home-made Patch Panel

I want to have every in/out from every instrument and all channel inserts/aux sends from my mixers all gathered in one central location for insane patching/routing/feedback possibilities.

So I think all I'm going to need is:

- 2-3u steel plate for the rack

- 50-100 female-female 1/4" jacks to mount on the panel

- a lot of patch cables

- possibly a special drill bit for cutting the holes (unless the panel ends up being made of something softer)

any ideas on places to order all this shit from?

it might be best to get a big bag of 1/4" jacks locally if i can find them at an electronics shop

i'm really curious about the rack panel though, are there places you can order blank rack panels from? and what are they usually made out of?

3u rack aluminum rack panel

cool.

will be easy to cut too

Neat idea, I found this for you:

Cheapy 1/4" f-to-f

I think thats the best price possible on 1/4" f-to-f connectors.

Post pics of how it goes!

  ten fingers ten toes said:

Neat idea, I found this for you:

 

Cheapy 1/4" f-to-f

 

I think thats the best price possible on 1/4" f-to-f connectors.

 

Post pics of how it goes!

thanks! that's an awesome price, as i think i'll get about 60 of them

i'm thinking of a layout of 6x10 or 5x12, should fit easily on that 3u panel.

only problem is, these don't look like the sort of thing you can mount on a panel, looks like it's just for joining cables

well, you could glue/epoxy them behing the panel, like just cut a hole in the front just wide enough to accept the 1/4" jack size, and then hot glue/expoxy it to the back of the paneling behind the hole. If you wanted to get really fancy I bet you could find some sort of bracket or metal tab or something to use to support it at lke Home Depot....

HOT GLUE

...if you want it to break before it's finished.

find something threaded, that you can bolt in place.

i think i'll have a hard time finding inline female-female that are mountable, i've found a lot of PCB mount jacks, but they are more expensive and i'd need twice as many to solder them together

Im telling you, you can mount those no problem with a bit of jerry rigging it behind the scenes. Notice I also mentioned epoxy. I had shit ass Volvo once that was held together with liquid nail. If it can keep a car running for a few months, it can handle some 1/4" jacks.

  ten fingers ten toes said:

I had shit ass Volvo once that was held together with liquid nail. If it can keep a car running for a few months, it can handle some 1/4" jacks.

ya but thats a volvo. if you'd crash a volvo into a brick wall at 100km/h there's a fat chance the wall is damaged worse than the volvo.

nonetheless, epoxy is the proverbial shit.

anyway dugbert you'll find all those things at your local radio shack / home depot. as for jacks, you get really really good deals at thomann (german mail order company), i pay like 40 ct for a 1/4" jack over there. good quality aluminum stuff, no neutrik ofcourse, but way better than yer regular plastic jack.

one tip: look into using PCB mounting jacks and fit every block of jacks (4 jacks or so) on a seperate PCB. if you make sure the PCB's are easily removable , you can have a nicely modular setup like the more expensive bantam/neutrik/ghielmetti patchbays

  iep said:

one tip: look into using PCB mounting jacks and fit every block of jacks (4 jacks or so) on a seperate PCB. if you make sure the PCB's are easily removable , you can have a nicely modular setup like the more expensive bantam/neutrik/ghielmetti patchbays

yeah i googled around and found some good sources for bulk neutrik jacks (NYS229)

that is a great idea about breaking it down into changable sections.

I was thinking earlier today about buying like a doepfer cabinet/power supply and just a few modules, like a few filters and weird logic modules instead of an entire modular system. then I could build tiny patchbays specific to each synth/drum machine and one for the channel inserts of my mixer, and mount all that shit in together with the filter modules and stuff....

yeah good idea. have you heard of ken stone's CGS designs? cat girl synth: http://www.cgs.synth.net/

ken stone makes A LOT of unusual (and some.. usual) modular-blocks, lots of weird logic modules, joystick controllers, strange filters, ec.

he sells the pcb's (cheap) and you can get kits from http://www.elby-designs.com/

for example, check out his 'modulo magic' design, which is basically modulo calculus translated into a simple circuit:

also, look into the 'psycho lfo' (bizarre lfo), wavetable oscs, BBDchip based comparators, very wicked stuff..

chuck it all into a cheap wooden cabinet with a small power supply & hook everything up to patchbays

head explodes

8 months later, I just ordered all the parts for this today!

I've been working on music a lot more lately, which always brings a fresh wave of gear-lust, so I thought I'd channel it into this project.

2x 2u black blank rack panels (one for the front, one for the rear(I'll clip the wings off), I'll get some long bolts and make some spacers out of narrow pipe to sheath the bolts so the panels will spaced like 2.5" apart, so the jacks can oppose each other)

so it'll be 36in 36out (36 on front and back opposite each other), so I got 80x NYS229. was like $60 but I can totally afford it at the moment.

got a few packs of 1' and 1.5' patch cables, a bunch of channel insert cables (TRS to 2xTS Y-split) for my mixer

so when the shit comes in a week or two I'll take a bunch of pics of my assembly and whatnot.

how much did it all cost you?

$60 for all the jacks (80)

$22 for the aluminum panels

$15 for bolts, nuts, wires, solder