How To Make Custom Power Cables

hi I'm Mason Marin jela the rig doctor today I'm going to be showing you five easy ways to modify your existing power cables that come with any of the standard power supplies that you would get for your pedal board and so that you can use them to double voltage to double current to do a reverse polarity to just shorten a standard polarity and also how to make a Wye cable so let's get into it DIY pedalboard DC power cables let's do it my name is Mason Marin jela I build rigs for the industry's top professionals now I'm teaching guitarists how to build rigs like the pros with DIY tips easy mods in all the tricks of the trade I am the rig doctor so today I'm going to teach you how to make five different DIY DC power cables that come with the majority of your pedal power supplies the voodoo lab the chalks the Strymon Zuma and the true tone and how to basically take the existing DC power connectors that come with almost every single one of these and how to modify them so that you can make them to the exact length that they need to be safely or if you need to let's say reverse the polarity or if you need to double the voltage or double the current or split out to multiple pedals to maximize your power supply I'm going to show you exactly how to do that so the five cables are really making today the very first one is a very simple just standard DC power cable just like the ones that come with your existing power supply but it's about cutting them to length and then reter monnet ting them properly the second thing though is a little bit trickier it's how to take one of these existing cables and turn it into a reverse polarity cable now reverse polarity is important for certain vintage devices like old fuzzes a lot of PNP stuff might require an inverted polarity so I'm going to show you how to make that type of cable as well the third thing I'm going to show you how to make today is what's called a voltage doubler so let's pretend for a moment that you have a true tone c s12 just like this and let's say for example that you don't have enough 18 volt outputs on the supply in order to power all your 18 volt pedals let's say you maybe have something like this which is the pic tronics ecolution that takes 18 volts and maybe you also have this guy right here the steel string which also can be powered by 18 volts although it's not required and you've already maxed up at to 18 volts over here you do what's called a voltage doubler cable and it basically takes two of your nine volt outputs puts them in series like nine plus nine volts get you 18 volts so you can power these pedals this same concept will also work with 24 volt pedals if you combine two 12 volt output so things like the vintage memory man's that take 24 volts it would allow you to do that very same thing by making these voltage doubler cables so I'll show you a little bit more about that later now another one that often people confuse with voltage doubler is called a current doubler and the current doubler is if you need to be able to double the amount of current out of two outputs and then put them into one pedal so on the Strymon Zula that example would be all these provide 500 milliamps on their outputs but let's say you have something that's really high current like a line 6 HX or an HX stump that takes a 1 amp or 1,000 milliamps and what you would do in this case is you'd put the two outputs in parallel and that would allow you to take 500 milliamps plus 500 milliamps and get one full amp so that then you could be powering your pedal using one amp so it gets everything that it needs you're just taking two of these outputs combining them together and then just have one line going out to the pedal itself now the fifth thing that I'm going to show you today is what's called a Wye cable and it's basically just the same thing as the parallel cable that you would use to double the current like I showed you on that zouma but it's just making them longer and coming out from one output so like let's say that was on this pedal power to you would basically be coming out of one output and splitting in to two pedals so powering two pedals off of one of these outputs and that's basically just a daisy chain is another way to say this thing but I think that it's best if you can do it at the source so let's get into it follow me over to the workbench I'm gonna show you exactly how to make these cables let's do it all right so I'm going to go in the same sequence that we talked about in the beginning of a new standard power cable reverse polarity power cable I'm a voltage doubler followed by current devil or followed by Y cable now a couple of things that you're going to need you're going to need the COBE con 2.1 millimeter by 5.5 millimeter this is linked for you in the description so you can get this exact same one that I'm going to be using today to solder on our existing power cables that come with your provided power supply the other you're going to need is a couple of different strippers and wire snips I'm gonna link the exact ones that I'm going to be using I use two different kinds because the diameters of the cables are a little bit different and the inner connectors are a little bit different so I want to make sure that I have a gauge for every possible wire I also have over here a vise and I've just taped this in place with painters tape just so I'm not moving it too drastically while we're filming this for you because I have another camera on it it's going to kind of give you a static view of this I'm using some 1640 castor solder and then I am using a Weller soldering iron I'm gonna wet this sponge and I'm gonna get into doing some soldering and I'm just again I'm just taking the existing power cables that come with any of your standard power supplies this one I think is from mazuma and so I'm gonna get