Free stompbox wire

[JohnnyB]

Hey everyone

If you're like me and prefer to use what you have lying around for stompboxes try find old LPT printer cables.
If you strip back the outer plastic you'll find a stack of wires of varying colours to use for the wiring in your stompboxes, and they about 24 gauge.
It needs to be the old LPT cables as the newer ones have really thin wire which won't work well.
The pics show what I'm refering to, the stompboxes' wires are all from an LPT cable.

[edvard]

Awesome!
...and I was just going to throw those things out next week...

This thread should join those "Don't throw out that <useless electronic doohickey>!" threads.
I've gotten quite the collection of wire from old computer power supplies, dead VCR's, etc.
Old (not the Ultra- variety) IDE hard drive cable can be used for ribbon cable if you're careful; it's a bit on the skinny side.

Thanks!

[Mark Hammer]

Thanks for the reminder.  I used to score wire from cast-off office telephone switcher cables, but those babies are a thing of the past.  I had completely forgotten about old printer cables from my Centronics days and my (not so) trusty old 9-pin and 24-pin printers.  Those must be in a bag, box or bin somewhere.

[edvard]

If you don't have any lying around, try Freecycle: http://www.freecycle.org/
There's probably more than a few packrats around that are more than willing to dump stuff on you that they can't bear to throw in the dump.
And, um... vice-versa...