That was interesting.

[bassetman]

Was making a deluxe style harness with S1 switch , super switch, and a couple push pulls. After getting through a fairly complex soldering job all checked out great. On soldering the jack I reversed the leads, D’oh! , took a minute to spot it but got some weird symptoms and effects...I always seem to learn best by making mistakes.

 

[Fat Pete]

There's just something about jack sockets. You can see perfectly well which lug is which, double check all you like, but still somehow wire it the wrong way.

 

[Sovereign_13]

It's like USB connectors and fitted sheets.  No matter which way you do it the first time, it's always the wrong way.

 

[Cagey]

LOL! Ain't that the truth?

 

[Seamas]

There's just something about jack sockets. You can see perfectly well which lug is which, double check all you like, but still somehow wire it the wrong way.

There is a trick to the USB connection, once you learn it you are gold.

As for the fitted sheets. I have no solution.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

There is a trick to the USB connection, once you learn it you are gold.

:laughing7:

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I wish Apple's Lightning were more widely used.
Simple to use, no matter how you plug it in, it always works properly.

 

[Sovereign_13]

I wish Apple's Lightning were more widely used.
Simple to use, no matter how you plug it in, it always works properly.

It can't be because if it was widely used you wouldn't have to buy them from Apple.  Proprietary design is their entire business model.

What you're looking for is widespread adoption of USB-C:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C

USB, but supports a wide variety of protocols and also reversible.  They're starting to become standard on smart-phones and laptops, but it will take awhile for them to penetrate as far as USB has.  But then, USB 2.0 has been around for almost 20 years now.

 

[bagman67]

Someone hide this thread from Cagey.  Otherwise he's bound to start spluttering and ranting about the program of planned obsolescence and standards-revision that mostly enriches incumbents and doesn't necessarily benefit consumers and blabbity blah blah...*

Oh, hey, Kevin, how  ya doin'?





*I tend to agree, of course. 

 

[Cagey]

Hey! I resemble that remark!  :icon_biggrin:

As for shifting standards, we can stay off that one this time in favor of pointing out Apple's stupidity in making Firewire proprietary. If they'd have made that an unencumbered standard, we probably would never have seen the 639 versions of USB we have now. Firewire was far superior performance-wise, and no more expensive to implement, but they wanted a royalty for every port installed. Something like $.25 per, so everybody told 'em to go scratch. When you're making consumer products that number in the millions of unit sales, that's a HUGE royalty to pay, and nobody was gonna do it. Not when USB was free.

 

[Sovereign_13]

Good old Firewire.  As far as I know, the only branch of consumer electronics still holding onto FireWire is audio recording, but even most of those products support USB now.  Some of the higher-end ones are early-adopting Thunderbolt protocol.  If Thunderbolt sees widespread adoption, I can see the audio recording industry abandoning Firewire for something that has more universal support.

 

[bagman67]

I think Firewire had good uptake in the audio realm because for a long time Macs were the only viable machines to do digital recording on.  But PCs and tablets have gotten much more powerful and USB 3 is so much faster than its predecessor that it's no longer necessary or even economically feasible in many cases to go Mac for recording, especially for the amateur. 

But anyway...

 

[rob91bob]

There's just something about jack sockets. You can see perfectly well which lug is which, double check all you like, but still somehow wire it the wrong way.

There is a trick to the USB connection, once you learn it you are gold.

As for the fitted sheets. I have no solution.

Buy stripped sheets they always run from head to toe.

 

[Seamas]

Stripes would clash with my polka dot jammies.

 

[fdesalvo]

I just completed an amp build and was smoke testing.  Thought I had some bizarre grounding issue and went through hours of gut wrenching troubleshooting. Then someone told me to check the output jack on my guitar, which I’d been using without incident for a year. Turns out my output jack wires were reversed there lol. It’s the simplest damn thing to wire, but by the time you get to it, your eyes have crossed.