stompbox wiring... messy vs. neat

indyguitarist · Post by **indyguitarist** » 07 Jun 2009, 16:52

Just came across this:
http://www.muzique.com/news/spaghetti-wiring/

Many of us are sticklers on neat wiring, I'm curious to hear thoughts on the above article.
bw

lolbou · Post by **lolbou** » 07 Jun 2009, 17:23

It looks better when neat

, but, yes, the shortest way sounds like the best idea...

I don't really think that the extra path added by neat wiring add that much noise or capacitance by the way...

But I do believe that coupling the appropriate wires together helps with noise...

Anyway, it's a nice subject you bring here in the Café, I look forward some more opinions!

frequencycentral · Post by **frequencycentral** » 07 Jun 2009, 18:10

I like neat. Never had any problems with parallel ribbon cable, in stompboxes or synths.

Scruffie · Post by **Scruffie** » 07 Jun 2009, 18:14

I don't think you'd really get a problem unless perhaps it was in a huge multifx board with metres of cable, but it is a good excuse to have messier wiring atleast and claim it's been wired in a 'special' way.

soulsonic · Post by **soulsonic** » 08 Jun 2009, 08:21

If I do stuff on a circuit board, it usually turns out fairly neat; but if I wire point-to-point, it usually looks pretty chaotic.
Generally, I try to avoid making a wire unnecessarily long just for the sake of neatly routing it around the perimeter of something. That goes for my PCB designs too - I usually have the pads for the connections to the controls and whatnot pretty much right at the spot where they connect in the circuit; instead of routing traces to have all the connections at one edge of the board.

I also think there's a difference between something having chaotic wiring and something having sloppy wiring. I define sloppy wiring as things like unnecessarily long wires crammed in there and held in place with electrical tape. Basically, it's long wires that I don't like - so, I'd say I'm with Mr. Orman on this one.

Dirk_Hendrik · Post by **Dirk_Hendrik** » 08 Jun 2009, 12:42

Or,
(almost) no wires:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5663

(And easier testability prior to casing)

Paul Marossy · Post by **Paul Marossy** » 08 Jun 2009, 15:33

The first pedals that I built, all high gain distortions, were a rat's nest as far as the wiring is concerned. They always worked fine without giving me any problems.

I have gotten much better at wiring stuff very neatly since then, especially after building three tube amps. It's more of an asthetics thing to me these days, though.

sergedeep · Post by **sergedeep** » 09 Jun 2009, 11:05

Interesting. When I think of spaghetti wiring, I actually think of exessively long wires, not "the shortest way"...

culturejam · Post by **culturejam** » 09 Jun 2009, 12:54

I aim for "neat", but let "short" have the right of way, so to speak.

I love the look of all that fancy right-angle wiring, but it always seems like a waste of wire. I'm cheap!!

I always thought twisting wires together helped reduce noise?

Paul Marossy · Post by **Paul Marossy** » 09 Jun 2009, 14:26

Take a look inside of a Marshall GV-2 Guv'Nor and you'll see a lot of wires packed into it. It's not exactly what I would call "neat", and the wires are not as short as possible. That's a pretty high gain pedal and yet it has no problems with oscillation. And it's not very noisy at all.

Duckman · Post by **Duckman** » 10 Jun 2009, 01:59

culturejam wrote:I always thought twisting wires together helped reduce noise?

If that the case, maybe there's a "rule" to do that properly and some wires may not be twisted avoiding you to get the inverse effect.

Anyone got an answer to that or... it's a waste of time?

soulsonic · Post by **soulsonic** » 10 Jun 2009, 03:21

Well, I like to twist signal wires together with ground wires - especially the input signal wire. If you twist a signal wire together with a ground wire, it can act similar to a shielded wire. So, yeah, twisting wires together is definitely good sometimes, but you have to understand what's going through the wires first - if you just do it arbitrarily, you'll be asking for trouble!

telecaster · Post by **telecaster** » 10 Jun 2009, 04:34

rocklander · Post by **rocklander** » 10 Jun 2009, 10:58

biffa wrote:I like to twist things too..soulsonic
honesty for instance.

I have just been thinking the last few days how much I've missed having you round biffa.... not one jot

[dramaqueen plea] please please delete my account.. oh whoa is me... why wont you delete my account? *gnashing of teeth and wailing* [/dramaqueen plea]

bajaman · Post by **bajaman** » 10 Jun 2009, 12:35

looks like they let biffa out of the asylum again

they didn't even keep him for a month this time

Paul Marossy · Post by **Paul Marossy** » 10 Jun 2009, 12:44

soulsonic wrote:Well, I like to twist signal wires together with ground wires - especially the input signal wire. If you twist a signal wire together with a ground wire, it can act similar to a shielded wire. So, yeah, twisting wires together is definitely good sometimes, but you have to understand what's going through the wires first - if you just do it arbitrarily, you'll be asking for trouble!

I agree, under certain circumstances. But contrary to what should be the case, I've had very neatly laid out pedals that had problems when they shouldn't have.

RnFR · Post by **RnFR** » 10 Jun 2009, 16:03

RnFR · Post by **RnFR** » 10 Jun 2009, 16:15

i guess i should add something worthwhile to this thread as well, so i'll just say that while those right angles can look neat, they do weaken the wire a bit where they are bent, and i don't really feel comfortable with that.
on another note, recently i built a dirty boots in an enclosure that dictated that the switch be on the lid. this made a problem as to figure out what to do with all of that wire when the lid was off. i ended up routing all of the switch wires to one place, and then heatshrinking around them. not the best practice, but if i didn't do it, it would've been an ungodly mess. luckily it's not that high gain of a circuit, so i didn't have any problems. i'll try and get some pics up some time.

----

oh and btw- while i think mr. orman is probably right in this case, i still think his fuzz face looks more like a smoke detector than a guitar pedal!

bumblebee · Post by **bumblebee** » 10 Jun 2009, 22:31

If I make pedals for myself they are pretty messy but I f they are for someone else they are neat.

DougH · Post by **DougH** » 12 Jun 2009, 11:21

It's not about neatness vs. sloppiness. It's about how long the wires are and what they are next to.

My approach is short first, neat second. I think Jack's right but he's not advocating sloppiness per se. And I do find the "beauty contest" aspect of a lot of pro wiring jobs tedious. A lot of that stuff impresses neophytes but doesn't serve any practical purpose.