Patchbays

thegeek · Post by **thegeek** » Tue Dec 08, 2009 5:49 am

My rig is slowly growing and the need for a patchbay will be inevitable... anyone have any good information on setting one up?

thegeek · Post by **thegeek** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 4:30 am

nothing?

JES · Post by **JES** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 5:55 am

Everyone is different. My rig is shrinking but this is what I did before:

I had one big rack of stuff--pres, comps, other processors, plus an interface for my computer.

I bought a 8 point XLR patch pay so I could plug mics directly into my pres without going around to the back of the rack.

I bought a 48 point TRS patch bay for everything else. For almost everything, I preferred half-normalled. Basically, you run things together in the order that you use them the most. Those should be your defaults, and then the beauty of the patch bay idea is that you can change that. My default was to run straight into my interface from my pres, so I half normalled my pres to the inputs of my interface. But that was only four channels. So I normalled the outs of a compressor and an effects unit to the other 4 ins of my interface, so that I could, for instance, take a bass part coming through a pre, compress the hell out of it, and record a clean and compressed tone at the same time on two separate channels.

If I had to do it again and was acquiring cables and the whole thing, I'd go with TT instead of TRS just for the space advantage.

Good luck. I'm sure there are chapters on this in some of the home recording books at the library. You wouldn't even need a new or up to date one.

Post by **TapeOpLarry** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 4:40 pm

There was a patchbay article in issue #29.

Jon Nolan · Post by **Jon Nolan** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 12:09 pm

I always go back to this thread when I'm thinking about smart patchbay layouts. the included .xls file is helpful to look at as well.

bluesbaz · Post by **bluesbaz** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 2:22 pm

Um Hopefully you can solder.
Make mults and use them.
Not everything has to be on the bay
MrPatchbay rules http://home.flash.net/~motodata/patchbays/
1/4 tends to be more cost effective than tt but space may be at a premium .
Make sure your not degrading your sound with some super budget bay,
your better off not having a patch bay if it makes things sound bad.

just my 6 cents.

LazarusLong · Post by **LazarusLong** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 2:40 pm

bluesbaz wrote:Um Hopefully you can solder.
Make mults and use them.
Not everything has to be on the bay
MrPatchbay rules http://home.flash.net/~motodata/patchbays/
1/4 tends to be more cost effective than tt but space may be at a premium .
Make sure your not degrading your sound with some super budget bay,
your better off not having a patch bay if it makes things sound bad.

just my 6 cents.

7 bits of advice for only 6 cents. You, sir, are a bargain.

not but seriously, it's great advice. Switchcraft makes some simple and friendly patchbays that are solder free, sound good and are easily swapped between the various normals. They aren't cheap, but they're extremely well built. To me, it's well worth the money versus the hassle extraordinaire that patchbays can be.

http://www.sweetwater.com/c958--Switchcraft--Patchbays

Jewish Guitar Hero · Post by **Jewish Guitar Hero** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 7:12 am

TapeOpLarry wrote:There was a patchbay article in issue #29.

And it is conveniently reprinted in the current issue

thegeek · Post by **thegeek** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 5:43 pm

I just barely signed up for the issues so I don't have the most recent. I don't know where to get the current one locally.

thegeek · Post by **thegeek** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 10:49 am

Here's what I was going to do based on what I have in terms of ins/outs... The only piece of outboard gear I have right not is a FMR RNC... everything else will come in time and I'll expand the bay as needed..

thoughts?
http://www.springloadmusic.com/Space/patchbay.pdf

ott0bot · Post by **ott0bot** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 2:19 pm

Great advice so far.

After biting the bullet a while back I find that life without a patchbay was much more complicated. It's worth the investment for sure. If you want to keep it simple here is what I use:

http://www.redco.com/shopexd.asp?id=638

The old standard 1/4" neutrik bays. I have 2 and still have room for expansion. I have a 20 unit rack at home with a couple empty spots, but all in all I have 6 compressers, 5 pre amps, a spring reverb unit and a head phone amp all hooked up to the bay along with my 003r. I have the outputs of my pre's normalling into the interface so there is no need to patch to get a signal into the DAW. If you don't have any external pre amps yet, you'll probably just be using the RNC for mixing and so it should be really simple.

Invest in some decent cable snakes and keep the cables as short as you can. Make sure you use unbalanced connections for the RNC or you'll be using the input as an insert, as most patchbays are balanced.

Obviously if you can learn to solder and set up a TT bay you'll be ready for serious expansion, but if you plan on keeping a simple home set up with 10-15 pieces of gear the 1/4" bays will serve you well.

junior · Post by **junior** » Thu May 13, 2010 11:48 pm

Jewish Guitar Hero wrote:
TapeOpLarry wrote:There was a patchbay article in issue #29.
And it is conveniently reprinted in the current issue

Which issue was it reprinted in? I didn't see it in any of the last few issues...

junior · Post by **junior** » Tue May 25, 2010 11:56 am

Still can't find the issue with the reprint. Does anyone have a scan/copy of the original article?

Thanks in advance...

Osumosan · Post by **Osumosan** » Mon May 31, 2010 1:34 pm

junior wrote:Still can't find the issue with the reprint. Does anyone have a scan/copy of the original article?

Thanks in advance...

pm'd you. Send me your email address.

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