to it and show you exactly how I'm going to be doing this so let's get into it alright so I have my standard Strymon power cable this is the one that came exactly with the supplies so what you're gonna do first is you're gonna determine okay do you want to have the right angle end left or do you want have a straight left typically I'm converting almost all these to right angle to right angle so I'm going to cut off this straight okay this is again just for our standard power supply that I'm just cutting to length and let's just pretend and I'm eight let's make a little shorten though it's pretend I only want about six inches so I'm gonna cut it down to about six inches cut that off completely now I'm gonna take my wire strippers and I'm gonna go to about a 10 gauge or so strip that away and now you can see that all we're left with is one black in one red wire typically the red is designated to the tip in the black is designated to the ground so I'm going to take my Kobe card connector I'm gonna put it in my advice here and what I like to do is just kind of flatten out this strain relief a little bit just because it gives me a little bit more space to work on so I got my solder and I are nice and hot what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna tin this slightly where the ground is gonna be and where the hot is going to be and then I'm gonna do the same with my connector but I kind of need to measure this out to see how things are fitting well I can see here that if I just left them exactly as they are they'd be way too long so I'm actually gonna trim these down I don't need hardly any of the ground wire so I'm gonna snip away most of that and I don't need also all this red so I'm gonna snip away that as well now I'm gonna take a different one of my strippers and I'm gonna use it at let's say about 20 gauge I'm just gonna pull away just a tiny bit of the tips of each of these with the 20 gauge okay so it looks like 20 gauge might be a little too much and not quite enough we need 22 so now you can see that I've exposed these two wires for the ground on the block there and then for the tip with the red there and now I'm going to tin these just as I did the connector tinning tinning and then I'm just going to solder them I'm gonna hold the iron to the ground there wait for that to set and I'm gonna push down the center conductor just a little bit apply a little solder there all right now we're done with the soldering now I got a little bit of the edge of the wire up there just going to cut that off just I'm gonna have any sharp angles and then I'm just gonna crimp them together for that strain relief so that just kind of helps the wire stay in place I'll take the housing put it on the back just sit in there nicely and the last step is I'm going to take a little 4-inch zip tie I'm gonna put it around the housing pull it through cut away the excess and there we have perfectly soldered perfectly made to point one millimeter standard polarity cable so there's one but now here's the next one that we need to make sure that we do next one we talked about doing was what we called a reverse polarity so it almost follows the exact same principle I'm just gonna cut this one about the same length about six inches I'm gonna use my 10 gauge stripper to pull out the outside there so I'm gonna do almost exactly the same thing but instead I'm gonna wire the black lead to the tip in the red lead to the ground or the shield so I'm basically gonna reverse this where I took almost all the heat shrink or I took almost all the insulator there away from the black so I'm gonna do that to the red and on the black I'm just gonna take away a real tiny bit hitting those in a little bit here a little bit here I'm basically just doing the exact same thing that I just did if you tin these you really don't even need to hold the solder on there very long I've been down the center tab a little bit perfect now you can see I have a little excess wire here and so I just clip that off I'm gonna go ahead and crimp that strain relief put on the back of the housing take my zip tie pull it together snip and now we have a reverse polarity version of the exact same thing approximately the same length so there's a reverse polarity version now you may want to dress this with some sort of red heat shrink potentially just so you know that it's reverse polarity because sometimes if you use this on pedals that can't take reverse polarity it has the propensity to damage so now here's the third cable that we talked about baking this is the voltage doubler so it's gonna require that you sacrifice two cables so I'm cutting off one and let's see how to use a straight one for this one just for fun and this one doesn't need to be very long it'll show you exactly why let's pretend that we're using this strand and Zuma that we want to get to we need to use two outputs to get another 18 volt so it would be for example this is going to be going into this side and then we're gonna have one long cable coming out that's gonna go to the pedal so we actually don't need this one to be very long it's gonna be pretty short just enough to go from this connector to solder in a new connector here so we don't need a whole lot but I am going to need two so there is gonna be some sacrifice you could of course use some of the other connectors that you just cut up when you were customizing them to length but I just wanted to give you all of your options there alright so first things first we're in a cut or strip off the outside I'm gonna do it to both of them at the same time so I've exposed both the red and the black leads here okay not gonna cut these yet now here's one trick that's a little bit different than before on this guy when I flatten it out on the 2.1 millimeter connector when I flatten it out I'm actually gonna cut away the strain relief