This simple circuit board takes the output of your modular system’s power supply and creates multiple copies of it, routed to connectors that go to your individual modules. Desirable design features include thick wires or circuit board traces (especially for the ground path: 0v), filtering capacitors, and shrouded connectors that are keyed to prevent you from plugging in a power cable backwards.
(Doepfer – the creator of the Eurorack standard – advises that you don’t use shrouded, keyed connectors, because some power cables may be wired backwards from what’s expected, and a keyed connector may force you to plug it in backwards. Before connecting any module, double-check the power polarity, and if necessary buy or build a replacement cable if you find one that’s wired backwards from what a keyed connector is going to force you to do.)
If you have more than one bus board, it’s ideal to connect them in a “star” arrangement where the power supply has wires going out to each one. If you connect them in series – where the end of the first board goes to the start of the second board, and so on – you run the risk of resistance (and therefore, noise and other undesirables) accumulating along this daisy chain.
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