I Went Nuts

I bought some Befaco Bananuts from Control to add some color indicators. Having all aluminum jack nuts on Eurorack modules can sometimes obscure the jack purpose, especially on modules like Make Noise Function that have jacks all over the place.

Companies such as 4U Serge, Bugbrand, and Ciat-Lonbarde that use banana jacks each have their own color scheme for jacks. Bananuts come in a selection of colors, enabling schemes that associate a color with a particular use. Everyone seems to have a different idea for a scheme. I had to come up with one for this little project. I limited the number of colors to five, and used the following scheme.

Signal inputs would be Yellow or Gold.

Control inputs would be Blue.

Pulse inputs, i.e. triggers and gates, would be Silver.

Signal outputs would be Black.

Pulse outputs would be Red.

I could only put Bananuts on a small set of my modules, based on cost and also based on which ones would most benefit from clarifying the jack purposes. Here are details of a few.

Tromso Bank

I use the bank of four Tromsos quite a lot. Each Tromso contains three separate sub-modules, a VCO/LFO, a Comparator, and a Sample & Hold. These are normalled to work as a unit, but can be patched separately.

VCO/LFO has a Blue FM jack (and knob), plus a Black output.

Comparator has a Gold input, a Blue threshold CV, and a Pulse output.

Sample & Hold has a Gold input, a Silver trigger/gate input, and a Black output.

Low Pass Gates

Two Make Noise LxD plus two Erica Pico LPG are situated together. The bi-color LxD panel doesn’t aid in identifying ins and outs. To make matters worse, the inputs of the Pico LPG are arranged differently from the LxD. Now it will be easy to patch these modules.

God’s Box Loose Fruit

Loose Fruit contains three sub-modules. You can sort of discern them by the panel graphics and tiny labels. The two waveform modifiers each have an input and output and CV inputs. The right one has a two CV inputs. The third sub-module is a VC panner having two inputs, one output and a CV input. With the jacks all over the place, color coding really helps.

Make Noise Function

The Functions also have jacks sprinkled around. All five colors are needed here. One signal input, two signal outputs, two pulse outputs, a trigger and hang input, and three CV inputs. Although the Function layout isn’t as confusing as the Loose Fruit (to me, anyway), the color coding again helps.

Sport Modulator

Yet another nice module having jacks all over the place, needing all five colors. What is the S/H jack for? I had to stop and remember it is the trigger input when in Sample & Hold mode. What’s that middle jack? Ah, the comparator between both outputs.

Modification needed for Sport Modulator and Function

It turned out that both of these modules use the identical approach to jack and panel fitment. The jacks are Knobicon, I believe. Here’s a photo.

Side view of Sport Modulator showing nuts behind panel

Knurled nuts are placed behind the panel to increase the spacing between the panel and the board. This results in just enough jack threads above the panel to secure a flat hex nut. But Bananuts are a little thicker, and as a result the jack barrel is recessed just enough to create worry about a proper plug fit.

After the modification below, the lip of the barrels protrudes just a tad farther.

Raised jack barrels afford better security for plugs

It doesn’t seem like much, but I deemed it needed. I replaced the knurled washers with two standard jack flat washers.

Flat washers on the jacks lowers the panel a bit.

The only parts impacted are the LEDs, which on the Sport Modulator were snug against the panel. I had to lower them just a bit, by reheating the solder pads from the top and pushing the LEDs down. Fortunately, the LEDs on Function were a little lower to begin with and didn’t need this treatment.

Overall Impression of Bananuts

They look nice! Fitting them on the Sport Modulator and the two Functions entailed a small panel modification. The other limitation is, when replacing knurled round panel nuts, a few modules like Mutable Instruments Kinks and After Later Audio Tilt space the jacks very close together. I got them all to fit okay, but a few designs might be too tight.

A few modules use jacks and nuts that can’t be replaced (for instance Synthesis Technology). My one ADDAC module has a jack/panel design that uses no nuts at all on many of the jacks. But most modules that have round, knurled nuts, or hex nuts, can get Bananuts.

One last tidbit. The black Bananuts seem to be made of plastic instead of the clearly metal material of the others. Not a big difference, but I wish that the plastic ones were less expensive.