Can I do this to wire to a patchbay??

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formerlyfzfile

formerlyfzfile

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Is it possible to use 20 gauge 4-conductor telephone wire to hook up my outboard stuff to my patchbays??

All units are in one rack and I am trying to minimise the wiring as space is tight behind the bay and I have a bunch of the stuff lying around.

Can I do one connection per conductor/4 per length of cord (ie no ground connection at all)....

or

...could i do two connections per cord (one signal and one ground connection ...not a shielded ground obviously)

?????

The only reason I think this might work is that I saw a picture of somebodys rack (might have been Fredricks) and he had smaller guage wire and it didnt look shielded...although i really dont know.

Hopefully I'm only partailly insane.

BTW I want to connect all mixer/outboard/ sound card in's through the bays most, if not all of the time.

-mike
 
Good news and bad news.

The bad news is you are more than partially insane.

I was lieing there is no good news. The telephone wire won't work very well either. You can buy snake cable in bulk. It is the same gauge wire but since it is all wrapped together it takes up less space then a bunch of seperate cables.

You can either buy it all raw and solder but for some reason I think you might be better off just buying a ready to go 8 or 16 channel snake with whatever connectors you need on each end.

FYI - You use two wires for mono unbalanced and 3 wires for mono balanced or stereo unbalanced.
 
Thanks for the reply.

"The bad news is you are more than partially insane."

Well thats not actually bad news....it just means I have to change my dosages.
;)

So.....I would NOT be able to use one conductor wire for signal and another for ground (twice per cord) to hook my outboards in an unbalanced fashion????.

I should clarify that for hooking up the mixer and sound cards to the bay I do have premade snakes.

I was just thinking about the units in the rack itself and the bay all in an 8 space rack.
The problem with premade is that the runs in need are only 3 feet max, if even that long....and some as short as 6 inches.

I just want to customise the length to keep the excess cable to a minimum.

-mike
 
The phone wire is not shielded. You could end up with hum problems that won't go away.
 
O.K.

Thats what I was afraid of.

I guess it makes sense.

Thanks guys

-mike
 
A lot of music shops will make custom length snakes and don't forget about the guys on this BBS. Jake OWA made some nice DSUB snakes for me.
 
I built all of my snakes and patch cables. It isn't hard at all (just time consuming) and if you're going to run a studio (even a home brewed one), soldering is an indespensible skill.
 
I'm notta scairt.

I have actually made a whole bunch of cables for my previous set ups but it was all with guitar cord or mic cord size stuff (mostly from the Mars store that lasted about 4 months in Albany).....and the lengths are real long because with my previous setup I was going AROUND everything.....now I'm going thru stuff.:)

i.e. my desk is what you might call highly modified......and completely un-resalable.

So.....what is the best space saving small guage shielded cable to use??

-mike
 
I used Beldon 5500 (22AWG 2 conductor and shield/drain) on my system and have been VERY happy with the results. Something like Mogami Starquad would be more highend if you have the money.
 
If you want to use up your Phone wire use it for headphone runs - I've used it successfully for that application. :)

cheers
john
 
Is it possible to use 20 gauge 4-conductor telephone wire to hook up my outboard stuff to my patchbays??
Click to expand...

Its very possible to use telephone wire, however you will be extremely unhappy with the results.

Telephone wire is unbalanced, unshielded and you'll experience a lot of hum.

Often, telephone wire is solid wire, not stranded, so if it gets bumped or vibrated a lot, its going to break where you soldered it to the patch bay.

I can assure you that you've not seen any telephone wire in any patch bay that I've wired, ever.

For telephones I use cat 5, actually. I do this so when it comes time to remove all the single line house phones and plug in the business phone system I have in the garage, its plug and play.

Use good cabling for audio, always, its one thing not to be cheap with.

Here is probably the cheapest source for snake cable if you can tolerate beldin cable rather than canare or mogami:

http://www.meci.com/default.asp?mode=getitems&category=484

Do not buy snake cable that has foil shields around each conductor, unless there is a ground wire in the shield! Foil can't be soldered with a soldering iron.

Also, make sure each pair is individually shielded.

If you can't solder, find a friend who can and provide beer and steaks :)
 
Cool link Fredric.

Thanks.

I dont seem to find much veriety in connectors from them.
Is there a better (bang for buck) place to get 1/4" and XLR connectors from???

I googled wholesalers but most "audio wholesales" seem to be online retailers with wholesale in their name or description.

-mike
 
Re: Cool link Fredric.

formerlyfzfile said:
Thanks.

I dont seem to find much veriety in connectors from them.
Is there a better (bang for buck) place to get 1/4" and XLR connectors from???

I googled wholesalers but most "audio wholesales" seem to be online retailers with wholesale in their name or description.

-mike
Click to expand...

I got patch bays off e-bay. ADC, Gentner, switchcraft, etc are good choices.

For "loose" jacks, to mount in electrical boxes or on panels for the vocal booth and places where mounting a patch bay won't work, I'd use neutrik combo jacks - they are the same size as a XLR jack, but accept XLR [and] 1/4" phone jacks. Very useful to have. Those, I haven't sourced yet, but before I order them from somewhere, I'm going to skim ebay.

Cheap is good :)
 
I bought a bunch of Gepco cable out of Illinois for my patch bay wiring...

Got a KILLER deal on it.

The line I bought is the same as the Mogami quad (actually the specs were a little better), but it was wayyyyy cheaper.

Velvet Elvis
 
Velvet,

Such good deals should not be mentioned without a weblink :)
 
Frederic,

I bought it DIRECTLY from the manufacturer :)

www.gepco.com

http://www.gepco.com/products/cable/twistedpr/gfmulti22.htm

I got two 24 channel TRS (switchcraft) custom made 20ft star-quad type snakes for something like $200 each... not bad considering the quality and length.

Then I bought a whole spool (500 ft) of the star-quad patch bay cable (this stuff is cool!!!) for on the cheap as well.

Velvet Elvis
 
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