Having more than two enclosures full of Eurorack stuff can be challenging at times. I’ve rearranged several times trying to account for optimal patching convenience. But one of the issues is that I have the WMD Performance Mixer, and it’s rather large, so it simply can’t sit in the same enclosure as a lot of the things that need to patch into it.
So I started shopping for rack plumber modules (modules that extend a number of jacks over a small distance semi-permanently). I looked at a bunch, and none of them scratched the itch perfectly. I wanted a lot of jacks, and I didn’t want it to take up a lot of space. I noticed I couldn’t seem to find any 1U versions with high port density.
So I took the knowledge I’ve picked up over the last few years of designing PCBs with DC540, ran a couple of things by some more experienced folks, and designed my own 16-jack pair of 1U rack plumber modules (PulpLogic format, because that’s what I have). They take advantage of shielded ethernet patch cables to pipe two sets of eight signals via RJ45 to a matching unit elsewhere (for me, it’s another rack — for someone else, it might be to the far reaches of a much more complex permanent enclosure).
I can’t put them up for sale, because on a whim I added a poem about communication and signals, and that poem’s probably copyrighted. But the satisfaction of having an idea, putting it in KiCad, refining it, ordering parts, fixing fitment issues and then seeing it do its job in the rack is pretty priceless. (The RJ45 hole was just shy of a perfect fit, so I had to use a tungsten carbide grinding dremel bit to shave off a little bit of the edges so that it would nicely slip over the jacks.). It’s not fancy or complex (no power, no microcontroller, just signal paths), but it serves my particular utilitarian needs very well, and I’m pretty stoked about it. Also, I got five sets for what would effectively be the price of one set retail. And it has my face on it. LOL.
Update: Tested in rack, works GREAT!
