in search of: a rack philosophy...

[Smitty]

the last of the boxes are getting unpacked at my new apt, i'll soon be dragging the funeral rack out of my buddy's garage and into my studio room, and will be hooking most of my outboard together in one place, at one time, for the first time.

this brings up some interesting questions that i'm hoping some of you more experienced folks could offer some insight on. specifically, i'd be interested to hear your favorite approach to in-rack gear order. i realize this is terribly subjective, but i feel like i need a place to start.

do you group your EQ's, your compressors, your sonic maximizers? do you assemble favorite signal paths in order? patch bays in the center or at the top/bottom? any tips/tricks or things to avoid (minimizing interference/hum/noise between units, etc)?

i've seen those hulking racks of goodness some of you are sporting... what determined how they got put together?

[leftofthedial]

The only specific thing I have ever done is put all the gear that have wall warts in a single rack. That way, I can put all the wall warts in a metal box (which is grounded) into a single power strip. This helps to sheild the wall warts from the rest of my stuff. After that, it's pretty much a free-for-all.

[RefD]

After that, it's pretty much a free-for-all.

"...the stakes are high and so's the ground reference voltage..."

[Judas Jetski]

My rack has evolved considerably over the last couple of years. I find myself installing gear in order of its importance to my thinking at the moment, then wishing I had installed it some other way. I tend to put the stuff I like the most where I can see it well. Or, I tend to put the stuff which is doing the heavy lifting in prominent positions. Neither of these is a particularly good idea, because I wind up with an inefficient mess. I have to sit on the floor to tweak things, I often can't clearly see where my settings are, and it's generally kind of a pain in the rear.

If I was going to redo my rack, I'd put anything that was going to get tweaked a lot where it was easily accessible and visible. That'd be my compressors and perhaps my Midiverb. I'd put my patchbay just below this stuff, so it would be easy to see what signal was getting sent where. Anything which was "set-and-forget" I'd put at the bottom. Stuff which didn't have a lot of settings (or which used detents extensively, like my Solid Statesman compressors) I'd put below the patchbay but above the stuff which didn't need a lot of fussing with.

I have my power amp just below my patchbay to give heat some room to dissipate. It'd probably be a little better at the very top of the rack, so the heat would have plenty of room to dissipate, but as it is it sits behind the patch-cords when they hang down. That's a good thing because while I do have to fuss with it at times, those times are generally not times when I have a whole bunch of cables in the way. When the cables are in the way, they're not very much in the way since all I have as far as controls go is volume pots.

I do tend to cluster gear according to purpose, and I tend to put the stuff I think about first sequentially above stuff that comes later on. Like I tend to compress first, and then apply reverb, so compressors go at the top.

So my ideal rack might look like this:

Tape Delay (at the top to keep the reels out of the way of everything else)
Fussy Compressors
Fussy reverbs
Patchbay
Power Amp
non-fussy compressors
non-fussy reverbs
Stuff I barely ever use
Things which don't need *any* adjustment

[CurtZHP]

I'm just waiting for someone to make a boobie joke....

[MoreSpaceEcho]

(.)(.)

[Rodgre]

Over the years, I have developed a sort of philosophy with the racks.

I have made each rack semi-modular in one crucial way, and that's made life much easier. All of our racks at Tremolo Lounge are separate standalone racks with wheels. What I did was to very neatly wire all of the units to a patchbay or two within the rack. Also, all power goes to permanantly-mounted power strips/racks within the rack.

Essentially, each rack is it's own module and needs to have one master AC cord plugged in. Wiring is very carefully laid out and tied up within the back of the rack.

I have a master patchbay at the mixing station, which connects to the recorders, the mixer, headphone sends, etc. Within this rack, I have a patchbay that goes to 24 tie points that normal to tie points in the modular racks.

It's harder to describe thank it is to see, but the gist is that there are very few rats' nests of cables all over the place, as there are uncommitted tie points in each rack which go to the master patchbay. All patching is done with super-short cables from patchpoint to patchpoint within the same rack!

I used to have dozens of cables (all the same color!) strewn across the floor from rack to patchbay to get to the recorder. This way, I don't have to have EVERY PIECE OF GEAR in the rack connected to the master patchbay. They just connect to their individual rack's patchbay, which has uncommitted tie lines that go to the master patchbay. I will never need EVERYTHING patched in at once, so I usually can get away with 24 uncommitted tie lines even in a big tracking session.

As for types of gear, I group preamps and compressors that I use in tracking in one rack, with some spillover to a second rack. Effects and more specialty gear is in a second, third and fourth rack.

Every few years, I need to re-do some racks to configure new gear, and retire some gear to a spare rack, but it stays pretty organized for the most part.

Roger

[RefD]

I'm just waiting for someone to make boobie ASCII art...

[MoreSpaceEcho]

this thread needs pix of inverse's uber obsessive compulsive rack wiring.

[Smitty]

seconded!

[RefD]

i'm not sure he posts here anymore, which is sad in itself.

[mjau]

My only advice is to stack your blue effectrons on top of each other, so you look as if you have a rare 4U effectron with tons of knobs on it in your rack.

[Smitty]

My only advice is to stack your blue effectrons on top of each other, so you look as if you have a rare 4U effectron with tons of knobs on it in your rack.

how the hell did you know i have multiple effectrons?

*checks locks on doors*

[RefD]

My only advice is to stack your blue effectrons on top of each other, so you look as if you have a rare 4U effectron with tons of knobs on it in your rack.

how the hell did you know i have multiple effectrons?

*checks locks on doors*

you have have multiple effectrons?!?

*dons cape and pointy wizard's hat*

[cgarges]

My only advice is to stack your blue effectrons on top of each other, so you look as if you have a rare 4U effectron with tons of knobs on it in your rack.

Dude, when were you at Old House?


A couple of years ago, I re-wired six nineteen-space racks worth of gear and patchbay (three 96-point tt bays for outboard gear). I grouped similar stuff together in a way that made the most sense in terms of frequent useage and combined usage. For example, all the mic preamps, equalizers and most frequently-used compressors got put on the same side of the room, so if you're doing a tracking session, it's easy to tweak your mic pre-EQ-compressor signal path without moving around much. The effects units and more oddball stuff is on the other side of the room, along with the rack-mounted two track stuff (Masterlinks, DAT, cassette, CD player, etc.). The next thing I did was to try to make sure that everything showed up as close to "in-order" as possible in the patchbay. That way, if there's a freelancer working in the studio, it's easy to find a particular piece of gear in the rack AND the patchbay. All the mic preamps are grouped together, all the EQs are grouped together, all the dynamics are grouped together, and all the effects are grouped together. Those units are also color-coded by type on the patchbay labels, again, for ease of location.

As such, I've had to change very little in the racks in the past few years. And the way it's set up, it's actually very easy to swap out equipment if we buy or sell something. That kind of setup has worked out extremely well for me.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC