MOTM

In the two sets of Serge banana cables I've seen, gray is the shortest
at 4 inches, green is next at 8 inches and red is the longest for the
"short" set, up to about 21 inches.  Then blue, purple and maybe green
again for the long set.  One of these sets was from the late 1970s or
early 1980s and one was from very early STS, 1994.  So it appears that
Serge may have had different color schemes along the years according to
your account.
 
IMHO patching by color is more useful than color by length.  It doesn't
matter what colors are used as long as you have some consistency.  For
instance, all pitch control voltage cables may be one color, gate
voltages another color.  Then I might color code everything in an audio
chain the same color, for instance, VCO1 to VCF1 to VCA1 is white, then
VCO2 to VCF2 to VCA2 is blue.  You don't have to follow this
religiously, and you'll always have one-offs where the color doesn't
matter.  It most definitely helps when you have a patch going with a 100
patch cords.
 
I have relegated nearly all of my black cables to use on the back of my
patchbay.  Patching black cables on top of black MOTM panels would be a
challenge.
 
This, of course, is all a personal decision to make.
John Loffink
jloffink@... 
In all honesty (ah hemn) I have to admit that my cable color scheme is
actually the opposite of what I claimed. I got the idea of (5) rainbow
color cables with red being the shortest and blue being the longest
directly from Serge T.. I have no idea why he chose those colors/lengths
(this might be the standard way banana cables come from Pomona) but many
years later I was showing them to a friend (as well as the 75 other
cables I'd made) stating, "and I chose these colors because red is the
shortest wavelength and blue is the longest." To which he said, "No!
It's the reverse."