This is a 24 point TRS patchbay that I was commissioned to do by the musician Tycho. He had spotted my
Epic Looper build and liked the graphic design aesthetic. I initially turned him down because I always end up taking way too long on builds and I hate the pressure of keeping someone waiting. He changed my mind though because he was super laid back about it and was willing to wait as long as needed.
It’s kind of funny because I didn’t initially figure out who it was. I noticed that he had a huge IG following, then I realized I had already been listening to, and really enjoying, a lot of his music. Throughout the whole build process, he has been super patient. Any time I updated him with progress or pics he was super friendly and encouraging. It’s so cool to interact with someone in that domain who is enjoying some pretty significant success and is humble and cool. If you haven’t listened to Tycho you should!
This build was deceptively tricky. He wanted it to be half-normalled and fully point to point because he was getting crosstalk issues with his existing PCB card based unit. He also wanted it in a 1.5U form factor and he likes the look and feel of the plastic jacks and wanted green nuts on all of the inputs. Sounds pretty straightforward, no? Holy cow.
I discovered that 1.5U enclosures are not something you can just go buy in quantities anywhere close to 1. So, I had the brilliant idea of mounting a 1.5U face plate to a 1U chassis. Of course I had already purchased 50 Cliff solder lug jacks. They are not compact. Had I known how challenging this would be I would have used different jacks or insisted on a 2U enclosure.
It was scary doing all of the drilling and trying to get everything located so that the graphics would look good, the scribble strips would fit and I wouldn’t run into any of the chassis hardware. In the end I had to do lots of cutting and bending jack lugs and I drew up a mounting plate that would allow the jacks to be properly located and spaced without fear that they could rotate and short on each other. I also drew up a wiring jig that allowed me to hold all of the jacks in proper orientation while I wired them. I can’t imagine not having had that option.
I also had to 3d print brackets that I could mount to the sides of the chassis to screw the faceplate into. These had to be thick enough to accept mounting hardware but thin enough to squeeze between the edges of the rack rail. I had to do a lot of cutting and grinding. I basically had to take off the entire front of the chassis to make room for all of the jacks.
As for the circuit, I looked at a few different configurations before settling on one that keeps all grounds isolated from the chassis and only connected per circuit. I figured out the easiest way to visualize how I wanted to do it was to pop out one of the cards from my cheapo patchbay and build the same circuit point to point. It’s not hard to imagine having crosstalk issues with these when you consider that these cheap bays just have 24 of these sitting side by side. Hopefully he will have no such issue with this one.
The black brushed/anodized look was achieved with vinyl wrap. The graphics on the front are printed vinyl that my buddy Forest Dukes made for me. The white numbers on the back and the logo are vinyl that I cut on my cricut. The logo is the same black vinyl as is covering the chassis but I rotated it 90 degrees to catch the light different. I think it looks pretty cool.
The overall graphic design was a collaboration between Tycho and myself. He’s not only a world class musician, he’s also a world class graphic designer. Granted, it’s a simple design but getting things to fit AND look good is always tougher than it should be and it always looks easy in hindsight.
Anyway it feels amazing to have this one off my plate. I’m really happy with the way it turned out despite its many flaws and I’m excited to get back into some of the pedal projects that have been waiting in the queue because of this one. Thanks for looking!
