To save as much precious pedalboard-space as possible, it can make sense to swap out your patch leads for tight and convenient, one-to-one jack pedal connectors.
An Efficient Pedal Connection
There are some absolute purists who refuse to put anything between their amplifier and their guitar, but most guitarists and bassists can't resist the sound-shaping creative power of at least a couple of effect pedals. If you're sticking your guitar or bass through a pedalboard loaded with overdrive, distortion, modulation and/or delay pedals, then you'll need a way to link them. The first option is to plug in and route through some patch leads, but once everything's connected up, even those little cables are taking up a lot of space. The other issue is that, the longer your cables, the more signal-loss you'll experience. As such, the most compact solution to the problem is a simple guitar connector. This little widget is basically a two-sided jack plug, so you can neatly chain two effect pedals and save as much space as possible.
Effect Connectors: Straight or Offset
So that two pedals with a jack port fitted in the same spot can be linked, you can use a standard straight jack-to-jack pedal connector. But if you're working with differently sized pedals and the jack ports don't align so neatly, then you could use a 'Z-connector' where the two jack plugs are offset.
