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Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Thu Oct 10, 2019 9:24 pm
by Confuzzled
I'm tired of keep cables in drawers, gets twisted together, eating up space and taking forever to find exactly what I need. I have a friend who twist ties cables and stores them in large resealable bags that he labels (seems like a pain in the ass). My time and space need to be optimized because I don't have much of either. How do you all feel about the wall mounted cable hangers? any brand you'd recommend? Stay away from? Have a better suggestion? I'm open to suggestions.

Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Thu Oct 10, 2019 9:44 pm
by MrNovember
I wrap my cables up nicely, put them in drawers, and pull them out like this:
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So yeah, I'll take some tips too

Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Thu Oct 10, 2019 11:20 pm
by Blackened Soul
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These... Many of these...

Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Thu Oct 10, 2019 11:48 pm
by Gone Fission
I figured that around here cable mismanagement was a frequent gateway for tentacle porn.

Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 3:57 am
by Eivind August
I burn them as I praise the almighty sun. Then I order more.

Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:17 am
by frodog
I keep some in one of those round, woven laundry baskets (come to think of it a real snake charmer's basket would have been fitting), some in a dust-gathering coil on the floor.

At our space there's a big coathanger covered in black spaghetti. Every time you go for a cable you end up taking down everything on that hook just to untangle one and hang up the rest. It's hellish. One of these days we gotta get busy and test 'em all.

Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 7:42 am
by spacelordmother
Reduce reuse recycle

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Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 9:22 am
by crochambeau
I eat a lot of burritos, and the tortilla bag is a nice dimension for a coiled cable. Those bags are then sorted into type groupings and stored in bags that originally contained 25 pounds of rice. Those bags are stuck in an old plastic bin in the corner of my room.

For stuff I tend to use all the time, I'm a fan of protruding wall hangers to drape the cables on so they are visible by type and length. That said, in any given day I have wires draped all over the place, because at heart I'm a fucking slob. I do try and keep them off the floor though..

Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 11:45 am
by cosmicevan
There's a closet in the room where I keep my setup. I use the bar that you would hang clothes hangars on to sling cables over. I keep like cables together (TRS vs patch vs y cables, etc). Some of the longer ones I'll loop over at the halfway point and then sling them over the bar. I find this to be a good way to keep things so I can get to them when I need them without having to deal with a tangled mess. I find that for cables that you roll up (like 20' patch cables) that it is a good idea to use a twist tie after you coil it. While tangling can still exist, it is pretty simple to detangle a few if they are twist tied.

Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 12:21 pm
by retinal orbita
I have been toying with building some kind of pegboard to hang them on. I bet $25 at the Home Depot would solve a lot of issues.

I built a huge one for my tools and it’s been very helpful. I was thinking of a long board with dowels in them but that seems like you wouldn’t be able to tweak. Then it could hold patch cables as well?

Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 12:23 pm
by retinal orbita
Also: learn to over under you turkeynecks!

Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 3:00 pm
by coldbrightsunlight
I'm planning to put up a pegboard too... I think it's the only good solution for making lots of cables easy to sort and access.

Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 3:27 pm
by MrNovember
I would like to go for the pegboard method as well, but that's going to wait until I am in a permanent space. We're expecting to move sometime in the next year or two

Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 3:28 pm
by Paul_C
I use velcro ties to keep my long cables tidy.

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Re: Cable storage. What do you do?

Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 6:58 pm
by K2000
I use one like this ("wall mount cable organizer") for short patch cables (one rack holds a lot and is enough for me) and cheap hooks for the longer ones. Sometimes not even hooks, but long screws, if it's not very many cables. Bike hooks are cheap and will hold a lot of long cables.

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Mine was like 15-20 bucks on Amazon, they are widely available.

https://www.grainger.com/product/30PJ20 ... 229497181!