Tips for the sexiest offboard wiring!

[benallison]

lulz

[G. Hoffman]

I'm less a fan of solid core wire.  Generally we don't necessarily use what the big guys do as an example for our work here, but you'll notice there aren't any widely available, large-scale production pedals that use solid core wire.  Why?  It's more prone to failure than stranded of the same gauge.  At least that's always been my understanding.  Which is a bummer because it's so damn easy to work with, especially when you need to desolder it

I'm completely with you there.  I do not like solid core wire because it just isn't as reliable.  I do, however, use Teflon insulated wire, which gives you much of the stiffness without the reliability issues, and you don't have to worry about melting it with your soldering iron, which is a plus! 

Also, if you are going to bend wires with a pliers, you really should be using a round nosed pliers, such as THESE.  Make the bends as big as you can so you are spreading the stress over as large an area as possible.  I have a great pair of pliers that I stole from my dad (who has no use for them anymore) that have one round jaw and one flat jaw, which work better than any of my duel round nose pliers.  Sadly, i8t was made in the sixties, and I can't find them anywhere anymore.

And having my first amp build be incredibly sloppy, I can attest to the fact that spaghetti does, in fact, oscillate!


Gabriel

[frank_p]

Uh, there's something wrong with you if you find wires to be sexy. 

Wires Like an Egyptian

[joegagan]

easy when there are hardly any wires

[humptydumpty]

maybe im not looking hard enough, but whered ya get the terminal strip?

[joegagan]

i got those term strips at a surplus place here.

[Paul Marossy]

Uh, there's something wrong with you if you find wires to be sexy. 

Wires Like an Egyptian

Uh... there's no wires in that video, unless you are in a roundabout way referring to somewhat wirey looking women.   

[DougH]

Good lead dress has nothing to do with "purtyness".

Parallel wires: bad- vulnerable to crosstalk.
Input/Output wires colocated: bad- vulnerable to oscillation.
90 degree wire bends: waste of wire. Keep wires as short as possible.
And long wires that can get tangled up with a battery and broken during a battery install are never a good idea.

[Paul Marossy]

Good lead dress has nothing to do with "purtyness".

Parallel wires: bad- vulnerable to crosstalk.
Input/Output wires colocated: bad- vulnerable to oscillation.
90 degree wire bends: waste of wire. Keep wires as short as possible.
And long wires that can get tangled up with a battery and broken during a battery install are never a good idea.

I've only been joking around so far in this thread, but I totally agree with you. On another forum I belong to, this guy had a similar looking pedal to one that is shown here with all the wires running parallel as if they were a ribbon cable with perfect right angles and all that. But he couldn't figure out why he had a problem with oscillation. He had input and output wires in close proximity to eachother along with a gain control and other wires. We set him straight. I wonder if he learned something and changed his ways or if he's still doing his pretty wiring anyway.  

And for any of us that have built a tube amp, we know what Doug says above to be especially true. If you can make it look pretty and have it be efficient without a bunch wires being bundled together and running parallel for long distances, great. But if not, reliabilty and predictable, non-chaotic behavior is far more important to me than a pretty wiring job. What good is a pretty wiring job that no one can see when the chassis is inside the cabinet when you can't turn any of the controls up past three because it becomes a humming, howling, squealing mess?

[DougH]

I'll take an opportunity to brag a little and tell you I think these are all reasonable wiring jobs:

http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=37240&g2_serialNumber=2

http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=16564&g2_serialNumber=2

http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=22767&g2_serialNumber=1

None of them will win an internet booteek beauty contest, but they follow the principles of good lead dress.

[Paul Marossy]

Yeah, that amp chassis looks nice. Reasonably neat wiring and well thought out with no wires running parallel in close proximity to eachother and wires as short as practically possible. And where wires cross, they are at right angles to eachother. Exactly how a tube amp should be wired.

Is that one of your builds, Doug?

[DougH]

Yes, all three photos are things that I built.

[Paul Marossy]

Yes, all three photos are things that I built.

I thought so.

[solderman]

Are the heebee jeebees good or bad in this case?

Bad. The parallel wires, mainly because of crosstalk and noise (not really an issue if it's not a high-gain distortion or something); and the 90-degree plier bends because they're unnecessary stress.

Probably won't cause any problems in a stompbox, but it's bad practice for bigger toys.

Good for the eye Bad for the bone (sound)

Mainly because solid core wire will brake easier and parallel cables will transmitt noise in hi gain pedals.

But as art, extraordinary 

[DougH]

If you want to use multistrand wire that stays put- try teflon. Kind of overdone for pedals IMO, but I use it in amps and like it a lot.

[MikeH]

Input/Output wires colocated: bad- vulnerable to oscillation.

Does this mean "In the same general area" or literally occupying the same space? 

And Doug doesn't twist his heater wires!!  Oh boy...

[DougH]

Re. the heaters- I wanted to try running them in parallel and there really wasn't much room in this cramped space to get much of a "twist" in between the tube sockets. I pushed the limit of crowding stuff with this one. In any case, it worked fine. The reason they twist wires is to keep the wire cores equidistant so the AC heater signal will hum cancel (similar to humbucker coils). Another way of keeping them equidistant is to run them in parallel. I've also used zip cord for heaters, which by definition is two parallel wires (no twists). That works fine too.

See? "Pretty" has nothing to do with it. 

As for I/O wires- keep them as far away from each other as practically possible. With a typical 3pdt this usually ends up being about a 1/2 inch for the ends. Especially don't run them close and in parallel.

[Paul Marossy]

Re. the heaters- I wanted to try running them in parallel and there really wasn't much room in this cramped space to get much of a "twist" in between the tube sockets. I pushed the limit of crowding stuff with this one. In any case, it worked fine. The reason they twist wires is to keep the wire cores equidistant so the AC heater signal will hum cancel (similar to humbucker coils). Another way of keeping them equidistant is to run them in parallel. I've also used zip cord for heaters, which by definition is two parallel wires (no twists). That works fine too.

Interesting. If I ever build another tube amp someday, I might try just paralleling those heater wires instead.

As for I/O wires- keep them as far away from each other as practically possible. With a typical 3pdt this usually ends up being about a 1/2 inch for the ends. Especially don't run them close and in parallel.

Yeah, that is a big no no. That is unless you like and want to have problems with oscillation...

[solderman]

In general, there are two areas of this hobby that I hate........

• The winner without competition is drilling PCB:s
• The runner up is wiring the sodded effect, there is always some thing that happens and gets in the way of some other thing and shortens a third thing.

Well this could be my own fault cause of my stubborn way of shrink things to fit in a 1590A box. This one in particular was a mean @#$%er to tame.  
Tree of the switches has tree wires from them and one has two. And it wasn't until I was going to tighten the hex nuts that I released that there was not enough space for all of the nuts so I had to tighten them 1-3-4 and then 2 on top of 1&3



My one fault put it was a PITA.

BUT  I Won !!!!

Victory over dead things has a sweeter taste then everything else

Wanne know how it sounds?

 
My favorite combo, 3:rd octave down+one octave up + Phaser45 + Chorus
http://solderman.fatabur.se/Donkey_Kong/DK%20chorus_ph45_3%20oct%20down%20and%201oct%20up.mp3

A more contemplative thought is why we are doing this at all. I mean... After the 25th distortion box it's kind of hard to defend the 26:th with "I need it for the next gig" eave to one self.
So some of us get kicks from size and others do it for sexy wiring. As always there is no right or wrong way just your one way........ as I see it.



 
 

[benallison]

So is there any way to have sexy wiring that follows best practices?