Neat wiring. Ribbon cables?

[xorophone]

Hey! I want to neaten up the wiring inside my pedals to improve reliability, repairability and of course give myself some pleasure. Most jacks, pots and switches will be PCB-mount and I'll use a separate PCB for the 3pdt, which I'll solder the LED to directly (no wires). My idea is that I'll use ribbon cables and IDC sockets between the main circuit board and the 3pdt-pcb. Has anyone tried that? Do you think it'll be reliable and long-lasting or are there other solutions that you think will work better? I don't want to solder one wire at a time.

Thank you!

[ElectricDruid]

It should work ok, but it's an expensive way to make a connection about 2 or 3cm. That's probably why more people don't do it.

[Kipper4]

That and the increased possibility of cross talk.
How hardy are the ribbon cables used?

One wire at a time is fine for me.
I ain't in no rush.

[ElectricDruid]

How hardy are the ribbon cables used?

Oh, they're pretty good as long as they're not waggled. Inside a pedal they'd be fine. There are plenty of 30-year-old synths which have all the boards connected together using ribbon cables and they're still going. At that age, corrosion on the connectors is the biggest reliability problem, and you can solve a lot of faults by unplugging and replugging everything a few times to clean the muck off.
The trouble is the plugs and sockets are pretty big and bulky and they cost a pound/dollar/euro each. And that's without buying the manufacturer's fantastically expensive special tool for putting them together and just doing them in a vice old-skool style.

[amptramp]

If you have a pedal with high gain, having the input and output wires running together may cause oscillation through coupling.  Connectors can be a problem because most of them are insulation displacement connectors that can be a problem to connect and are not soldered to the wire.

The other problem with ribbon cables is there may be a number of things scattered all over the place to connect and you may have to split them off.  You may have pots and other controls, switches, LED's, indicators etc.  If you have a board mounted to the box by the controls, you may have this problem solved.

[ElectricDruid]

Connectors can be a problem because most of them are insulation displacement connectors that can be a problem to connect and are not soldered to the wire.

IDC connectors are pretty reliable, or they wouldn't get used as much as they do. Bodging them together doesn't count - you need plenty of force, evenly applied - a vice with wooden jaws is is good.
Incidentally, how many times have you seen soldered connections break? Solder isn't really very reliable if it's expected to take any mechanical stress at all. The bit of flex a ribbon cable provides can be many times *more* reliable depending on the situation.

The other problem with ribbon cables is there may be a number of things scattered all over the place to connect and you may have to split them off.  You may have pots and other controls, switches, LED's, indicators etc.  If you have a board mounted to the box by the controls, you may have this problem solved.

Yes, totally agree. If you're using ribbon cables, you *definitely* need proper IDC plugs and sockets on both ends of it. If you're splitting individual strands of ribbon cable out to different holes in a PCB and soldering them in place...well, you're asking for trouble and you'll get it, as sure as eggs are eggs. It's not what the parts were designed for and it will cause problems.


Disclaimer: views expressed above are only my own personal view and not intended to be any guide for the whole of humankind or any such nonsense. Your mileage may vary, and the value of your investments may go down as well as up, etc etc.

T.

[xorophone]

If you have a pedal with high gain, having the input and output wires running together may cause oscillation through coupling.

That and the increased possibility of cross talk.

Yeah, this is something I've thought about. But if I put the inputs and outputs on each end of the ribbon cables, would it be good enough? How about power and ground? Should they be separated or can they be next to each other?

The other problem with ribbon cables is there may be a number of things scattered all over the place to connect and you may have to split them off.  You may have pots and other controls, switches, LED's, indicators etc.  If you have a board mounted to the box by the controls, you may have this problem solved.

Yes, totally agree. If you're using ribbon cables, you *definitely* need proper IDC plugs and sockets on both ends of it. If you're splitting individual strands of ribbon cable out to different holes in a PCB and soldering them in place...well, you're asking for trouble and you'll get it, as sure as eggs are eggs. It's not what the parts were designed for and it will cause problems.

Yeah, I'll redesign the circuit boards myself to make them compatible with IDC plugs. Of course that's a lot of work and I won't do it with every pedal, but it would look really nice in a battery compatible pedal for example.

It should work ok, but it's an expensive way to make a connection about 2 or 3cm. That's probably why more people don't do it.

