Cable Management Labels

BeZo

Well-known member
What do you guys use for labeling cables?

I've used colored electrical tape for pedalboard breakouts where there are only a few cables. Color coding is a great method, but I'm wiring up an IEM rig, and I need more colors than I have. I want to label cables so I know what's what if (when) something comes loose. Does anyone have a good suggestion for labeling cables?
 
Electrical supply shops have numbered stickers used just for wiring. If you have lots of cables to track, that’s what I would use.
 
Ive seen people use the P touch label makers for that
I did just that for labeling the back of my ampete switcher cables and even my main pedal board's FX in/out and input. It totally helps make it quick and easy without the need of busting out my reading glasses.
 
I tried some adhesive labels a while back and I keep finding them in the bottom of my rack. They didn't help. Masking tape and a marker might be next.

How does the P touch labels hold up?
 
I tried some adhesive labels a while back and I keep finding them in the bottom of my rack. They didn't help. Masking tape and a marker might be next.

How does the P touch labels hold up?
Be careful with Masking tape.. I always found it to leave that glue residue after its been on a surface for a while. the P Touch labels will honestly depend on the quality of the tape you're using. I found the cheap stuff tend not to stick very well, but that's my personal findings.
 
I tried some adhesive labels a while back and I keep finding them in the bottom of my rack. They didn't help. Masking tape and a marker might be next.

How does the P touch labels hold up?
It works well and looks clean and tidy for sure, something that I didn't really think about when I did tape and markers which I did shitty job at first. So it looked shitty for years and eventually the tape got gooey and slid a little and was just fkn nasty like what Duke of Metal mentioned. The irritating thing about labelers is that I swear they are designed to waste your tape, they all have a ton of extra tape printed before your text and after so I needed to trim most of them with scissors.
 
I used to use colored gaffer tape(specifically neon green)to distinguish my cables from others. On both ends. Never has a setup so complicated that I needed to mark were they were going or coming from. Now days I can understand why you would need to do that.
 
It works well and looks clean and tidy for sure, something that I didn't really think about when I did tape and markers which I did shitty job at first. So it looked shitty for years and eventually the tape got gooey and slid a little and was just fkn nasty like what Duke of Metal mentioned. The irritating thing about labelers is that I swear they are designed to waste your tape, they all have a ton of extra tape printed before your text and after so I needed to trim most of them with scissors.
Some label makers will come with a Margin adjustment.. you can adjust that so you waste less tape :)
 
I use white labels around the ends.
Then sharpie designate the amp/fx on each side.
It's pretty permanent. But i still scotch clear tape over it.
Also I found writing it twice on both sides of the cable ends helps for when they inevitably, twist, settle and are facing away 🤦🏻‍♂️
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I run an enclosed IEM system in my rack. I have an 8 channel mic splitter going into a Behringer XR18 where all 16 inputs are used.

Left Vocals
Right Vocals
Left Guitar
Right Guitar
Bass
Kazoo
Sampler (Long)
Sampler (Drum)
Keys
Kick Drum
Snare Drum
Ukulele
Guest Vocals
Auxiliary Input
Click Trigger
Talkback Input (FOH)

Oh yeah, and we're a three piece band.

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My guitarist brought a P touch home from work with the hopes of labeling the breakout panel all nice and neat. The print was too big, and we couldn't use it. Looking back, I should have done the cables with it, but I learned the hard way that we needed it when I added the mic splitter.
 
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