...And it begins. My homemade pedalboard build.

[gtrjunior]

I think from now on I’m going to be making my own cables. It’s really easy and much cheaper too.
I spent about $30 on 25ft of cable for this board and probably $40 +\- on jacks. It seems like a lot but I’ll get probably around 20 patch cables out of it. (I made a couple of mistakes and wasted about a foot or so of cable at the beginning ☹️).
And the best part is that each cable is exactly the length I need.

[briman]

That's way better than spending over $200 on 20 cables! I build my own too.

[gtrjunior]

I sound tested that cables I’ve been making (working my *ss of on) today and I’m highly disappointed with the sound quality. I have a cheap eBay cable I was comparing them to and the cheapie sounds perfect. The Canare cable I bought from Redco sounds like a wet blanket has been thrown over my amp.
I’m thinking of getting some Planet Waves bulk cable. I’ve always had good luck with that brand.
Ugh....money and time wasted for nothing. And I was almost finished. Back to the drawing board.

[briman]

That sucks. Hope you have better luck on next cable.

[gtrjunior]

What brand have you been using?

[briman]

I will check when i get home. I paid 50 cents a foot and it had good shielding and i think it was 16 gauge but not sure. I will get back to you on it.

[schmasty]

Board looks good sorry to hear about the cable trouble. You put a lot of work into this hope you can get it sorted out.. Have a great Memorial Day weekend enjoy some food have a few beers and crank the Splawn

[gtrjunior]

I did some online research this morning. I’ve been using the planet waves cables for some time now and I think they sound great. They have a capacitance of 28 pf/foot.
Redco.com carries Lake Cables brand which has the same numbers! I just went ahead and ordered a bunch and we will see what happens.


Just as a comparison, the Canare cable that I originally ordered has a capacitance of 53.3 pf/foot!!
Big, big difference.

[gtrjunior]

The new Lake Cable arrived the other day.
Saturday morning I de-soldered the old cable from the plugs. The straight plugs I had ordered were sub-par at best. I decided to order some Neutrik jacks instead along with some additional colored heat shrink tubing.
So, unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any work done on the board this weekend.
🙁

[gtrjunior]

I put a good dent in he patch cable making this afternoon.
I got about 12 or so cables made and wired to the board. Took a big chunk of the day to do it but I’m almost halfway done.
And yes...I both tested the cables with my multi meter AND I sound checked them with my ear!!!
So far, so good.
I’m really impressed with the Lake Cable. Good stuff and easy to work with.

[gtrjunior]

Ive got all of the pedals wired up.
None of the components here are attached to the board just yet.
I made the cables a little longer than needed to insure that I have enough play to be able to move things where I need them.
I have some plastic cable clips that I will install to keep the cables immobile once everything is done.
All that’s left is to make cables for the routing through the noise gate and routing the in/outs from the switcher to my junction box located inside the board.
This last part is gonna take a little planning as the routing can get confusing!!

Right now it just looks like a sloppy mess but once everything is actually attached it will be much cleaner looking.

[briman]

Looks great! What is that in front of it? Another carpeted board?

[gtrjunior]

Jun 12, 2018 9:23:57 GMT -5 briman said:

Looks great! What is that in front of it? Another carpeted board?

Lol...no it’s a drum riser in my basement.

[gtrjunior]

[briman]

Aha! Lol Nice jam space bud!