Patch Cable Recommendations

HT986M2

At the grand ol’ age of 37 I’m building my first pedal board.  Up until now it’s been modellers and multi-fx all the way, with never more than a couple of sporadic pedals here and there. 

So I now have a decent board and a very good isolated power supply. I don’t want to have spend money on decent pedals and a decent power supply only for the quality of the connections to let the side down. 

At the minute I have a few MXR pancake patch cables. They work, they seem to introduce minimal if no interference, but they look a bit naff.  The cables themselves are also a bit too stiff for getting pedals in right next to each other whilst still being able to tuck the excess cable away. 

So I’m looking for low profile, flat patch cables that are somewhat malleable. Ideally they will also blend in looks-wise.  At this stage I’m not really looking to build my own using a solderless kit. 

I’ve heard Klotz are good and meet the criteria,  but I haven’t heard of many others.  So please let me know of any recommendations you guys may have. 

Thanks!

Lebarque

As long as your don't get cheap and nasty jobs from Amazon or eBay or summink, I think it's hard to go wrong these days.

I've just rewired with Rockboard cables and have been impressed with them. Same low capacitance as more expensive cables so I didn't see the need to spend more.

EBS if you want to spend a bit more and get the same result. 

maharg101

Ernie Ball flat ribbon cables are another option to consider. 

Th4fonz

EBS gold patch cables can’t go wrong and super low profile

pt22

maharg101 said:

Ernie Ball flat ribbon cables are another option to consider. 

On sale via Amazon as well, or at least they were earlier this week. 

Moe_Zambeek

Th4fonz said:

EBS gold patch cables can’t go wrong and super low profile

I have one of these and it’s noisier than my solderless. Being flat you’re also constrained slightly in routing, they can only bend one way. If that suits you’re fine.

Winny_Pooh

maharg101 said:

Ernie Ball flat ribbon cables are another option to consider. 

These are great. I've gone from soldering my own to using these on 2 of my 3 boards. No failures yet after 2 years.

Supportact

I use a mixture of EBS flat, rockboard, and home made ones, and a few random ones I've picked up over the years. The only ones I've had which I remember being a problem were a pack of Mooer ones I had were a couple went intermittent (that was a few years ago so they may be totally different now). 

timbuk02

Winny_Pooh said:

maharg101 said:

Ernie Ball flat ribbon cables are another option to consider. 

These are great. I've gone from soldering my own to using these on 2 of my 3 boards. No failures yet after 2 years.

another +1 for these, they are all metal - a lot of others are not.

Neilybob

Th4fonz said:

EBS gold patch cables can’t go wrong and super low profile

My last purchase from Anderton's and can't recommend them enough. 

gatheredinsong

Winny_Pooh said:

maharg101 said:

Ernie Ball flat ribbon cables are another option to consider. 

These are great. I've gone from soldering my own to using these on 2 of my 3 boards. No failures yet after 2 years.

These get my vote too. I bought expensive cables and can't hear any noticeable difference so have switched to mostly using these as they fit so well.

ecc83

I don't know any of the suggested products but do note... a cable cannot be "noisy" unless it is faulty in some way or the plug is corroded.

Dave.

soma1975

Another shout out for Ernie Ball Flats.  

Far superior to the EBS in terms of handling noise and they sound great. 

fretmeister

EBS flats for me.

Corvus

Mainly EBS flats and one or two Rockboard, for lengths not available at the time in EBS.
Thin flexy cables and being black they pretty much disappear visually, with a black board.

thermionic

I bought some of these recently - great quality (Rean/Van Damme) and very reasonably priced. Loads of other options and I think they skso do custom lengths. Will definitely buy from them again.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284402335711

Hellsbells87

Hadn’t seen the EB ribbons before, they look good. I use the regular EBS flats (as I also can’t be bothered to get into making my own but understand in many ways that’s the best option) - they’re superb. They have plastic heads which are much more pedal friendly than other metal-headed options, especially on a congested board. In fact, I’m pretty sure all my pedals would have immitation rack rash if all the patch cables had metal heads. 

ICBM

Probably not the answer you’re looking for because the plugs aren’t low profile enough, but I’ve always used the multicoloured moulded plastic ones you can buy for about a quid each in packs of six, and I’ve not had a single problem with them, ever. Totally reliable and sound fine.

ecc83

Hellsbells87 said:

Hadn’t seen the EB ribbons before, they look good. I use the regular EBS flats (as I also can’t be bothered to get into making my own but understand in many ways that’s the best option) - they’re superb. They have plastic heads which are much more pedal friendly than other metal-headed options, especially on a congested board. In fact, I’m pretty sure all my pedals would have immitation rack rash if all the patch cables had metal heads. 

Yeah, still have a couple of those left that I bought from Maplin!

Dave.

HT986M2

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. 

So the consensus seems to be that you can’t go wrong with the Ernie Ball ribbons and Rockboard flat cables? But that the disadvantage of the flatter/ribbon styles are that they can really only be bent one way?

 Not a problem in most cases, but worth knowing. 

matt_sefton

For what it’s worth I bought a pack of the Donner 15cm patch cables from Amazon recently. Very flat, low profile jacks and the cables are very flexible. I’m very ocd about cables and these ones allowed me to hide cables easily and also get the pedals really close to each other. Quality seems very good to me and I’ve had no issues with them.