 1/4" audio in and out, plus power supply)

Yay/Nay?
dawesy

[mboogman]

I'd stay away from having power and audio inside one sheild (IE, the MIDI cable). I use an 8 channel snake (Gepco multipair) with a Hirose multipin locking connector for my MIDI, control, tuner out, and power to my board. I've used it in the past for send/return audio, and it "worked" but with an inherent degree of noise. Guitar level signals and power just don't get along in that close of proximity to each other.

[dawesy1986]

mboogman,
cheers for the info, it was a good idea but if it's just going to introduce noise, Definately Not worth pursuing then!

Interesting though as a local guitarist I know of does something similar with some giant multicoresupercoolcable (not the technical term for it methinks ) which I believe feeds power, midi, and audio, to and from his pedal board - and he DID get a real bit of trouble with extraneous noise the first gig he did with the new cable setup - BUT - he took it back to the tech and they were able to 'fix' it..

I'll ask him what the deal with that was, and perhaps if there's good news about it I'll post it here with his permission so it may help others who are thinking of doing something similar

Cheers again mate,
Dawesy.

[JohnClark]

DC power shouldn't be any problem running alongside any signal run, but I am unsure if the in and out signal line running side by side with no shield between them would be noise free in the above example.

Most custom snake cables I have seen are simply taking the cables normally used for each purpose and bundling them together by shoving the whole gang of cables into braided expandable tubing.

I hope this helps!

[unix-guy]

Check out the PedalSnake - www.pedalsnake.com.

I have been using them for about 4-5 years and they work very well and allow for future flexibility.

I have my GCP midi (including power from GCX phantom), wah send-recieve signal and 9-volt DC going between my rig and board in my current configuration.

Kevin