How about a Pedal Snake

[Gilles C]

I kew about the Spyder, but while searching about power jacks for my 9V Power Supply, I found this Power Snake.

I found it very inspiring for my future connections...

http://www.pedalsnake.com/

Check the video.

Gilles

[littlegreiger]

That looks pretty sweet. It would definitely clean up your pedal board if you have an fx loop and no on board power supply. However, if you already have a power supply on your board, like the spyder for instance, it might turn out to be just another expensive guitar cable. Still a really sweet idea though.

[Pushtone]

I'm working on a guitar snake system right now.
Its vastly different from the pedalsnake.com people.
Can't tell you my method as I hope to sell them.

Only problem is the cable is expensive!
Just like a 24 channel mic snake is expensive.
(no it does not employ mic snake cable)

So do you think a player would spend several hundred on a 6 channel snake that would carry
guitar signal to two amps, a rack tuner and rack effects and DC power to the pedalboard?

I'm looking at a $300 price point for a 30 foot guitar snake.

My gut feeling is guitar players would rather put up with a rats nest of cable
rather than sit down an plan a system out they'll have to live with.

Opinions?

[Gilles C]

A 30 foot cable is more than what people can normally find, and a good guitar cable that long is already expensive.

For someone in need of 6 cables, it would be a fair price. I already paid around $25.00 or $30.00 can for a 25 feet cable with a special jacket, so $30.00 x 5 = $300.00 would be realistic for a clean setup.

I also bought a stereo mic cable a few years ago to have a send/return kind of cable for my guitar. I always liked that kind of multi-cables for my connections...

Gilles

[Pushtone]

Cool.

We build custom mic snakes at work often. My guitar snake concept would be along the same lines
where the length as well as the terminations at each end would be custom.

The whole idea came to me because I hate the sound of ALL wireless systems.
Bought a cheap one and it sounded terrible. AKG WMS40
Bought a middle of the road Sennheiser and it sounded bad.
Rented a $3000.00 Shure system and even it sounded ugly.

What really did it for me though was when I went to my Sound Engineers Handbook,
a book about 6 inches thick, and all it said under wireless was
"a wireless microphone can not approach the reliability of a wired mic."

I'll never give up on cable, even if copper hits $5.00 a pound.
My favorite is Mogami cable. I see they make a twin coax cable.
Is you stereo cable Mogami by any chance?

[Gilles C]

No, it's not Mogami. Not that good...

It was (because I ended up splitting it to make shorter mono cables with it) a dark grey cable.

Gilles

[blanik]

i just buy the cables i need (including power, back in my mega pedalboard days), remove all the jacks on one end and slide in several 3-4" long pieces of yellow heat-shrink tubing, spread it all the lenght of the cables and heat them up, put the jacks back on with different smaller pieces of heat-shrink on each jack (different, highly contrasted colors so i can recognize wich jack is wich on the darkest stage) and i color coded my pedalboard outputs so even the drunkest/dumbest roadie can figure it out!! 

if one of the cables break after a while (wich they are less prone to do when gagned up like that) i just have a little heat-shrink session do do, so i don't need to replace the whole thing...

two output jacks (stereo rig) a shielded power cable (small to medium gauge since effects don't pull that much power) and a footswitch jack, is still only 4 cables together... still smaller than any PA snake, and with those yellow stripes every foot or so it's highly visible by anyone on stage... don't even need to tape it...

R.

[Ge_Whiz]

I just know that if I spent $300+ on a PedalSnake, it would still be three inches short at the other end... 

[MartyMart]

I just know that if I spent $300+ on a PedalSnake, it would still be three inches short at the other end... 

MM !

I've made up a couple of snakes using belden cable and that "nylon" flexible tubing that gets fat
when you twist it ( studiospares ) looks like material .
You have to burn the ends to stop it fraying, then use a piece of heatshrink.
One that I made lasted from '98 to 2002 and was gigged around Europe every year, must have been
at least 300 shows before it got damaged ( by a roadie who rolled a 750Lb case over it !! )

[darron]

cool idea.. sorta. not for me though.

i was wondering.... i had the idea ages ago to run all my pedals off one stereo line that carried the signal, ground/negative and positive. you'd have to take the mono jacks out of the pedals, replace them with stereo ones and remove the switches. it would work. it would look cool. BUT... would this add any noise or hum running the positive line right beside the audio? it would run even closer to the audio line than the negative shielding would.

i'd love to hear what people think?

[Gilles C]

I found the kind of cable I bought that I said cost me $25.00-$30.00 CAN.

http://www.best-tronics.com/guitar-cable/guitarnylon.htm

I bought it especially for Blues jams, because I always knew which one was mine, it was long enough for any occasion,and I would not end up with tangled wired in the end.

They have some heat-shrink tubing on the jacks as you guys do.

Gilles

[jeffy]

Wouldn't there be an issue with AC voltages and guitar signal in the same cable bleed noise into the signal by being so close?

[darron]

Wouldn't there be an issue with AC voltages and guitar signal in the same cable bleed noise into the signal by being so close?

that's my assumption...

maybe someone should do an experiment?

[Pushtone]

Another cool thing for these kinda snakes are compression nuts.
Buy them in the electrical dept. at Home Depot.
Their plastic panel mount nuts with a  rubber seal inside.
When you tighten them the seal forms around the cable locking it in place.
Good strain relief. and water proof too.

[Ge_Whiz]

BUT... would this add any noise or hum running the positive line right beside the audio? it would run even closer to the audio line than the negative shielding would.

i'd love to hear what people think?

You'd have to have a very quiet and well-regulated power supply for that. Not good building practice. You might get away with individually screened mono cores, but...

[hairyandy]

I build all of my own cable looms for the guy that I tech for.  We always use Canare GS-6 cable and switchcraft ends and loom it up with the flexcore material that Marty was talking about.  There is no better way to do it, period.  If you make them right and take care of them your looms will last as long as you need them to.

[analogmike]

The guitar cables in the pedalsnake sound bad unless you have some buffered pedals or a buffer. They just have too much capacitance for a true bypass effect user. thin gls cable would work well to make your own snake.

[Arn C.]

Howdy!

Blanik wrote

[a shielded power cable (small to medium gauge since effects don't pull that much power) /quote]
shielded power lines?   

So, could I actually use microphone cable, since it is shielded and has two wires(one for - and one for +) ?

This has been bothering me for some time now, all the narly mess of wires.  I just wanna slap the bundle of wires on the floor and start hookin it up instead of the slow process I go through now.

Thanks!
Arn C.

[darron]

You'd have to have a very quiet and well-regulated power supply for that. Not good building practice. You might get away with individually screened mono cores, but...

thanks. i won't try it out then. but it WOULD look cool

[blanik]

sorry, my mistake, i was typing faster than i was thinking... 
i didn't mean shielded power cable, i was talking about regular power cable with a ground, like they have at most venues, the big black cable used to feed spotlights, i used some smaller gauge one for my snake (since i only had to feed 2 PS), and at the pedalboard end i removed the regular plug and put a computer style 3 pin power cord plug with the female part on the pedalboard casing...

some of you talked about some kind of sheet or plastic shield? never seen that, but the heat shrink thing is cheap and once installed makes a solid snake, easy to roll..

R.