Building your own patchbay

Have any of you built your own patchbay? I can't seem to find the configuration I want, so I figure I'll try building it on my own. I have tons of questions, but my biggest one is how to make the faceplate. How do you cut the holes? What kind of drills/saws/blades do you need to cut 1/8" aluminum (or possibly steel), or is there someplace that will do it for me?

Next question, since this will be a balanced patchbay, is there anything special I need to know about wiring it up? I was planning on just going straight thru front to back, non-normalled to make it easy on myself. So do I just wire the jacks pin-to-pin?

If any of you have been down this road, I could sure use your wisdom before I screw up. I don't have a budget for too many mistakes!

Yah, my first cost estimate (based on materials alone) was enormous. But after scouring the web, I found some really sweet DIY components that are actually pretty cheap. Now I'm looking at around $200 for all the materials. So moneywise it's a pretty decent bargain.

Just to give you an overview, here's what I need. It's so simple it's ridiculous

On the back: 16 XLR ins + 16 TRS ins (or a set of 16 combo jacks would do the trick)
On the front: same thing, only female outs

You'd be surprised that no one sells a patchbay that will do this basic setup. Try googling "XLR patchbay" and all you'll get is the Hosa PDR-369 (~$120) but it only has 12 points, and it's only XLR.

If I make it myself, here's my parts list:
2 Middle Atlantic UNI-1-C faceplates with 16 Neutrik D punchouts @$30 ea ($60)
16 Neutrik D XLR jacks Female @$4 ea ($64)
16 Neutrik D XLR jacks Male @$4 ea ($64)
32 TRS jacks... those things are pretty cheap aren't they? (~$50)
3 conductor cable... I have tons of the stuff already

grand total $238

I think I can handle that. My actual budget is $300 which is why I'm considering a custom faceplate instead of the generic one from Middle Atlantic. But that's where we get into the issue of drilling & sawing through aluminum/steel. I just have to know what kind of tools to use.

I know a lot of y'all make your own guitar cabs, amps and other stuff. A simple patchbay should be a piece of cake!

I think Markertek sells prefab and custom rack panels. You might find what you're looking for there.

Also agree though that you can save yourself some pennies and time by just buying an off-the-shelf unit which will have the added benefit of customizable routing. But I'm a tinkerer at heart too. Nothing like DIY to sooth the soul

PS - if you have a metal shop in town somewhere these guys live to make stuff like this - sometimes for nuthin if you're polite. They usually have a lot of scrap metal laying around.

ORIGINAL: krizrox
if you have a metal shop in town somewhere these guys live to make stuff like this - sometimes for nuthin if you're polite. They usually have a lot of scrap metal laying around.

You're absolutely right about that. Once I was fixing an old piano and needed some counterweights for the hammers. I figured I'd go to a machine shop and order 88 sheet metal 3/8" punchouts. The guy was so cool he just handed me a box and said I could grab anything I find on the floor. Found everything I needed; they were perfect!

That was back when I lived in the city, though. Now I'm so far out in the boonies I'd be lucky to find a machine shop within 50 miles. But I found a few places online that say they'll do any custom metalwork if I email them an acad dwg. We'll see what the prices are like, though...

But hey I found something at Markertek that's pretty close to what I want
16 Channel XLR Patch Panel

~$100 ea. and I need 2 (front & back) for a grand total of $200. I still have to solder them together myself but I think I can handle that.

Thanks for the tips guys

Not sure about guitars, but if you feed an amps line out 48V, you will most likely end up with a fried out.

ORIGINAL: Spaceduck
That's a great idea I never considered. Is that what the "pro" studios do? Honestly I'm amazed that there aren't more XLR patchbays on the market, you'd think it would be the most popular item for studios with a lot of mic inputs.

My only concern is how phantom power is handled. I've heard some scary warnings about connecting 1/4" unbalanced jacks to a phantom powered TRS. Sure, I'd be careful not to do it, but what if someone else plugs a guitar into a hot TRS jack. Zapsville?

A few random thoughts from one who has designed, built, and installed more patchbay systems than I can even count...

1) Connectors are bad! All connectors are bad because all connectors will eventually fail, and the more connectors you put in the signal path the harder it is to find the offending one. No connectors is almost as bad because it limits flexibility and makes troubleshooting more difficult. The obvious compromise / optimization is to use connectors only where you need them for flexibility and/or troubleshooting.

This is why you never see patchbays with individual connectors on the rear in a professional studio. Connectors on the front and back is probably one of the worst ideas foisted off on the home studio owner ever. It is more work to solder or wirewrap, but both are infinitely more reliable than even the high end multi-pin connectors like ELCO/EDAC or Whirlwind MASS. If you have to use connectors on the rear you should use the multipin variety. The downside of most multipin connectors is that they weaken the shielding.

There is also an issue with oxidation between conductors - the number one reason that connectors fail. It matters what the conductor is made of, but that is secondary to matching the material. Nickel plated copper is by far the best construction, but it does not come cheap. Copper is bad because it is too soft to survive many operations. Gold works, but it does not provide an appreciable benefit over nickel plated copper.

2) Running phantom power through a patchbay is a really bad idea. It is way to easy to patch something together that is not tolerant of 48VDC.

