Alembic Guitars Club
Connecting => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: jazzyvee on January 10, 2023, 06:01:38 AM
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I have just bought some plugs for wiring up my guitar pedal board to a loop switcher.
I presume their patch cable are also suitable for rewireing my bass racks too?
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Hey Jazzyvee,
I'm gonna state my opinion here, YMMV. In my opinion (did I mention this was just my opinion?) the actual wire used in a cable assembly isn't terribly important as long as it's shielded, making short runs, and connecting low impedance sources. (Things get more serious when running long cables from passive instruments.).
But I think the most important factor in a cable is a solid and reliable connection to the plugs. And this is where the George L system is a bit worrisome. They've invented a convenient way to simply cut the wire to any length and "crimp" on their 1/4" connectors. That's like a pin that pokes into the center wire and another pin that pokes into the shielding to make the electrical connections. No soldering. Very clever design.
However, are you willing to rely on an entire chain of those kinds of connections to remain reliable and not interrupt your signal? I personally am not. I'm much more inclined to spend the time soldering (and then forgetting the shell of the 1/4" cable, having to take it apart again and start over... :o ).
Again, just my thoughts. One good thing about these patch cables is that they're meant to be installed and never moved so that at least gives the "poking pin" system a chance by not being repeatedly jostled. But still...
Jimmy J
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I have no experience with George L - because my first thought upon seeing their ads was pretty exactly what Jimmy just said; in my opinion (as the guy everybody looked at when something crapped out mid-gig), it's just not worth the risk of depending on a slap-it-together connection even if soldering wasn't so much fun......
Peter (who spent some of his happiest hours at the band-house kitchen table with a soldering iron, a box of dead cables, and a Sneak-A-Toke®)
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Peter, i guess those were ‘Un-Grateful Dead’ cables. 🤓
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Yes, Jimmy that makes complete sense and i always welcome your experienced input. However they are bought and due to be posted tomorrow.
I think i will try them on my guitar pedalboard first and see how that works out. The switcher is a true bypass and all my pedals will have it’s own loop so if something goes down i can leave that loop out. (That’s the theory). Maybe i should invest in a decent soldering iron, some jacks and make a neater more permanent set of connections at the back of my rack now that, that loud CRACKING sound seems to have disappeared.
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They look a lot like some solderless connectors I used back in the late 70's, early 80's. My experience with those was they did not like to be moved about and if they were they would make intermittent connections sooner than later. They were adequate when I used them to connect effects on my pedal board where everything was fixed to the board and did not move but they would still on occasion become intermittent. It was easy to fix the problem. All I had to do was remove the wire, trim off a 1/2 inch and reinstall the wire. After about a year I went back to solder connections for all of my pedal board cables.
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FWIW, here’s a contrary opinion, though with a caveat. I’ve used George L. connectors on all my pedal boards for several years. I LOVE them as they allow for exact length runs and result in a MUCH cleaner looking board. The caveat is that you must take the time to double and triple check EVERY SINGLE CONNECTION with a continuity checker, or multi-meter set to check continuity, as you go along. Once you get good solid connections at every point, I have found the George L.’s to be completely reliable in a pedal board where, once installed, the connections all remain unmoved. YMMV.
Bill, tgo
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I still have a solderless cable from whatever that company was that made them back in the 70's. I have had to redo the ends a couple times over the years (no big deal, 4 minute job) but other than that I love it. I have also A/Bd the thing in my recording space and it is one of the most quiet cables I own. Way better than my several monsta cables. It's so skinny it's hard to believe.
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Wow that's a pedal board and a half Bill tgo. i only recognise the C9 and micro tron.
Good to hear that they have proved reliable. I was talking to a guitarist friend and he uses them and said he has failures about once per year on average. Which is ok if it happens at home. Gulp.
i have a cable tester so will give them each one a good shake when plugged in to make sure they are tight..
We have had a lot of postal strikes over here recently so they may take a while to get here.
@gtyguy, i guess skinny works better in those situations and probably no good for the road.
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I do gig with it a fair amount. I really recommend the Behringer CT100 6-in-1 Cable Tester (29 bucks at Sweetwater) for any gigging musician. It's about their only product I like though.
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I don't know it a cable tester is the best way to go. Many of the connections between pedals are too short to use a cable tester. I cut the wire to the size I want. Then I install one George L. plug to one end and use the pointed probes on my multi-meter to test. Once I have this solid, I plug it into the "out" of pedal one, run the wire to underneath the board and then back up next to the "in" on pedal two. Once I am sure the wire length is correct, I unplug the "out" on pedal one and then install a George L. plug on the other end, test with the multi-meter, and plug the two ends in. I essentially follow this practice for all connections. Using my method, a continuity tester or multi-meter will work better than a cable tester.
