Racks with internal cabling?

Greetings.

I have a Hart 6.4 Pro set that I bought used with the original Hart rack hardware. Great kit; I have it set up in my home studio for recording. I have moved it to play out once in the 4 months that I have owned it and I am not looking forward to doing that again. The main issue is the rack and rack wiring, I have it all tie-wrapped nice and neat on the rack and moving it is like -- a instant rats nest of cabling flopping all over the place that I can't really do anything about except sort it out when I set up. PITA. I started out on acoustic drums 30 years ago and just recently got back into drumming again on electronic sets. So dealing with the cabling is sort of a new thing for me. Maybe I will get used to it (?).

Anyway, the point of my post is this -- I wanted to ask if there are any companies making rack hardware designed specifically for electronic sets that feature the option of internally rouiting the wiring. Also maybe a fixed harness type dock for the module, you know like a laptop dock. So you can unfold the rack and there is all your TRS cables exiting the rack at the correct places, jut pull it out and plug in. And slide the module in so it lines up with the TRS plugs and even the power and bam, you are good to go. Sure would make setting up and tearing down a lot easier. If nobody is making anything like that, well, they should

Thanks for any info.

Internally wiring a rack is a tall order but not impossible to do. However, an easier thing to do, and less damaging to your rack tubes is to simply make your own cable snakes. When I owned the Roland TD-10 kit years ago, I wired everything up to the brain, and then with the help of those cable-collector-rubber-tubes (these are also made with a split in it so you can pull out wires as you need them along its length) from Radio Shack, put all the extraneous wire into this tube leaving the other ends out still plugged into the pads and the module. Once I had it the way I wanted it, I would wrap the areas that had wires coming out of it with gaf tape, making it semi-permanent.

The only job you had to do consistently was to 'lay' the whole snake along the rack the same way, the wires should land where they were before. I attached velcro ties to the rack where I wanted the snake to be attached along the rack. With all the wires in the harness like this, it was easy to just roll up the snake and put it in a bag after simply unplugging from the pads and module.

But yeah, I agree, I wouldn't take out the eKit without having the wiring done like this, it is a major PITA. This is why I think I was attracted to things like Octapads and Zendrums over the years - no messy cables!

If you travel with your rack, folding and unfolding it, you are also going to need to budget for "flex" and "give" depending on where it folds or hinges. If your cables are too tight at the joints you will risk damaging them and probably even the pads and module. I like the idea though and have thought of it myself. The wife keeps on giving me "to do" lists though ... need to send her on a vacation for a few days so I can have my pet projects

I'm right there with Bo Eder on that one: making your own snake is absolutely the only way to go, and then velcro it back to the rack each time you move it. I used spiral cable harness wrap on my Hart setup, as you can see in the attached picture. I laid it all out, harnessed it up, and then trimmed the brain end of the cables, re-terminating all of the wires so that they were the right length without all manner of slack, and properly strain-relieving them with heatshrink tubing.

Yes, this was a lot of work. But once it is done it stays done. It makes getting in and out at gigs much, much easier, and you'll thank yourself for having done the work every time you break down and set up.

The other thing I have learned over the years is to use multiple short lengths of the spiral wrap, say 2 feet at a time, instead of one long one. This makes it much quicker to replace cables when they fail. With the old Hart Ecymbal triggers, the cables take a beating, and tend not to live long. This is an old picture: I've since pulled the triggers off the cymbals and reattached them with the cables fed towards the stand to reduce the "whip effect" when the trigger is struck- which just about doubles the cable life. Other cymbal triggers got this much more right. In the fullness of time, I think I'll actually use some small project boxes and put jacks on the harness for the cymbal lines, tied on with ty-raps. I'd then use a 3 foot whip cable from the project box to the cymbal trigger. That would eliminate having to pull the harness apart when a cymbal trigger cable fails: just unplug the 3 foot whip right there and swap it for a fresh spare.

Hope that helps!