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Lead Dress for pedals...is twisting ok?

Posted: 04 Jan 2013, 04:34
by DarrylC.
I just hopped on the veroboard train a month ago and while my first couple of builds have been successful, they were also pretty simple. My last two have been a Honey Bee and a Skreddy Lunar Module and both of them don't seem to operate fully the way they should. It ran across my mind today that maybe it is the way I have wired the pots. I seem to want to make everything look very neat and tend to twist my leads so they don't create a rat's nest. It hit me today that doing so is probably introducing cross-talk and depending on how tightly the leads are twisted I could possibly be affecting how the post read in the circuit. My honey bee has some oscillation at the gain pot and my skreddy has some weird lower frequency oscillation stuff happening on one of the pots,too. I know I should be keeping my leads as short as possible, but should I not be twisting them up? Sorry if this is a stupid question.

Re: Lead Dress for pedals...is twisting ok?

Posted: 04 Jan 2013, 11:39
by deltafred
Not a stupid question at all.

Twisting is fine but don't just twist all the wires together. I would twist wires to each pot or socket separately, that way you are minimising crosstalk.

Definitely don't twist inputs with outputs, and anything that is before a high gain and/or high impedance input stage with anything else.

Re: Lead Dress for pedals...is twisting ok?

Posted: 05 Jan 2013, 18:02
by DrNomis
I agree with Deltafred, if the wires are just going to things like pots, Leds, Switches, Battery Clips, twisting the wires shouldn't cause many problems, things like Input sockets and connections to High-Impedance and High-Gain circuitry should really be done using shielded-audio wire, also, try and keep the Input and Output sockets as far away from each other as physically possible, this stops the Input socket from picking up a signal from the output, if this is allowed to happen the circuit will turn into an oscillator, ie it will feedback on itself..... :thumbsup

Re: Lead Dress for pedals...is twisting ok?

Posted: 05 Jan 2013, 18:25
by Lucifer
Hi Doc,

Hope you haven't had your wires twisted lately - there's certainly been very little noise from you of late ! :D

Have you seen my new amp stand (under the Amps thread) ? I've now got a balanced amp to go with my balanced wiring !

By the way - Happy New Year to you and to Delta Fred.

Re: Lead Dress for pedals...is twisting ok?

Posted: 05 Jan 2013, 18:28
by deltafred
DrNomis wrote:... if the wires are just going to things like pots, ...
I usually err on the safe side with pots and keep them separate, especially higher value ones.

Edit - Happy New Year to all FSBers.

I met a guy I know yesterday and wished him Happy New Year, he replied well it is a new year but still the same old shit. :hmmm:

Re: Lead Dress for pedals...is twisting ok?

Posted: 05 Jan 2013, 19:25
by DrNomis
Lucifer wrote:Hi Doc,

Hope you haven't had your wires twisted lately - there's certainly been very little noise from you of late ! :D

Have you seen my new amp stand (under the Amps thread) ? I've now got a balanced amp to go with my balanced wiring !

By the way - Happy New Year to you and to Delta Fred.

Happy new year to you too mate, the reason why I haven't been making much noise is because....surprise..surprise, internet credit ran out again, I'm using what credit I've got left on my Samsung Galaxy Y phone, will have to wait till this coming tuesday to buy more credit for my new 4G modem, will check out the balanced amp stand shortly..... :thumbsup



Sorry to get slightly off topic.... :thumbsup

Re: Lead Dress for pedals...is twisting ok?

Posted: 05 Jan 2013, 22:05
by Seiche
DrNomis wrote:Sorry to get slightly off topic.... :thumbsup
[smilie=nonono.gif] [smilie=new_tomato.gif] [smilie=pope.gif]

Re: Lead Dress for pedals...is twisting ok?

Posted: 05 Jan 2013, 22:34
by DrNomis
Humble apologies Seiche.... :oops:

Re: Lead Dress for pedals...is twisting ok?

Posted: 06 Jan 2013, 11:09
by Lucifer
No, no, it's MY fault officer !

I led him astray.

But it's in my job description. :twisted: