pedal board junction

[olslick]

i'm in the process of building a new pedal board. i want to build a sort of junction box, that would handle all of the ins and outs of the guitar signal and act as a power strip for my wall warts.

i'm thinking that the pedals themselves will be one basic effects loop with an output for the first pedal in the chain and an input for the last. then i will have an input for guitar and two outputs for running two amps. i also wanted to have an input/output for an amps footswitch so that that stays on the pedal board. i think as far as wiring goes all i have to do is make sure all my inputs are stereo jacks and run wires from the sleeve to the tip of the output jacks which would all be mono. is this correct?

i've scoured the interwebs looking for diagrams of how to wire this up, but most of the one's i've found aren't necessarily passive. most involve at least a footswitch and an led and an input or output buffer and i don't think i need all of that.

as far as the power goes i was thinking i would just put standard wall power outlets in my junction box enclosure, then wire those to an on/off switch and an 115v ac input mounted to the enclosure. then when i get to a gig or something i only have to plug a heavy duty power cord and guitar and amp cables to this junction on my board. the pedals and power supplies are never messed with again.

it all seems pretty easy but i wanted to make sure i don't mess this up as i'm not too sure about ground loops and such. and who knows, you guys might be able to think of something i'm missing as far as what you'd want on a box like this. i considered putting an effects loop to go to the amp, but i don't ever find the need to use an amps effects loop. i also considered putting a tuner out, but i usually just use the one on my volume pedal. is there anything i'm missing?

[jkokura]

I'd suggest that if you want to split your signal between an effects loop and a tuner to use a buffer, like the Opamp buffer from AMZ. If you don't care, and want to go guitar>pedal chain>amp then it's just simple wiring. Wire your tip to tip from the in to the send, then tip to tip from your return to the amp jack, and then connect all the grounds together and you should be good to go.

I would suggest a separate junction box from your powersupply. The problems with doing both in one box are: you don't know if down the road you might change to a different powersupply or use the junction box separate from the power for some reason so putting them together locks you into that one format, and while I doubt you would run into problems of interference and such, it may cause humming and grounding issues that you don't want to deal with. Find a good useable powerbar and fasten that down rather than make some sort of box for it. Or use a commercial or DIY powersupply like the ones suggested at GGG or the PP2 from Voodoo labs. Just a suggestion.

Jacob

[Paul Marossy]

Patchbays are very easy to make. It's just two jacks wired in parallel for your in and out. It doesn't get any simpler than that.

But if you are going to have two amps connected to your output, then you need to do something to prevent ground loops, because any time you connect the grounds of two different amps together it is likely that you will have problems with hum. Something like the "Hum Free A/B/Y" at www.geofex.com ought to work for that.

[olslick]

so how do i wire the ground?

[Paul Marossy]

so how do i wire the ground?

I keep the ground on the input jacks and output jacks isolated from eachother. The output, if it is connecting two different amplifiers together with a common ground, will need to go thru some kind of circuit like the GEO A/B/Y splitter linked above to isolate the output grounds from eachother. Otherwise, it is likely that you might have some ground loop issues.