Ha. I suggested the exact opposite, with all wiring in the back of the patch bay being wired for balanced, you can achieve every one of the configurations in those diagrams with a couple of custom patch cable variations. I'll admit that you'd have to do some thinking when repatching - but in reality, you are always in that situation when you re-patch balanced <-> un. You could throw in a couple of isolation transformers to minimize those concerns.
I have another life in telecom. The wiring engineer of one of my buildings thought he was designing the ultimate in flexibility having the phones wired on cat 5. Unfortunately the 100 pair that ran between closets only supported 25 channels (when punching to rj45s) so the installers had to hand make custom patch cables to utilize any of the 3 unused pairs per rj45 - what a disaster, if you just touched anything, you were sure to knock out a phone. I spent the next 10 years troubleshooting problems. It turned out that design was not a very good idea - but in the engineers defense, it turned out to be quite handy when we switched to VoIP. Anyway it takes a few minutes to crimp a cable and I've used this kind of patching to do all kinds of tricks, and you can go in and out of the same jack and create a loopback to change your wiring configuration by plugging in different loopbacks.
I don't have any nice tt patchbays hanging around - but a bunch of rj45 patchbays that I could uses as a reconfiguration bay with a handful of loopback ends I could cut a few trs cables in half and punch them. I think I'm going to set up one channel worth to see if this is more trouble than it is worth.
Dave how do the the patchbays terminate the wires? They might have a 66 - or more likely a 110 punchdown block. If they do I recommend getting a good tool rather than improvising. If they are used, inspect the wire slots carefully for any wire fragments because if an old piece of wire is underneath, it can interfere with a good connection. And also read the patchby documentation to make sure you are getting compatible wire type and gauge - because depending on the termination method, this can impact the longevity and reliability.
Finally, I'm a big fan of minimizing connections. The likelihood of noise and other issues goes up exponentially (or at least non linear) with the the number of connectors switches and splices in a path wiring a patchbay is cost and time consuming and you don't initially notice when you need to break out the contact cleaner. The point is you don't need flexibility for a wire you change every couple of years - do the ones where it is beneficial. Getting reliability in exchange for flexibility is a good trade.
Take my suggestions with a grain of salt. I confess I have limited experience with audio patchbays - but a great deal with network and telecom...
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