Anyone ever made a "wall plate" with custom connections?

[jrm27]

I posted a similar thread in the effects forum a few days ago, but thought I would enquire here a little differently.

 

Basically, I'm wanting to make a wall plate that I can mount on the side of my pedalboard to handle all my ins and outs. That would mean two 1/4" input jacks, one 1/4" output jack, two DC jacks, one midi (5 pin) coupler jack.

 

Anyone ever made something like this? Any tips on how to DIY?

[amarule]

If you've got that many pedals, then I'd be more inclined to not want yet another connection in the chain, and go I/O directly from the pedals. Every connection, every inch of wire, deteriorates your signal.

[amp_surgeon]

I made something similar to this, but it was for my "shop" speaker cab. I wanted to have two 8 ohm speakers, one 12" and one 15". I wanted to be able to hook up either the 12" or 15" separately as an 8 ohm load for either a guitar or bass amp. I also wanted to be able to connect both speakers in either series or parallel so that I could have a 4 ohm or 16 ohm load, for those amps that needed these loads.

 

I end up using two wall plates from Radio Shack. One of them had two pairs of banana jack/binding posts. I connected the speakers to these. The other had a single pair of banana jacks/binding posts. I added a 1/4" jack to this plate and connected it to the posts.

 

I can now use banana patch cords to connect the 1/4" jack to either speaker indepentantly, or stack the patch cords to connect the speakers in series or parallel to the 1/4" jack. I put the wall plates on the side of the cab to make them more accessible from the front of the cab.

 

amarule makes a good point - each connector has the potential to degrade your signal. But, if you already have a number of pedals, then one additional set of connectors isn't going to add much additional noise. The newest SKB pedal boards even have patch bays, which can potentially add LOTS of additional connections, and I've heard good reviews of them. It won't hurt to give it a try.

 

By the way, wall plates take up a considerable amount of space. Also, Radio Shack only sold audio wall plates with either binding posts or RCA jacks. They didn't have any with 1/4" jacks, so I had to drill a hole in one to mount mine. I don't know if they have blank wall plates, but I'm sure you could probably find one at a hardware store. If you can find a metal wall plate then it would probably be better to use that. I can imagine a plastic wall plate breaking the first time you trip over a cord.