MOTM

That's a good estimate. The most frequently used cables are likely to 
be 2 and 3 footers for the cabinet you have planned. 1 footers are 
great for syncing oscillators and semi-permanantly patching in a 
JLH-822 to them. You'll need the longer cables to get from the far 
left end to the far right end.

Figuring out quantity is tougher because it depends on how you use 
your synth. The upper limit is to count the number of jacks and 
divide by 2 to get the number of cables. I've never used all jacks in 
a patch, but I often use half of them, sometimes up to 2/3, when 
creating self running/evolving soundscapes. But when I'm patching 
together a simpler minimoog-like structure (even if it's four 
voices), I'll use considerably less of those jacks, maybe 1/4. I 
think 53 cables will be fine for a 24U x 2 row system, based on my 
experiences.

>I have a slightly different patch cord question - hopefully one of the
>seasoned veterans on this list can offer some sage advice...
>
>I'm building a system which basically fills the typical 24U x 2 row
>case. Having never patched a modular before I'm at a bit of a loss when
>it comes to the number of cables to buy. My crude estimation attempt
>landed me at roughly 53 (just counting up the number of inputs across
>all modules I could see used in a fully patched mutli-timbrel setup).
>Does 53 sound a bit high to anyone with a system of this size? For
>reference it consists of:
>
>4 x 300
>4 x 800
>2 x 190
>1 x 101
>1 x 120
>2 x 320
>2 x 420
>2 x 440
>2 x 485
>1 x 700
>1 x 820
>1 x 890
>1 x UEG
>1 x FS
>and
>1 x 650   (with fingers are crossed for Feb 2005 :)
>
>I figure about 2/3 of the cables would be 2-3 ft while the remaining
>1/3 would be 1 ft or 4 ft (and longer).
>
>Any thoughts would be appreciated!
>
>Thanks,
>
>-greg