3) Connecting any high impedance input to a patchbay is another really bad idea. You want noise? You got it!

4) Adapters are bad! They usually get lost before they fail, but neither is a good solution<G>!

So how do commercial studios manage their thousands of connections?

A) Different signal levels are isolated. All microphone level signals are kept on a microphone panel, or to straight to the microphone preamplifiers. I have not, in over 25 years, ever seen microphone preamplifier inputs brought out to a general purpose patch panel. Speaker level signals are almost never routed through any kind of patch bay.

B) Patch points use either long frame or TT/Bantam jacks with self cleaning, nickel plated surfaces and switches.

C) Most of the time the cabling to the rear of the patch panel is "hard wired". The really picky folks use wire-wrap because it does provide a superior gas tight seal. Recently a couple of companies have come up with Insulation Displacement Connectors which also provide a gas tight seal, but they are not as strong mechanically. And of course solder connections are quite popular too.

D) If an intermediate cross-connect is required (and they are popular for troubleshooting) it will usually be a telephone style block, either a punch down block (there are punch down blocks made specifically for stranded wire) or a "christmas tree solder block". Over the last 15 or so years the popularity of these intermediate blocks has dwindled to the point where I no longer include them except for really large projects.

If I were designing a home studio today I'd use one of the patch bays manufactured by either Switchcraft or Audio Accessories. Both make bays with multipin connectors on the rear, and jumpers or switches to configure normals and grounding. I would then build a panel like the one you are describing and route the signals such that phantom power is never interrupted nor interruptable. I've done this dozens of times and it works beautifully. I would use the TT version of the panels because they save so much space, but I would install 1/4" jacks on my microphone plate or a separate 1/4" patchbay to provide adapterless patching.

ORIGINAL: wst3

A few random thoughts from one who has designed, built, and installed more patchbay systems than I can even count...

Hey wst3 thanks for that great info. I'm still digesting most of it, but I wanted to ask about this...

ORIGINAL: wst3
1) Connectors are bad! All connectors are bad because all connectors will eventually fail, and the more connectors you put in the signal path the harder it is to find the offending one. No connectors is almost as bad because it limits flexibility and makes troubleshooting more difficult. The obvious compromise / optimization is to use connectors only where you need them for flexibility and/or troubleshooting.

I've always had an inexplicable dread of connectors, and it looks like you've finally explained it. Unfortunately they're almost a necessity for the home studio musician, mainly because we keep upgrading & changing the configuration of our equipment, it's not very conducive to have everything hard wired.

But I wanted to throw this at you. Hot off the presses (the Neutrik 2008 catalog)...



This is exactly what I need. No soldering required, no mess, and it only requires a screwdriver if I need to change configurations. I'm sure it costs twice as much as a regular (solder point) panel mount, but what do you think about it? If I use those, then all I need is

-faceplate ($30)
-16 XLR feedthroughs (assuming $8 each = $128)
-16 xlr short patch cables (1 ft. cables cost around $3 ea = $48)

total $206 (cheapest so far) AND it gives me the most convenient & configurable solution for my needs while keeping the signal path as short as possible with minimal connections. Too good to be true?

Destroyed a Behringer keyboard amp this way.

Yeah, that sucks. I'm always puzzled why they put the switches in the damnedest of places too - I switch one by mistake way too often (both on my Edirol it can happen, or on my Behringer mixer), simply because it's just one more switch to the designers, while in practice you want a ******* padlock over it, preferably one with two simultaneous keys like those missile silos

ORIGINAL: Spaceduck ~ That's a great idea I never considered. Is that what the "pro" studios do?

Spaceduck my advice was primarily intended for patching the XLR and TRS input/outputs of rack gear, processors, effects units and such. And yes it is not unusual to have a cable with XLR connector on one end and a TRS on the other in those scenarios. It's really not an adapter per se' as much as it is 2 balanced connectors in 2 different configurations on the same cable.

But I think if you are trying to use phantom power, mic pre-amps and such you are opening a can of worms.

Sounds like you need a mixing board to me... more than a patch bay.

"normal" :-)

Hosa is now making a modular patchbay. I saw them in the Sweetwater catalog.

My only [small] gripe... why are their XLR modules in groups of 3? 3 is a really stupid number! I wish they did them in 4s or even 2s, just to keep the math easy.

That's like my Furman patchbays. 40 points - What's up with that?

Sweet setup! Just out of curiosity, when you record yourself on the kit, do you use your drumstick to hit the 'R' and spacebar? I don't see a Tranzport anywhere!!

But yup, I do understand how normalled patchbays work, but I just have no real use for one since all my preamps/effects/etc are handled inside my breakout boxes. Normalled patchbays are for people who have different outboard gear in their signal chains; they can configure a certain path (say mic > preamp > compressor > mixer) and easily swap/add/bypass gear by interrupting the "normal" with only 1 patch.

It's really clever stuff, but me, since I don't have any outboard gear (it's all inside the box) I don't have any use for that type of setup. I guess technically I shouldn't be using the word "patchbay" because all I'm trying to do is move the inputs from the front of my rack to the rear.

What I'm after is a glorified rear-rack-mounted snake I guess. But most of the catalogs just lump it into the category of "patchbay".