Pedalboard audio routing : patch panel?

[kiat]

With a limited number of pedals and devices (to use in my signal paths) Pre, Post, Amp, DI, BT, IEM (band feed, bass), transmitter headphones, etc, rather than having to move and jig devices and their connections around into different configurations based on the use case: practice at home, band rehearsals, videoing, gigging, I'm thinking about audio routing with 1/4" patch panels (or other compact mono or stereo patch cables).

 

I'm thinking it might be worth the effort and sacrifice.

 

Has anyone tried this before and if so what worked/didn't etc?

[BigRedX]

In theory a decent idea.

 

However in practice, especially for live use, every additional connection adds another point of potential failure and a patch bay will add 2 for every device connected to it. Also connections that are made and broken on a regular basis tend to be the ones that fail first.

 

If you find yourself changing the routings you use on your pedal board a lot, there are two things you may want to look at:

 

1. Have your patch bay normalised so that the most commonly used configuration is hard wired into it without needing any additional patch cables.

 

2. Look at one of the MIDI controlled routing systems where all your devices are attached to a master controller unit and the various routing are made from that.

[SimonK]

My bass and acoustic pedal boards are pretty linear, but for my electric guitar pedalboard I use a 4-cable multi-core and a Bright Onion patch box so that I can easily switch pedals before and after the preamp.