My tech time is very limited, and I’d rather spend whatever time I do have working on music. So, when I wired my new studio space four years ago, I chose DB25 patchbays. I’ve never regretted this decision. DB25 bays cost more than traditional soldered or punchdown bays, but they’re flexible and easy to reconfigure without getting behind your racks with a soldering iron.

I wanted a few mults on my bays (that is, patch an input to one point and have the signal split into a few output points — handy for all kinds of things, for instance printing a processed and “safety” version of a track simultaneously), and was stoked to find that Redco sells these premade DB25 plugs. Connect the plug to the back of your patchbay, and you get a pair of 1-in-3-out mults. At $30 apiece, they’re more expensive than buying connectors and DIY’ng it, but they also worked the first time and gave me an hour or two of my life back.

Tape Op is a bi-monthly magazine devoted to the art of record making.

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