The board is a Temple Audio board. As for my pedals, there are three Mooer mini pedals, a Tender Octaver which is a direct clone of the EHX POG. These aren't made anymore as EHX sued Mooer and it turned out Mooer had directly copied the EHX software, even copying EHX's copyright notice! The Slow Engine is Mooer's take on the iconic Boss Slow Gear volume swell pedal. The light blue one is the Mooer Ensemble King, a chorus.
The Earth Drive and Solar Flare are wonderful pedals made by Brad Sarno at Sarno Music Solutions. Brad does great work, specializing in the Grateful Dead and pedal steel communities. He makes great preamps, buffers, and pedals. The Earth Drive is a boost with a little hair if you want it. The Solar Flare is an old style distortion pedal.
The AD-6 is a cheap decent sounding analog delay, nothing special.
The unmarked pedal to the left of the C-9 is a Hotone Xtomp Mini. This is an incredible pedal that can be loaded by Bluetooth from a phone or iPad in about 10 seconds with any of 200-300 different pedals, amps, preamps (including an F-2B), or cabs, all available for free on the Xtomp app! It's a GREAT pedal for trying out lots of different pedals before purchasing, or changing pedals for different playing situations. Currently, I have it loaded with an MXR Phase 90.
The Polytune is a tuner (one of only two pedal tuners I've found that are readable in direct sunlight), and the Bright Switch has a USB goose-neck light that fits in and illuminates the board. You can use the second USB input to charge a cell phone, iPad, etc. To the right of the Bright Switch is a SanJune 15 outlet isolated power supply.
At the upper right is an Xotic EP Booster which is always on at about unity gain. Lower right is a Dunlop Mini Crybaby.
Finally, on the upper left is my Quilter Superblock USA. This is a stand alone amp pedal. It has three voices, '57 Fender, '61 Fender, and '65 Fender. It is rated at 25 watts, but I strongly suspect it would test out at significantly more. I use it with a single 1x12 cab loaded with an old Jensen Neo 100 for a really lightweight rig. When I bring a bigger rig, I bypass the Superblock, but it's still there in case of emergency.
Bill, tgo
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For most of my guitar wielding days i only used a Pro Co Rat, Cry Baby/wah and a chorus pedal, even with that i mostly played clean or used the wah as a tone control. For the few dep guitar gigs i've had in recent years the band's guitarists had digital multifx processed sounds so i have added more individual pedals to accomplish some that. Still i mostly favour those three basic ones.
From memory, i think i have the following pedals: custom audio wah, crybaby, rat, boss chorus, boss stereo digital delay, Boss Octave pedal, Univibe chorus,MXR Dynacomp compressor, Radial Tonebone Trimode, Radial British Classic, Micro q-tron, Ehx Sitar, TC Phaser, TC Mimiq, TC quintessence ( though my lack of music theory makes it hard for me to use effectively at the moment)
My fairly recently purchased loop switcher is programmeable so i can put 8 pedals in separate loops and switch them on individually as needed and then also create custom groupings of pedals.
I think it will take a bit of gigging to really find out what groupings i should create.
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Even with all these choices, I'd say my pedals are turned OFF about 98% of the time. And when I do use them, it is usually only one at a time. Nevertheless, it's nice to have access to a broad range of sounds, especially when I'm playing improvisational space in a Grateful Dead setting.
Which loop switcher did you get?
Bill, tgo
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Joyo Pxl8 programmable loop switcher
https://www.joyoaudio.co.uk/JOYO-pxl8-purple-loop-effects-pedal-loop-switching-system?search=Pxl8&description=true&category_id=145
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They look a lot like some solderless connectors I used back in the late 70's, early 80's. My experience with those was they did not like to be moved about and if they were they would make intermittent connections sooner than later. They were adequate when I used them to connect effects on my pedal board where everything was fixed to the board and did not move but they would still on occasion become intermittent. It was easy to fix the problem. All I had to do was remove the wire, trim off a 1/2 inch and reinstall the wire. After about a year I went back to solder connections for all of my pedal board cables.
I think you're thinking of Bill Lawrence's cables: https://www.wildepickups.com/products/cable-plugs-set-1?variant=32638205067326
I'd echo the above - for a pedal board with fairly fixed connections it should be fine. I just bought two of their cable sets over the holidays (along with some pickups) and they feel really well done and sturdy. I just play in my living room, though, so I can't speak to their stage durability!
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They look a lot like some solderless connectors I used back in the late 70's, early 80's. My experience with those was they did not like to be moved about and if they were they would make intermittent connections sooner than later. They were adequate when I used them to connect effects on my pedal board where everything was fixed to the board and did not move but they would still on occasion become intermittent. It was easy to fix the problem. All I had to do was remove the wire, trim off a 1/2 inch and reinstall the wire. After about a year I went back to solder connections for all of my pedal board cables.
