D'Addario Accessories Modular Snake XLR Breakout Cable - 4 Male & 4 Female XLR Connectors for Professional Audio & Studio Recording Equipment

I perform live as a soloist/1manBand... I play 2 guitars, keys, tracks on an Ipod so I have a lot of stuff to hook up. I was into the idea of snake cables to it all and made my last one with the little brass connections that are solder less. Those are ok, but the connection does go bad and you have to keep trimming the cable back to make the new connection. I still found that I had to plug into all of the pedals and wore those connectors out. I also run all in stereo for a great sound from processors and this time I used small xlr type cable that shares the ground and has 2 inside signal cables for interconnection. The Planet Waves does have 8 cables, each with a ground/shield and 2 signal wires, set up for XLR or stereo...this totals 24 of the 25 available in the D connector end. This time I took the pedal board that has my track volume, guitar effects, vocal harmonizer and keyboard sustain and attached the open wire end of this Planet Waves system to that end. I glued the D connector to the end of the broad where it will meet the cable with two D connectors. This comes in two lengths 5 and 10 feet I believe. Then the other end where my rack is has another D connector tie wrapped and the open wire end has 1/4 inch and xlr connectors I soldered custom as I did for the pedal board end. I simply set every thing down, open my rack cases where the 5 foot cable stays connected and plug it into the pedal board. I ran a separate extension cable that is hardwired in the rack and goes down to the pedal board where I plug in a male ac cord that supplies power to the 2 ac adapters. You want to keep AC running separate to the signals or else you can get hum..but I did tape the run down to the pedal board next to the planet waves cord and it seems that the shielding they use does its job as I did not get any AC hum induced. Now the big advantage besides a heap of time saved unwrapping and wrapping connectors, cables etc. is that these plugs are plugged in once at the pedal board and all of the connections are saved the wear of constantly being plugged in and unplugged... and the Planet waves D connectors have a much longer life of this type of wear...and when they go bad..I have 2 spare lines in the Planet Waves cable unused...or I just replace the one cable. I play on the beach a lot and have constant salt mist and often get rained on to boot... I expect this is a durable and fast set up solution especially if you are using it around a studio or dry/clean environment. I am glad that Planet Waves has this system...did not find anything else like it and did not want to try to solder a D connector without a big expensive machine to help... The connectors are very reasonably priced for any experimentation.. If you wire them the same you can have a 2nd back up rack that everything plugs into for different volume gigs or just if a rack goes down. I plan to buy another D with bare ends and a double D and do just that with my old rack.I most always find Amazon has the best price and is hassle free when it comes to returning stuff. PayPal and EBay on the other hand, if you have a problem...well contact is like sending a Carrier Pigeon to the Moon.