A sharing of miscellaneous hints which might prove helpful in an electronic music studio but are not directly concerned with the Synthesis equipment.

More Patch Cord Racks

Greg Leslie, from Ponca City, OK, is still in search of the Utopian patch cord rack. (See Polyphony Vol. 1, No. 1 for Greg's first two ideas.) The first idea is a round, rotating rack mounted on a music or microphone stand. This unit can be set in the middle of a room, next to your synthesizer, and is easily portable. Cut a circle of plywood with a diameter of 10 inches or more (depending on how many cords you have), and use a protractor to lay out a number of radii (again depending on how many cords you have). Saw the lines from the outer edge of the circle to within 2 inches of the center of the circle. Mount a dowel or something similar in the center of the circle to allow the rack to be mounted on the stand. If, in the future, you need more room for cords, you can (1) cut more slots, (2) make a bigger disk, or (3) build another rack and put one on each side of the synthesizer. Drawbacks: You still have cords in front of cords, and the one you need is always behind umpteen others. Also, people tend to come up to it, scream "Wheeeeeeeee", and spin the disk as hard as they can. Bad news.

Idea #2 is the Velcro rack. It is pretty simple, but takes a while to make up. Go to the sewing department of your local department store and get several feet of black Velcro (loop and pile fastening material). Round up all your patch cords, adaptors, screwdrivers and anything else you normally keep with your synthesizer. Using the furry half of the Velcro, wrap a layer around the body of the cord plugs and cement in place with epoxy, etc. Be sure to prepare both ends of the patch cords. Fasten a length of the hook type Velcro material to wherever you want to hang your patch cords (the wall, an easel, or the synthesizer case). Just touch a cord to the rack and it will stick in place. To remove it, pull it away from the rack. This idea may be handy for transporting cords, also. If space permits, fasten two Velcro strips to the inside of the 4762 Road Keyboard Case lid. Fasten both plugs of a cord to the Velcro strips and they're always there when you need them and they won't get tangled.

Wire Markers Help Organize Connecting Cables

If you play in a band, or have a small recording studio, you probably spend a good amount of time manually tracing cables when a problem occurs. Even in a small 4-track studio, you may have a dozen cables from mikes or instruments to the mixing console, four cables feeding the recorder, four cables returning to the console from the recorder, four cables feeding the monitor amps, and speaker cables for each amp. If you have extras such as EQ, noise reduction, bi- or tri-amped monitor systems, you can see that tracing all these cables by hand would be "hassle city". Brady wire markers could save a lot of time. Identical markers should be applied to each end of the cable, and identical terminal markers can be applied next to the jack which receives the similarly numbered cable. Wire markers are available with several different labeling systems: numbers 0 through 45, letters of the alphabet, the 10 standard NEMA color codes, and special markers such as +, GND and blank write-on labels. The standard wire marker is made of vinyl covered cloth, but markers are also available in self-sticking aluminum foil, subsurface printed mylar and oil-resistant reinforced plastic. Check with your local electronics distributor or write; (Contact Details)

Ask for catalog #100 which should contain listings of the various markers available.