because with two of these plugs or two of these cables in there rather there's not enough room for us to be able to actually crimp it in a way that can make any difference so we're gonna start first things first I'm gonna take the nice short one I'm gonna address that on the left side and that's the reason is is because we've decided for this purpose that I want it to start on the left and work toward the right so I'm going to do first is I'm just gonna take a little tiny bit a little tiny piece off of the red now on this one I'm actually gonna feed it through that hole that you can see in the connector itself so actually is gonna feed it through the hole the reason I'm doing this is because we're gonna be cramped for space I'm gonna try to use up as much of the available room as possible and I'm actually going to do the tinning and soldering right to it on there all right so the red one is in place okay that's the first part next part is this this red connector is going to have to go to the ground log so I'm gonna do the same thing I'm gonna strip this guy down quite a bit though as I don't need very much and I'm gonna solder right to the ground tin this guy just a tiny bit Sauter that right to the ground perfect okay now these two black leads are gonna have to connect to each other in order to make this cable a voltage doubling cable now it's a little bit tricky to do this because these can't touch anything inside the housing so I think the easiest way to do it is actually to fuse them together and then put a little bit of heat shrink there so they don't risk touch anything so I'm going to show you what I mean by that so I'm just gonna strip off a little bit tiny bit of these on each one of these just expose the wire a little bit just a little tiny bit I'm gonna tin both of these wires and then I'm going to actually just mate them together I'm gonna trim them down about as much as I reasonably can just because I don't want there to be a lot of exposed wire for some reason that heat shrink came undone I'm just gonna fuse them together hey they're fused together now I'm gonna cut them down just a little bit more looks good now I'm gonna take a little tiny tiny piece of heat shrink and that's just because I don't want any of that to be exposed I'm gonna take my heat gun hit it with a little heat looks good now the last part I'm gonna put on the housing now in the housing on this guy I'm actually gonna have to cut it because those two cables coming out of it are not gonna work so I cut it right to the edge and I peel it back and I get a nice straight cut on it put the housing together you don't even see that heat shrink at all looks really nice and clean get my zip tie on there pull it through snip and now we have our 18 volt connector so one side would go into the power supply this I would also go into the power supply and then this side would go to your 18 volt pedal of choice so that is a voltage doubler one other thing I should mention is on voltage doublers like this you want to make sure that you're only doing it on an isolated power supply if you don't have an isolated power supply you do not want to do this modification to your cable it could possibly damage your supply so I highly recommend that you look and my recommended list in the description of the best power supplies to get and choose one of those if you can afford to do so next one we're gonna do is going to be the current devil so this is also called a paralleling the connectors or the cables here so let's do the exact same thing I'm gonna have it let's just pretend it's going to go in that exact same place and the power supply don't need very much of this first cable because remember it's just coming out of this one and going into the one that's neighboring it but this one I probably want to be a little bit longer since it's gonna be going to some other pedals I'm gonna use my strippers here strip this out just go this out now this one is actually I think a little bit easier it doesn't require any fancy heat shrinking so I'm going to secure this in here I'm gonna do the same exact thing where I'm going to cut away the strain relief these again with two cables going into the same housing there's just not much room now this is the fun part this one is really easy in this way it's basically like making a standard polarity cable except you're just doubling it up you're doubling up the grounds you're doubling up the hots and your wiring those to the tip you'd have the grounds and wiring those to the ground bug so what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually strip away as much of the black connector as I can on both of these so I have as much of the ground wire available I'm gonna braid these together so those are together I'm actually going to tin them right now just so I don't have to chase them around so that looks nice and neat I'm definitely not going to eat anywhere close to that amount of wires I'm going to cut that about in half and then on the tips here I'm just gonna take off just a little tiny bit of each of them don't need a whole lot I tend these as well and you're basically just combining them you're gonna put the two ones that were the shield they're going to slaughter that right to the ground basically just like a standard polarity cable but you just double them up and then for the center then that guy down a little bit and then these guys are both going to go in fact I think I'm gonna feed one of them through just to give me a little bit more room to work with I'm gonna feed one of these guys through I don't think that they'll both fit otherwise I just feed both of them through see how that how that works I think that's gonna work just a little touch of solder okay there's the first one I'm going to cut off the excess here got one more perfect now you can see that I put a little bit too much