AP Audio Patch Bay help

[notbillcosby]

I got my first patch bay for $10! It's an (i'm asuming older) AP Audio "Master Patching System." I've done plenty of reading on how a patchbay works and I feel like I've got a good hold on it. My patchbay has a bunch of individual circuit boards that you flip around to change between normaled/half-normaled/de-normaled. There's diagrams on the bottom of the bay explaining how each mode works, and from what I read, there should be instructions on the top explaining which way the board faces to make each of those happen. Thing is, the guy before me took the top off of the unit and didn't put ti back on before selling it to the music store, I guess.

Anyone have one of these laying around that could help me out? google has provided surprisingly (or maybe not...) few pictures of the chasis.

[psinglet]

The ones I have do not have a top at all, so it's not missing. These bays are either half normalled or non-normalled, depending upon the placement of the cards in the frame. Mine have on one end of the card two black jacks and on the other end one black and one gray jack. Basically, placed in the bay with both blacks out the front (circuit board to the left), they are half normalled (plugging into the top does not break connection - effectively a "Y" connection - connecting to bottom plug breaks the connection). Placed into the bay with black and gray facing out the connection is non-normalled.

[notbillcosby]

Awesome, thanks. Should the circuit board- when looking at the front of the unit- always be on the left side of each channel? What happens if they aren't?

[psinglet]

I just tried flipping one board to the right side and the spacing is wrong to have a left and a right next to each other, the circuit boards gnash together. It does appear you can flip all of them to the right. AFAIK all that would change flipped to the right is that the normal would be reversed - it would break when plugging into the top instead of the bottom and the "Y" feature would be on the bottom jack.

[notbillcosby]

Alright, that all makes sense. Guess I don't have a good reason to flip them the other way

Thanks for all your help! I got all the boards flipped where they need to be flipped, and now i'm rummaging to find enough patch cables to connect everything I want to connect! Thanks!

[psinglet]

No problem, glad to help.

BTW these are not necessarily old, though the funky 70's looking font makes them appear that way. The ones I have lying around are probably less than 10 years old.

[notbillcosby]

That's interesting... the plastic connectors spelled 1980s to me! I had an exceptionally hard time finding anything resembling an AP Audio website so I figured they were long defunct.

[psinglet]

I believe they were also marketed under the name Re'an and possibly Ace Products. A Google search seems to indicate they are now out of business as they show up, but as "unavailable" on a few sites. I seem to recall spending a bit under $100 each.

FWIW, they seemed to work pretty well. The only minor gripe I had with them was that the plastic nut would sometimes loosen allowing the circuit board to slip out of the frame. Not a big deal pulling the bay and reseating the jack unless it was in the middle of a multi-bay setup. I have since moved on to Neutriks and they seem considerably more solid for not much more money.

[notbillcosby]

Yeah, I definitely will need a couple more bays to complete my modest outboard setup, between interfaces, board, tape machine, and a few (hopefully more coming soon!) compressors and such. I work at a music store that allows me to get those Neutrik bays for something like $40, so I figure that isn't a bad investment in any possible way.

[obijuanmas]

Here's the configuration for a Re 'an patchbay

De Normalled: Grey hole can be either on top or bottom in the front

Half Normalled: Grey hole is on the bottom in the back

Normalled: Grey hole is on the top in the back

[Smitty]

I've got three of these things. One has "slim cards", two don't, and don't none of 'em have any grey plugs. I have no idea what they're currently set up to do, and I'm not sure how to figure it out.

I don't do a lot with inserts and I'd really just like to use it for thru connections if possible.

Anybody got any ideas on that?