Do you have standard colors for wiring?

[col]

Qite early on in my pedal building I settled on standard colours. All + are red, all earth black(unless +ve earth!), all input, input switches, pots etc. yellow and all output green. I then usually use white, orange and brown for other controls in order of preference. It makes it so much easier to find problems and in getting the correct wire to the correct pot/switch/jack etc. Last year I got hold of a 10m length of multicore telephone cable from a bin at work and cut it into 2m lengths before separating the different coloured strands. Since then I've only had to buy a small roll of black and as I've just found some more telephone cable I will be using that up.

[Gilles C]

The resistor color code is indeed a good idea, especially when some colors are always used for the same signals, like Black for ground, etc...

Especially when you can get a flat ribbon cable using that color code. That's what I prefer to use these days. But I have problems finding cables with more than 4 colors. A Black, White, Red and  Green cable is the last one I bought .

What I used a lot is the color code used by telephone companies with their 25 pair cables.



I worked for a company a few years where I was using this type of cables, and when I left that company, I still had a lot of that wire at home from left overs. That's where I learned to use twisted wires, and also use a drill to twist the wires that were not twisted originally.

You can get these cables in 2,4 or more pairs. All you have to do is separate the pairs by keeping the pairs intact.

From what I see, for those working in electricity/electronics, the place we work(ed) is a big influence in the choice of what we use on guitar effects.

Thanks guys for sharing your wiring habits, it helps me re-define what I like(d) to use.

Added:

Qite early on in my pedal building I settled on standard colours. All + are red, all earth black(unless +ve earth!), all input, input switches, pots etc. yellow and all output green. I then usually use white, orange and brown for other controls in order of preference. It makes it so much easier to find problems and in getting the correct wire to the correct pot/switch/jack etc. Last year I got hold of a 10m length of multicore telephone cable from a bin at work and cut it into 2m lengths before separating the different coloured strands. Since then I've only had to buy a small roll of black and as I've just found some more telephone cable I will be using that up.

Hey, you posted while I was writing my post, and it seems that you are the one being closest to my wiring habits...

You answered a question I had about using these twisted pairs. What to use when 3 wires are needed. Black when it is a ground, another color when it's not.

Gilles

[mydementia]

Gilles,
Do you use the twisted pairs for redundancy (like we do at my aerospace company) or do you break them up and run single wires to each connection?  At phone cable gauge, I'd think you'd risk breakage and might want redundancy...

I use solid core, 24AWG wire for In/Out and power:
In=Blue
Out=Purple
Batt+=Red
BattG=Black

I use 24AWG stranded wire for the pots and switches...allows more flexibility for installation.  By using different types, I can hold my power and in/out jacks in one spot and my jacks can move around (helps a lot when testing a big circuit and you don't want bits to touch...learned the hard way...difficult to get the magic smoke back into the IC...but that's why we socket, right? )

Good thread...always interesting to see what everyone else is doing.
Mike

[Gilles C]

I don't separate the pairs unless I need a single wire. More combinations become available that way with the same number of wires.

You're right about the phone cable gauge. It breaks easily, and is normally snapped into a connector with a tool instead of being soldered. I didn't use that kind of cable for so long now (over 20 years...) that I forgot.

And I think that the twisted pairs that I could find lately were following the resistor color code, and with a bigger gauge like 24 which is the one I prefer, stranded if possible.

Deleted some and added this:

I realised that there were too many standards to adopt only one and say it is the best one. I also realised that the flat cable (4 wires, 24 AWG) I was using lately used one of the Intercom Color Codes.

So, I decided on some colors for my own use, inspired by some of these so-called standards. Today, I bought a few 100' 22 gauge rolls of stranded wire for the colors I needed for my nexr project with my new standard.  The 24 guage solid wire I already had will only be used for on-board wiring now.

This concludes my search of a standard for my wiring.

Thanks for your answers.

Gilles