Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Original ROS boxes are scarce, and Rich-e-split seems to be out of business.

Has anyone tried the RattleSnake Cables splitter? It’s on sale this weekend for $25.

The Y cable causes too many problems if you aren’t sitting still.

Now if one of you geniuses created a wireless ROS box, so you don’t need the stereo cable, you’d really have something.

My Y-cord has about 20' of stereo wire, then the Y with two mono legs, each about 8' long. It hasn't caused any problems. I had it custom built for about $35 with really good quality parts, right after I took the cover off of my official R.O.S box and looked at what was inside of it.

I played around and built my own, it's not too hard even with my modest soldering skills. You can probably find schematics online. I built mine to take a stereo jack cable instead of the soldered-in cable, that way if that end went dead I could replace it. The split box takes the hot connections from the stereo jack and send them to two separate mono jacks with the grounds connected to the aluminium project box. I got one around the size of a stomp pedal. All in all a bit of time and $40 worth of parts (with the 10 foot stereo cable). I thought I'd get fancy and add a couple of ground lift switches in case it got noisy on either channel, but never got around to it. I don't use it enough to justify getting too clever with it. Come to think of it I should dust it off and give it another go.

Bayou Audio Cables used to make one, not sure if Butch still does.

They are pretty easy to make with basic soldering skills.

I've used a custom built stereo to twin Mono for a long time, more recently I've used a simple Stereo to Stereo cable with a Female to twin male Stereo to twin mono cable, much more cost effective and easier to maintain

I have a couple of the ProCo cables with the angled stereo end that come with Parker Fly guitars, and I believe also sold separately.

Rick-O-Sound cable could and should exist.

Decades ago, when Radio Shack was still open, I bought a "stereo" plug and two mono jacks. I had a dead cord, so I cut out the good sections of the cord and made my own Ric-O-Sound plug, with each side having a jack so I could use two conventional guitar cords to get the guitar hooked up to two amps. I still have it, and it still works very well, indeed. Let's see: a plug, two jacks, solder on hand, cord on hand, a little bit of my time: I'm thinking it was about a $10 to $20 outlay all those years ago.

Would this cable work as a rick-o-sound alternative?

https://www.cordial-cables.com/en/products/cfy-vpp-long

Essentially yes, in that it does what any Rick-o-sound box does - i.e. split the two signals off down two mono jack leads. However, you would most likely find it inconvenient to plug it directly into your instrument. As the product page says:

"The part of the cable before the split is about 15 cm long."

Having the cable split into a Y after a mere six inches would make it pretty difficult for the player to move about. A possible solution to this would be to run a stereo cable of decent length to an inline tip-ring-sleeve jack socket, then plug this Y cable into the end of that.

TBH, it would be just as simple to build a splitter box and have done with it. It ain't rocket science!

kennyhowes wrote:I have a couple of the ProCo cables with the angled stereo end that come with Parker Fly guitars, and I believe also sold separately.

Here’s the current version of what I was referring to:
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... le-15-foot

kennyhowes wrote:

kennyhowes wrote:I have a couple of the ProCo cables with the angled stereo end that come with Parker Fly guitars, and I believe also sold separately.

Here’s the current version of what I was referring to:
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... le-15-foot

That looks a nice solid piece of kit. A sensible 10ft of stereo cable before it splits, too.