Poll: Do you prefer Side- or Top-mounted jacks?

[PRR]

The phone-plug was invented for constant connect disconnect--- telephone operators in the days before dial-up switching. It works OK at large guitar and amp. But when you get a dozen+ pedals underfoot you wind up being >10%, maybe >25% plugs and cables. And mostly after initial setup the connections are rarely changed.

Everybody please agree <ha> on a smaller connector. The guitar-cord gets adapted-down to pedal connector, pedal patches connect pedals, and adapted back up to 1/4" at the amp.
________________________________

The 1/4" jack is a lot of empty space. It should be physically possible to drill two 1/4" holes into a block and fit contacts so a plug may be inserted top or side, side or back. Three sides may be too many.....

[blackieNYC]

Hey Mr Druid sir,

Is this particular crowd among your customer base? Fine, upstanding members of the community, and Tapflo owners as well, but most of your responders have around 2000 posts or more.  I don't mean to turn this into a different poll and derail this thread. But if this were to be a perf and etch crowd, unlikely to purchase, this wouldn't be very accurate. Seeing the topic first appear I thought I wouldn't answer, seeming to have decided perf is best for me right now. Trying to make this not sound like troublemaking. I only ask because the vote is close. 
Top first, rear 2nd. I like the boxes right next to each other. Very pointy shoes.

[stallik]

Here we are still (ab)using it 138 years later.

And after 138 years, we can now buy jacks which can be crushed between 2 fingers. Progress!

Top or sides? I must confess there have been too many times where my answer is " where will they fit?"

[duck_arse]

pointy shoes or round toe?

pointy.

[amptramp]

pointy shoes or round toe?

pointy.

Winklepickers:

[digi2t]

pointy shoes or round toe?

pointy.

[R.G.]

My comment was based on my day job - designing pedals. I keep being offended at having to put those huge jacks into pedal boxes again every time I start a new design.

Sigh.

The 1/8" jack remark was a pipe dream, I realize. Even more so than center-negative DC plugs, we can't go back and un-do over sixty years of pedals using the 1/4" jack. I just wish we could.

I keep thinking of this off and on. I have occasionally sketched out a partial design for some kind of PAN (Pedalboard Area Network  ) to eliminate the cables entirely, as well as ground isolation issues and probably even switching/bypass/ordering issues for pedals. But that's a huge step and there's really no reason for a guitarist to adopt it. I think we're stuck with the 1/4" jack for the foreseeable future.

The pedalboard has grown from a piece of plywood holding a few pedals into an electronic system in the same way that coral reefs grow - by incremental accretion. And for the same reasons, it's inseparably tied to the base it has, for better or worse.

[robthequiet]

RG -- the FXBus? It's a great idea.    By the time we get all the manufacturers to agree on a format we'll probably have nothing but DSP algorithms that connect via Bluetooth straight to our in-brain monitors. OTOH, there are some less expensive projects from the military that are based on self-registering mesh networks, like a swarm of IP microphones (shhh!) -- if you have seen the Reactable project, it's kind of along the same logical path, something like a control surface onto which you place your "pucks" and control them by proximity and orientation. Demo here:

Look, Ma, no jacks! 

[Processaurus]

If you have the room, why not put both side and top jacks in   

Or, hey RG, why not stick some little 1/8" jacks in back, in addition to the 1/4" jacks, and start the transition to sanity?

[ElectricDruid]

Can we have a +/-12V (or +/-15V) power supply too?!

This new pedal is going to be bristling with connections!

Tom

[DavidRavenMoon]

Here's what annoys me; when did pedals start having the input on the right and output on the left?

As a left to right English reader this seems backwards!

I seem to remember a time when it wasn't this way?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[R.G.]

Here's what annoys me; when did pedals start having the input on the right and output on the left?
As a left to right English reader this seems backwards!
I seem to remember a time when it wasn't this way?

It bothered me too, so much that I put a section in "PCB Layout for Musical Effects" (which is finally back in stock at Small Bear) about why this is.

Most guitar players are right handed, so the left hand works the fingerboard and the body of the guitar is on the player's left. The cord exits down and to the right side toward whatever it plugs into.

Pedals sit facing the player, so the cord enters pedals with the fewest crossings of the player's feet if the input jack is on the right. It's a human interface thing. The electrons don't care.

It is confusing to left-to-right readers, but there is a technical and human interface reason for it. I don't remember a time when they were all left to right, but I'm sure some of them were at different times.

[DavidRavenMoon]

Here's what annoys me; when did pedals start having the input on the right and output on the left?
As a left to right English reader this seems backwards!
I seem to remember a time when it wasn't this way?

Most guitar players are right handed, so the left hand works the fingerboard and the body of the guitar is on the player's left. The cord exits down and to the right side toward whatever it plugs into.

Pedals sit facing the player, so the cord enters pedals with the fewest crossings of the player's feet if the input jack is on the right. It's a human interface thing. The electrons don't care.

It is confusing to left-to-right readers, but there is a technical and human interface reason for it. I don't remember a time when they were all left to right, but I'm sure some of them were at different times.

Ah! That makes sense. I still don't like it though! lol


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ElectricDruid]

So did Jimi Hendrix have his pedals altered to go left to right, or did he just use normal pedals upside down?



T.