Do you have standard colors for wiring?

[Gilles C]

The reason I ask is that I always try to use a different color of wire for the input than the output. And I also use a different color for pots.

And as I began to make new layouts, and redo some older ones, I was wondering about this detail. I would like to establish a kind of standard that would make circuits easier to test and debug. The same colors would be used both in the Wiring Diagrams and with the real Wiring.

Black and Red for the battery is pretty standard.

What about IN and OUT?

And then pots?

I normally use Yellow and Green for the IN/OUT wires.

What about you?

Gilles

[Mark Hammer]

I generally use white for in and blue for out.  This both to/from the board and to/from any output volume pot, jack or stompswitch.  I'll often use grey or purple for modulation sources, and brown/orange/yellow for 3-band tonestacks.

I started doing it a while ago so I could follow my wiring on perfed projects and also through the boxed pedal.

[Gilles C]

Thanks Mark.

I forgot to say that we don't have to use all the same colors for our projects. But it could be the right time for a newbie to start on the right foot, and begin to start his standard based on what most people use, or find the colors he prefer to use, but always use the same colors for the same things.

Good idea for the Tonestacks, I like the choice of colors.

Gilles

[jonathan perez]

no haha

[Morocotopo]

Usually i start all tidy and logical (9V red, gnd black, etc.) but then... swap pot cables connected wrong, cut and splice cables not long enough, forgotten connections, only have violet cable left and it´s too late to go to the shop, etc.etc, and the final result is more like Miro gone mad... 

[QSQCaito]

I have lotssss of cable.. but theyre all grey and white.. imagine the result.. what i do is on pot all with grey, the other with white, negative grey, positive white, input white, output grey,, my standards.. but all a mess indeed..

hahaha
things that happen.. it gives more adrenaline when you're testing it.. cause you know it's all wrong

bye bye

DaC

[burnt fingers]

I personally just use one spool of black wire.  I may be doing it wrong but it works for me.  The only thing I do to help myself is to put a little red electrical tape on the V+ wires.

I thinkg the idea of color coding is great but I'm too impatient (and to cheap) to deal with a bunch of spools of wire. 

Good luck with your project.

[birt]

since i get most of the wire i use from old stuff (i got loads of different colors and all kinds of lengths from an inktjet printer) i use everything everywhere. sometimes i think about it and use the same color for 9v or ground connections. but thats it

[jimbob]

I personally just use one spool of black wire.

I do the same thing. I order a spool of 100ft and order usually a different color each time I run out. I might get wild here soon and order green- so my next so many projects will be wired in all green.

[Mark Hammer]

I should add two very important  things to my earlier posting:

1) A lot of what I build is perf-board and improvised, and constantly interrupted, set aside, returned to a month later, and so on.  The colour is immensely helpful in being able to keep track under such ridiculously disorganized circumstances.  If everything I made were PCB then I imagine a single colour could work just as well.  It would simply be less pretty.

2) I am able to use different colours through the good graces of Steve Daniels, who graciously sent me a C.A.R.E. package of about 10 spools of all different colours some time ago.

For those who may be interested in using different colours but aren't quite so fortunate to be able to spring $3-5@ for a bunch of colours, I heartily endorse keeping your eyes peeled for any sort of phone wiring renovation in office buildings.  Thoe thick solid-core multi-stranded cables for phone lines are a terrific source of colour-coded wires.  Used them for years until I upgraded.

[Gilles C]

Hahaha... I knew many of you guys were using only 1 or 2 colors to wires your effects, and it's ok for most of you , as long as it doesn't cause you problems.
Your effects won't stop working because of that 

But like Mark, I have many circuits that I won't be able to finish or try until a few weeks or month after I wired them. There are even some which I don't remember what they are.

And I know what problems I can have with badly identified wires (wrong color) because it happened to me. Connecting the +9V to the wrong wire, or starting to unsolder some parts because I "thought" it wasn't working while I was checking the wrong wire, burning my finger on a hot resistor or transistor because  of a bad connection, etc...  That's the kind of things that happened to me because of that. That's why I try to be consistent with my wiring.

What I like to use is gauge 24 multicolor flat cable or twisted pairs when I find them.

