Patchbays and whatnot...

[beatpoet]

So, I am now the proud owner of a TR 505 and am getting ready to bend it. 
I want to do a patchbay and, but was looking for a little advice, as I have not done a patchbay yet. 

In terms of parts, what do you folks prefer?  Banana plugs/jacks or RCA? 

Also, I'm thinking that an external patchbay might be preferrable as well.  I have also never done one of these.  I have a box already to use, just have to figure out a connector.  I've seen people use parallel ports for this.  Is it as simple as just soldering the wires to the pins on the parallel port?

[Circuitbenders]

What to use for connectors really depends on how much space you have. Most of my patchbays use 3.5mm jacks as i prefer to keep patchbays inside the casing or in as small an external box as possible. 3.5mm sockets take up a lot less room when space is at a premium like if you were mounting an internal patchbay on a 505 and tend to give a good solid contact even with cheaper versions.

In an ideal world i'd probably go for 4mm banana plugs as they are stackable and have the best feel to them but they take up a lot more space and are more expensive. I don't really use RCA phono's unless someone actually asks for them or its a casio SK and they fit nicely in the the speaker space, as they can be a real pain to repatch quickly.

You could always bolt your external patchbox to the top of the 505 and take a 32 way (or whatever) multicore cable out the side of the 505 and into the patchbox like i've done on this RX17 on the right



get a couple of rubber cable grommets and the cable is held tightly enough in place without having to wire up endless parallel port connections

[beatpoet]

Thanks for the tips.  Using rubber grommets is definitely a good idea, probably much cheaper than using a parallel port connection or the like...

[Signal:Noise]

Is that pedal bolted onto teh rx as well paul?

[Circuitbenders]

Is that pedal bolted onto teh rx as well paul?

Unfortunately not, thats a couple of bits of kit i built for Noise Inc / Sweet Noise. Apparently the biggest industrial band in Poland.