Rob Flinn, I see what you're saying but you have to take into account that you have obviously been incredibly lucky with those patchbay prices, and that you are very experienced with making the cables. I'd really like to know what kind of technique would allow to work fast with broadcast style Canare L-4E6S star quads for example. I mean they just aren't meant to be opened!
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I don't think I have been incredibly lucky, £10 a row seems to be the standard price. I probably have 15 B Gauge bays, 2 row, 3 row, 6 row, & they all cost around £10 a row.
I don't know what canare star quad is like, I used Van Damme balanced patch cable for mine, but if it has a tight braided shield use a small jewellers screwdriver to unpick it. Only strip it back as much as you need, then you won't waste time unpicking screen that you're only going to cut off.
Mount your soldering iron so that it is solid, & hangs down with it's tip about 10" from your bench. I use a hand drill bench press mount & some cable ties, but where I worked we had some stands made out of wood, with a nail on top for the reel of solder & computer fan to drag the fumes away. Put the soldering reel on top so the solder hangs down near the tip of the iron. It's much easier working round the iron like this, takes a bit of practice, but you have a big advantage in that you can move both the plug & cable, which makes it much easier to get the wire to sit in the the solder tag/bucket of the plug properly. I even do Dsubs like this it's much more acurate & quicker, no blobs of solder shorting 3 pins together.
I know people who make up special jigs with different sockets to hold the plugs, but you just don't get as good a connection & it takes a lot longer. It also wastes the sockets on their jigs, which could be put to better use in some DIY gear