That's right. But the thought of only a ribbon cable connecting everything is.. beautiful...

[marcelomd]

I like the way Darkglass and Way Huge do wiring:





Pete Cornish stuff is known to be reliable. I like how it looks like aerospace cabling:

[xorophone]

I like the way Darkglass and Way Huge do wiring:





Pete Cornish stuff is known to be reliable. I like how it looks like aerospace cabling:

That looks lovely! Are those ribbon cables on the first image?

[marcelomd]

That looks lovely! Are those ribbon cables on the first image?

Yup. Look for 0.1" or 2.54mm pitch flat ribbon cables.

[pinkjimiphoton]

i love the way ribbon cables look, but they can be a mega pain in the arse.
hard to strip and tin.

i use one of them wire stripper things that looks like this:



pretty sure i got fired by black cat for stripping each wire by hand. it takes a while.
if ya use the gun thing, strip off about 1/2 " of insulation, but then don't touch it or twist the wires... i found a short cut that seems to work.... just lightly tin each wire near the insulation side, and run it up the cable to the end. don't worry if the cables bridge together at the end a little. once its all been tinned, just cut off the last 1/4 inch or so and you should be good. once the solder hits the  braided wire kinda sucks it right in, and ya end up with nice solid pretinned strands instead of stripping each wire and twisting and tinning each one. huge time saver, and more consistent looking and working, too.

hope it helps a little!

[xorophone]

i love the way ribbon cables look, but they can be a mega pain in the arse.
hard to strip and tin.

i use one of them wire stripper things that looks like this:



pretty sure i got fired by black cat for stripping each wire by hand. it takes a while.
if ya use the gun thing, strip off about 1/2 " of insulation, but then don't touch it or twist the wires... i found a short cut that seems to work.... just lightly tin each wire near the insulation side, and run it up the cable to the end. don't worry if the cables bridge together at the end a little. once its all been tinned, just cut off the last 1/4 inch or so and you should be good. once the solder hits the  braided wire kinda sucks it right in, and ya end up with nice solid pretinned strands instead of stripping each wire and twisting and tinning each one. huge time saver, and more consistent looking and working, too.

hope it helps a little!

Ah, thank you for all the tips! I was initially planning on using IDC connectors, but I'm not sure those would fit nicely in the pedals. I'll have to take some measurements. But using ribbon cables without IDC connectors will still give me that nice and sleek look, but with a little bit more work.

I was looking around the net for other neat wiring tips and tricks and I found this thread: https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=315899&sid=2c568baa9f17ab9e0cd69b8de0b9d671. I might give that one a try too!

[Kipper4]

I'm have used those connectors for stuff like pic chips. They do fit into in a 1590BB.
They're no higher than my tallest capacitors.
I contemplated using ribbons but not for parallel in and out from a pcb. And let's face it, how many connections do you need for the switching? 4?
Even spaced at the far ends you may still end up with x talk.
Am I barking.....

[ElectricDruid]

Its funny, but neither of those Darkglass or Way Huge pedals use what I would really call "ribbon cable". Maybe I'm just being narrow-minded.

The Darkglass one does use a ribbon cable of a form, but it's not the standard 0.5" pitch IDC stuff you usually see - it's a 0.1" pitch cable with a solid core which is actually designed for this sort of job. It's still not terribly reliable if it's waggled much (we used to use it at work, and I worked in the repairs dept, so I got to see the failures. I can also tell you what happens to optocouplers when they're struck by lightning!) but it makes a neat job and it's quick to solder. This stuff:


http://www.dgwenchang.com/product_show_387.html

The Way Huge pedal is using IDC connectors that you can wire up with a "mushroom" (that's what the tool looks like). Again, it makes a neat job, but it's time consuming and expensive. You have to cut lots of individual wires and fit them one by one, both ends. At least you don't have to strip them. I use those connectors for power cables for prototypes on my bench, and they turn up in some modular synth gear (Dotcom, for example). I'd say they're more reliable than the other stuff.

When people say "ribbon cable" I think of this stuff:



That's a disaster for anything apart from what it's intended for because the individual strands in the cable are very thin and will break with even fairly gentle motion. with IDC plugs and sockets on both ends, it's good and lasts a long time. The IDC plugs usually include strain relief so it survives a fair bit of yanking too.

HTH,
Tom