One last sugestion is to use white wire, and many felt pens to add a color code to it. It's better than nothing.

But now I know what I wanted to know...

Oh, did I tell you that I color coded some of my guitar wires. It saved my life a few times in some wild Blues Jams.

Gilles

[moody07747]

im an electrician so when i got my wires i tried to apply the same ""codes" to the electronics

black i use for hot leads (+)
white i use for neg. leads (-)
and green as a ground

i dont do much electronics because i simply dont understand it half the time...
my main work with electronics is modding pedals..thats about it.

[newbie builder]

I try to wire everything in a pedal with either black or red........that way it looks cool to me. Other than that, I just have to trace the wires and look at the perf to figure out what is doing what.

[Gilles C]

im an electrician so when i got my wires i tried to apply the same ""codes" to the electronics

black i use for hot leads (+)
white i use for neg. leads (-)
and green as a ground

i dont do much electronics because i simply dont understand it half the time...
my main work with electronics is modding pedals..thats about it.

Exact. For an electrician (AC wiring), White is neutral. Green is ground. And most other color can be used for hot, like Black, Red, Blue, and Yellow.

But for an electronician (DC wiring), the Black wire is always connected to the negative terminal, and the White wire always to the positive terminal.

Sometimes, when I stopped building things for a while, I wonder what the color of the ground is. Because I work both in AC and DC circuits.

Gilles

[Alex C]

Yes, I use color-coding.

These colors are standard for all builds:
Red:     V+
Black:   Ground
Green:  Input
Blue:    Output

For pots, switches, etc. I use combinations of white, green, and blue wires and further color code by wrapping each wire in a specific color of electrical tape every few centimeters, which results in a "striped" wire. I mark this on the layout or diagram.  For example, "white with green" goes to Speed lug 3, "blue with yellow" goes to volume lug 2, etc.  These are not standardized; they vary with each build.

[cd]

Like some of you guys I never use color coding either.  It's always wired neatly, but I never give a thought as to the color.  I will use whatever wire fits the tonal goal of that part of the circuit. 

[Gilles C]

Hummm, 1 Green and 2 Blue for Output. Blue could become a standard...

Yellow, White or Green for Input? I think it will be White.

I worked on a Wiring Diagram tonight with these colors. It looked ok. But I also had a Drive Pot to wire. I realised I needed a different color for the pin 2-3 of the pot than the pin 1. I like to use a drill to twist the wires going to pots together, so they need to have different colors for when I connect them. Hummm... Orange and Yellow maybe. Green could be there too if a 3rd wire is needed.

I remember now I like Grey and Purple for Control. I saw that in Boss pedals for the momentary footswitch I think.

Like I said, it seems that for every one who uses color coding, another doesn't.

Thanks,

Gilles

[petemoore]

  It makes it alot easier to keep track, especially if you have pots with 3 wires each coming off the board.
  red. v+  * [or other]
  Blk. GndS  *depending on polarity of course
  because V+ is usually really obvious, I'll use red as an alternate elsewhere.
  Then I'll use like...yellow/beige/Brown for the 3 wires for pot 1, making the input wire the brightest of the three colors.
  Blue/Green/Blue [because I don't have a blue w/green stripe] for the other pot.
  Another trick I use is just loop the end of the 'one' wire, bend a tight hook in next one, leave the third plain, to mark them, then remember [hopefully] which one was marked that way.
  when you have say 8-10 wires coming off of the board, some of them originating at close quarters, it makes it much easier to sort out which's whichif theyr'e marked [correctly ...or to sort out which's which when they're order must be double checked...I've used the DMM to find which color beeps where .
 

[BDuguay]

There is a wire colour code that we use at my place of employment. It is similar to resistor code but 1 digit back.
Like so...
blk - 1
brn - 2
red - 3
org - 4
yel - 5
grn - 6
blu - 7
vio - 8
gry - 9
wht - 10

[birt]

yeah why not use the resistor color code?

black = ground
brown = 9v
red = in
orange = out
yellow = pot lug 1
green = pot lug 2
blue = pot lug 3
violet = switch lug 1
grey = switch lug 2
white = switch lug 3


or something like that.
i think i'm gonna try this on my next build.