I think you're thinking of Bill Lawrence's cables: https://www.wildepickups.com/products/cable-plugs-set-1?variant=32638205067326 (https://www.wildepickups.com/products/cable-plugs-set-1?variant=32638205067326)
I'd echo the above - for a pedal board with fairly fixed connections it should be fine. I just bought two of their cable sets over the holidays (along with some pickups) and they feel really well done and sturdy. I just play in my living room, though, so I can't speak to their stage durability!
They weren't sold as kits but as parts. They might have been Bill Lawrence but it is so long ago I don't remember. I picked them up to try mainly for the same reason as Bill and jazzyvee and that is for the pedal board. I did make a 10 or 15 foot guitar cable to try out but abandoned it quickly.
I dug one out and they look like the ones being sold as Bill Lawrence in this Reverb listing.
https://reverb.com/item/18051824-bill-lawrence-lawrence-1600-cables-2000-s (https://reverb.com/item/18051824-bill-lawrence-lawrence-1600-cables-2000-s)
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I do kinda remember buying mine at a music store back then and it was sold on a spool of wire (you pick the length) and two brass connectors. The fact that I still use that cable today, long after all my other cables from the 70's have been thrown away, says a lot.
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I used George L's for several years, but finally got tired of them failing. Not fun on stage. After I'd given up on the "build your own" parts, I thought I'd try a couple pre-assembled. One of them was bad right out of the package! I really wanted to like them, but it just wasn't working out.
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No. Not even.
I learned a long time ago that everything needs to be blast-proof, the worst will happen, and weird stuff happens all the time, and the Number One on today's question: Dopey cables will bite you in the a*s EVERY TIME at the worst possible minute. This is one of those things that if the biggest touring sound companies or pro recording studios don't use them . . . . there must be a reason they're not betting on them to do a 50,000 seat show, or a JT's next master recording sessions. Good enough for me.
So since I don't solder, it's either Mogami or stuff from my friend Butch at Bayou Cables. That George L stuff, just like every other cheap cable, gives me the willies.
My Two Cents. Your results, as they say, may vary.
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Well i wired my pedalboard and loop switcher this evening with the George L cables and jacks and checked each one using Bill tgo suggestion of a multimeter and all except one plug tested fine. The failed one did not have a pin in the jack.
i decided to wire my distortion and a couple of wah pedals with standard patch cables and put them before the loop switcher so that in the event of the George l cables misbehaving, i can bypass them and still have some basic effects.
I have to say that tightening all the thin knurled screws one after the other makes for a really sore finger and thumb. :o 🫰🏾
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"i decided to wire my distortion and a couple of wah pedals...."
A couple? Dude, you must post a video of you wahing with both feet at once........
Peter
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Hahaha, there is method in the madness. i have used two for as long as i can remember. One is used as a regular wah and the other is used as a tone control. Anyone else do this?
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I use both a wah and an envelope filter/auto wah.
Bill, tgo
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That's my layout before cabling it all up. The power supply should come in a few days so maybe I will get a chance to check it out and programme the loop switcher at the weekend.
In the end I swapped the pedal tuner and the Chorus pedal as the more central position would make it easier to click on to tune or to mute.
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kinda late to the party, i'll cop with hte usual excuse.
these press-fit, insulation-piercing connections are fine for landscape lighting connectors or lamp cord replacements but with dry low-level electrical signals any kind of corrosion or flexing is gonna cause intermittent and/or noisy connections gauranteed. plus it's just not a good electrical connection. i don't care how ya slice it. i'm old school and it's solder and strain-relieved connections everytime in my signal chain. period.
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I'm sure you are right, as others have noted but i'd committed myself to buying them before consulting the wisdom of this forum. So i will see how I get on with them. At the moment i don't have any guitar gigs so I can check them out at home and at a jam session before that changes. I don't use effects on bass so that's not going to be an issue.
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I never use anything other than these:- https://www.mikehillservices.com/. Based in Milton Keynes UK and superb cables.
Glynn
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Looking good, Jazzy! I assume you will be adding the little black rubber covers to the George L’s?
Bill, tgo
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Yes i do have a load that came in the package.
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Well yesterday I took the pedal board to rehearsal with the band for my next gig. The cables behaved fine, no issue there but the Joyo PLX8 has a click that comes through the speakers when you select any of the loops. So that's pretty much rendered it useless. Will have to look for another type that has silent switching or go back to daisy chaining my effects together.
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On my last big pedal board I used a switcher made by One Control. They make several in their “reptile series”. I have the Agamidae Tail. Excellent switcher.
Bill, tgo
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No.