Wiring tricks

[night-B]

Hi!
I can see lots of beautiful and neat wiring here, at the opposite mine is spaghetti looking.
If you have some personnal tricks to share here I would appreciate the help
Like the type of wire, wire stripper, wich components you wire in or out the box, in wich order?

[juansolo]

Personally I'll do a build as follows to make it neat:

- Work out where it's going to go in the box, design it accordingly.
- Populate the pcb
- Solder all the wires required to the board at (over) estimated lengths
- Put the hardware into the enclosure and wire up anything in there that can be (switch/led/power/ground/etc)
- Put the board into the enclosure then trim the cables to length and feed them around as neatly as possible.

As for tips; with the solid core cable as I use, bend it as little as possible and be very careful not to score it when you strip it.

The rest comes with practice and most importantly, patience. Take your time.

When I make an effect out of the box to test it before dropping it in, it inevitably with be nowhere near as neat. I still make some proper rats nest jobs every now and then.

[cjkbug]

everything Juan just stated.

Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly ambitious, I will make a carboard (about the same thickness as the walls of an enclosure) mockup with all the holes punched or cut out to test fit everything. I make it out of one flat sheet and fold it into shape and looseley tape the corners. I can then learn if I have any interference between parts. I can use it as a jig for soldering. the corners can be folded out of the way so you can solder joints near the floor of the box easily. and when you are done the jig makes a useful drilling template. when I get most of my builds done I have a sturdy wiring "harness" that holds the guts in a fairly fixed pose that can be inserted into and removed from the box in one piece. I've got it done to a science at this point.


Use different gauges of wire

thin stuff for complicated areas with lots of connections. Lots heavy wire can get bulky and eat up space fast.

use fat wire for long runs and pot connections. the right wire can be used like a structural material to make a wiring "skeleton"

I never use solid core wire any more cause it can break internally if it gets bent to many times, causing an open circuit that is no fun to debug once a build is boxed.

teflon jacketed wire. I swear by this stuff. the insulation doesn't melt or swell with heat. It can be expensive but it is really high quality. I use 20,22,24,and 26 gauge. and it is available in neat colors.( matching the wire to capacitor colors or paint work can look really classy!) I use silver stranded most of the time and you can still form right angle bends if that's your thing, without worrying about snapping the core from bending.

craft stores sell jewelry making needle nose pliers with round tips with are great for bending and handling wire without marring the insulation. I use them to hold wire that I'm stripping. especially when assembling inside a box.

If you have trouble with mistakes in wiring up pedals. try color coding. red for power, green for ground white for input and black for output as an example. That can help you track down your errors easier till you get your wiring "style" dialed in.

Well that's all I can think of for now. I'll edit if I think of any more.

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

Yes the easiest way I've found is what Juansolo said, attaching the wires to the destination leaving extra length and then cutting to exact side. This way you end up with lots of short jumper wires too. A nice set of tiny needle nose pliers always helps!
Juansolo whats the problem with scoring the solid core wire when stripping it?

[stecykmi]

i think he means scoring the actual metal wire, which can break when you bend it. it's one of the faults of solid core.

[juansolo]

i think he means scoring the actual metal wire, which can break when you bend it. it's one of the faults of solid core.

Yep, exactly this. Solid core has some serious drawbacks. But until I can find a source for cheap 100m rolls of the pre-tinned multi-core in the right guage, it's the next best option for me.

[night-B]

Thanks for all these tips 

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

I haven't tried Barrys best pedal hookup wire or the source that madbean posted which both seem very good, but my favorite stranded wire is the wire provided in the GGG kits. Wish I knew where he gets that stuff from. Recently I've been using rainbow ribbon wire. Similiar to what FC uses and boy does it makes things neat. Plus that wire is extremely flexible, I've been tugging and its not tearin   

[jubal81]

Barry's Best really is, well, the best.
I had plenty of wire, but he sent some as a freebie with an order and now I'm good and hooked. I couldn't believe how much trouble and time it saved me.

[Mark_McQ]

I flip my enclosure over, bolt the pots, footswitch and led holder onto the face with the shafts pointing inside the box, and then wire my board up that way. Then you can remove the whole assembly, flip the box back over, and place everything inside. Then you can wire up the i/o and dc jacks.
Obviously this only works on a setup with a symmetrical layout. 3 pots in an L-shape with the footswitch near the corner, for example, wouldn't really work this way.

[cjkbug]

I flip my enclosure over, bolt the pots, footswitch and led holder onto the face with the shafts pointing inside the box, and then wire my board up that way. Then you can remove the whole assembly, flip the box back over, and place everything inside. Then you can wire up the i/o and dc jacks.
Obviously this only works on a setup with a symmetrical layout. 3 pots in an L-shape with the footswitch near the corner, for example, wouldn't really work this way.

That's a pretty good Idea. A simple wooden template with the pot locations drilled (like they use for strat and less paul wiring harness's) would work well too.

[Dixie_Crap]

Wow! These are some great tips. I especially like Mark_McQ's simple box flip, I am angry that I didn't think of doing it.... Anyway there is always next time