length of the cable there at the edge it's exposed I'm just gonna cut that down just to slide slide them out so I can close nicely just making sure you don't have any stray wires here sometimes you might see a few stray ground wire sticking out and you just cut those away and that'll work just fine now that looks perfect I'm gonna do the same thing that I did with the last I have the housing I'm just going to cut to a two of the sides there bend it back snip it once I got a nice housing to go on that now that fits both connectors get my zip tie feed it through but we're good and this is gonna do the same thing so instead of the last one the voltage connector that would double to make 18 volts this one is basically to take the 500 milliamps or the 500 milliamps at nine volt plus another 500 milliamps at nine volt and is gonna get you nine volts at one amp or one thousand milliamps on the other end to go to your high current pedal so that's what that one's doing for a very last one we're gonna do what's called a Wye cable and it's almost it is the exact same wire in fact that we just did except we're gonna be leaving the two connections they're the two cables extra long so I'm gonna make let's do the Y cable with two straight ends and so basically what I'm gonna do let's just pretend the cables are the same distance away from the connector I'm basically going to fuse these two together so that they're gonna be coming out of one output from here let's say they come out of one and they go to two different petals on the opposite end so I'm going to strip this guy out same exact technique I just did literally identical to what I just did it's just the length of the cable is a little bit different the same thing I'm just gonna strip away as much of the the black conductor hair strip away as much as I can braid those together really identical technique to what you just saw and take another one of my Coby card connectors as you probably remember we need to cut away the heat or the strain relief I'm gonna do a little pretending there I'm not gonna pretend late the tip because I want to feed one of these guys through and if I pretended it's gonna be harder for me to do that alright don't eat very much of that just taking the small tips off this guy tip of that tin both these guys alright so soldering the ground they're shielded the ground that's one down now we're gonna feed one of these guys through through that hole there that's just making it a little giving us a little bit more space although it looks like I was a little overzealous on the solder there something to kind of have to trim it a little bit to get it to fit there we go that's looking good hit that with just a little tiny dash of solder all right perfect now this guy's gonna come over solder him in there too perfect I went a little bit too long again on this one so I'm just going to trim that down so you know the two tips here wired to the to the or the two hots here wired to the tip and we got the the shield wired to the ground beneath there so almost identical oh we just did and again we're just gonna cut away the bottom of this housing this just gives us enough room and clearance for two connectors two cables to fit through that connector I'll put that on the back just let snap into place get our zip tie this is just so it doesn't come apart and voila we have connector ready to go and so this would be for example if you wanted to come out of this nine-fold output and now we have two connectors two different cables coming out of it go to two different pedals this would be something that you'd only want to do on something that was like an analog distortion device I mean that doesn't have very high current something that has low risk for any sort of noise you definitely would want to test the two pedals that you would put on a why came like this or a parallel cable like this but for the most part any analog distortion little current will work fine for this application so that is building DC power cables I gave you five different varieties that you can implement into your very own rig again all we're using is the provided power cables that come with any of these great supplies that I mentioned I highly recommend that you give this a try the parts are all listed for you in the description so that you can get the exact stuff that I used on this video please make sure again if you haven't subscribed already that you hit the bell icon you hit subscribe that keeps you up to date and it keeps us relevant in the YouTube algorithm in the musical community space so I really invite you to do that and would appreciate that and also if you're using any of these tips and tricks to implement into your own rig I want to see that I want to see what you're up to I want to see how this is helping you and this gives me good ideas so that I know how to help people in the future so please put any comments in the comment section if you're having any trouble with any of this and this doesn't make sense again everything is diagrammed everything is linked in the description so that you can do this exactly and we are here to help you in the comment sections if you get stuck so until next time i'm mason Marinella the rig doctor see you later [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Vertex Effects

Views: 46,512

Keywords: diy pedal power cables, pedal power cables, solderless dc power cables, voltage doubler, current doubler voodoo lab, current doubler cable diy, voltage doubler cable, daisy chain power supply, daisy chain power cable, reverse polarity power supply, reverse polarity cable, dc adaptor cable, dc power cable polarity, truetone cs12, pedal power supply, strymon zuma, cioks dc7, cioks dc5, Truetone CS7, rig doctor, vertex effects

Id: bO5V-3R6UHQ

Length: 25min 53sec (1553 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 25 2020