Leave the board connected all the time, or disconnect between uses?

[Eminor3rd]

Hello friends,

I have only very recently given into the demonic pull of the pedalboard lifestyle, and so I have what might be a silly/beginner/stupid question: in order to minimize wear on the jacks inside my pedals, is it best to leave the patch cables connected on the assembled board all the time, or to disconnect them all before storing?

Intuitively, I cannot decide whether the action of connecting/disconnecting or the constant light "stretch" from an omnipresent cable connector will cause the jacks to wear out sooner. I'm also aware it mat be possible that it doesn't matter at all -- but it seems like something where there is some standard wisdom.

Thanks in advance!

 

[ebo]

If you’re like most of us, you’ll be switching pedals and the placement of them from time to time. Other than that, set em and forget em.

 

[PhatBottomBass1]

Leave them connected, using a good isolated power supply like a CIOKS 7 or SOL or many others. Don't store batteries in your pedals!

 

[Eminor3rd]

If you’re like most of us, you’ll be switching pedals and the placement of them from time to time. Other than that, set em and forget em.

Leave them connected, using a good isolated power supply like a CIOKS 7 or SOL or many others. Don't store batteries in your pedals!

Thanks, friends. I’ve got an MXR mini iso brick, just three pedals for the moment. The plan is to keep it that way but I’ve seen how these things tend to go.

 

[Grinderman]

It's hard go wrong with a CIOKS SOL isolated power supply.

 

[Chrishi87]

Only strip the cables?
Put them from your pedalboard into the box. After every Gig or practice.
And place the boxes into a foam case. But not the Tuner, the Tuner should not stay in a foam box with other pedals.

 

[King Harvest]

If you’ve got your board the way you like it, you should remove the jacks and hardwire the pedals together. That way the jacks won’t wear out.

 

[K2000]

The jacks will never wear out, the way that most people use them. I've never even heard of that happening. But if you are worried about wear & tear, leave things plugged in, don't keep plugging & unplugging.

One of the main benefits of a pedalboard is being able to leave everything plugged in.

 

[themickster]

If you’ve got your board the way you like it, you should remove the jacks and hardwire the pedals together. That way the jacks won’t wear out.

Neither do they wear out if you leave them plugged in, which is the point of a pedalboard.

 

[themickster]

Only strip the cables?
Put them from your pedalboard into the box. After every Gig or practice.
And place the boxes into a foam case. But not the Tuner, the Tuner should not stay in a foam box with other pedals.

They need lots of alone time? They start fights? Come on; tell us why.

 

[antfarm]

Do you unplug your bass and amp? Same thing.

 

[JakobT]

Do you unplug your bass and amp? Same thing.

Not really. The OP was asking about the patch cables.

 

[BassBrass]

The new Flat patch cables put less stress on jacks than traditional ones, especially fabric wraped. You can get pedals tighter together also. Your bass's own jack gets more stress and is often braced against a pickguard, but always the less movement/friction the less stress. At least pedal jacks are braced by metal, and can probably handle 10,000 disconnections before failure. Usually they just need to be tightened.

 

[Stranger Danger]

Only strip the cables?
Put them from your pedalboard into the box. After every Gig or practice.
And place the boxes into a foam case. But not the Tuner, the Tuner should not stay in a foam box with other pedals.

Haha! Dude what?

 

[ardgedee]

Jacks can wear out or break, but they're not going to die easily (most jacks have a life cycle of tens of thousands of connects/disconnects -- a minimum of 14 years if you plug and unplug them every day) and they're cheap and easy to replace if they do go.

There are any number of good reasons for keeping pedals plugged, but wearing out the connectors isn't one of them.

 

[jj.833]

I've never had a jack worn on a pedal, plugged or not. The most fragile thing about pedal is the foot switch, and it can be exchanged for a good one. Sometimes, the pedal just dies. You may have it repaired, but usually it doesn't pay off.

To be perfectly honest, I've seen jacks worn. Happened to my combo after about 20 years of not using the send/return jacks; there was a little rust grown inside the connectors, creating false connection and rendering the amp unusable. I'm quite confident the people who are making fun of you in this thread would dump such amp. However, as you are not afraid to ask what looks like potentially stupid question, you can learn that a little cleaning up solves even this ;-)

 

[gln1955]

They need lots of alone time? They start fights? Come on; tell us why.

I think that was humor. I could be wrong.

 

[antfarm]

Not really. The OP was asking about the patch cables.

Isn’t a patch cable just a very short instrument cable?

My point was that there is no difference to plugging into or unplugging from the quarter inch jacks in your bass or amp. You do it when necessary without giving it any thought, at least I do

 

[HolmeBass]

Leave all the patch cables in your board plugged in until you want to change pedal order or swap out for a different pedal. This is less wear and tear than constant plugging/unplugging.

In fact leaving the pedals wired up, and connected to a power supply, is the main point of having a pedal board.

 

[MultiScaleMale]

1/4" jacks were originally designed for telephone operators to connect calls maybe hundreds of times in a day. If you want to strip your pedalboard every time you use it, for whatever reason, it will be fine. Just seems to be a lot of work.