Wall mounts

[notbradsohner]

I am working on an iso room, and my control room shares one wall with it. I have some xlr wall plates that i will be mounting, but is there something similar for headphones. Basically, i want a 1/4 female wall mount. And then do i put a male mount somehow on the side of the control room?

[knightfly]

You would use females both sides, then plug in male/male cords. Otherwise, if you could even get male panel mount TRS connectors, they would get broken off probably within a few days of installing -

http://www.partsexpress.com/webpage....=320&sm=1&so=2

These aren't the cheapest, but are good quality. Be sure and offset your wall boxes by at least one stud cavity, preferably two - wire them leaving at least 8" of wire sticking out both ends, caulk thoroughly around wires and any holes, then solder the connectors and cover plates... Steve

[Track Rat]

Just to amplify on Steve's excellent post, I bought steel blank face plates from Home Depot and just drilled a hole in them and mounted the TRS females connectors in the hole. Very cheep and custom. I home run ran the wire from all the plates to a central location and mounted the same type connectors on a double gang blank plate very near to the headphone amp for easy patching (sort of like a little patchbay). It works for me and is a pretty flexable system.

[myfreakinuserid]

This is great stuff.
I've had some questions about this also.
Is there any particular wire I should look for?
Does it matter where I buy it?
Can you get one cable with many wires in it, to hook up like 4 XLR, 1 headphone, and one TRS?
Would a balanced TRS work with an unbalanced guitar 1/4 cable? Can you get the wire from Home Depot also? Also, does length matter....would you lose signal level and get more noise if the wire is about 25' to 35'?

Sorry for all the questions on my first post here, but I'm on a mission to wire up my garage to my office so I could record while my 2yr old daughter sleeps at night!


thanks!

-brad

[Track Rat]

Is there any particular wire I should look for?

Depending on what application you want to use it for, yes and no. Signal carrying wire (mics, instruments, line level signals) you want to use a quality wire. Beldon, Canair, Mogami, etc. Headphone wire you can use just about anything with three conductors will work.

Can you get one cable with many wires in it, to hook up like 4 XLR, 1 headphone, and one TRS?

While you can get multi conductor wires, it's a bad idea to mix mic/line level signals with anything else (power cables, speaker cables, headphone cables) as they can induce nasty stuff into your signal.

Would a balanced TRS work with an unbalanced guitar 1/4 cable?

No. Balanced connections are three conductors, unbalanced (like guitar/instrument cables) are two.

Can you get the wire from Home Depot also?

No!!!!!!!!

Also, does length matter....would you lose signal level and get more noise if the wire is about 25' to 35'?

With low impedence mic cables and balanced cables, length is not so much an issue as it is with unbalanced lines. There 10' is about max.

[myfreakinuserid]

Track Rat,
Thanks for the reply and all the info.
That will help greatly.

Now, my only question is that I'm gonna have about 25' to 35' of cable going to my garage, and I'd like to have the ability to hook my guitar or Rhodes up in my office, plug it into the wall, and plug that same signal into my amp in garage. That way I could track in my office but mic my twin in the garage. Am I asking too much? I get the impression that it would be too far to run an unbalanced 1/4" cord...

any work-arounds?


thanks,
brad

[knightfly]

Running unbalanced, high impedance, low level signals like a Rhodes or guitar that far will lose you quite a bit of high frequency while picking up plenty of noise - you could use a passive transformer DI box, but their input impedance is typically around 20k ohms - I've never measured the Rhodes outputs for impedance, but some passive guitar pickups have impedances up around 100 k ohms. You don't want to load such a pickup by using lower impedances, because it will drastically change the tonal quality (not to mention noise with longer cables)

My recommendation for what you want to do would be to use an ACTIVE DI box, such as the top one here -

http://www.whirlwindusa.com/dirbox.html

Then, on the end where your amp is you can convert the high level, low impedance balanced signal out of that box back to high Z unbalanced for your amp with one of the less expensive devices, like the IMP 2. Its unbalanced side has a 20K impedance, which won't be loaded down by any guitar amp you plug it into.

The above method won't TOTALLY keep from changing the timbre of your guitar or Rhodes output signal (nothing is that good) but it's the best (not cheapest) way I know of.

IF you just use a pair of matching transformers, one on each end, their lower-than-guitar unbalanced side impedances will change your tone a fair amount, and not for the better. Still, for about $30 you could try a pair of the "little imps" or equivalent, and see if you can live with it.

Hope that helped... Steve

[myfreakinuserid]

Originally posted by knightfly
Running unbalanced, high impedance, low level signals like a Rhodes or guitar that far will lose you quite a bit of high frequency while picking up plenty of noise - you could use a passive transformer DI box, but their input impedance is typically around 20k ohms - I've never measured the Rhodes outputs for impedance, but some passive guitar pickups have impedances up around 100 k ohms. You don't want to load such a pickup by using lower impedances, because it will drastically change the tonal quality (not to mention noise with longer cables)

My recommendation for what you want to do would be to use an ACTIVE DI box, such as the top one here -

http://www.whirlwindusa.com/dirbox.html

Then, on the end where your amp is you can convert the high level, low impedance balanced signal out of that box back to high Z unbalanced for your amp with one of the less expensive devices, like the IMP 2. Its unbalanced side has a 20K impedance, which won't be loaded down by any guitar amp you plug it into.

The above method won't TOTALLY keep from changing the timbre of your guitar or Rhodes output signal (nothing is that good) but it's the best (not cheapest) way I know of.

IF you just use a pair of matching transformers, one on each end, their lower-than-guitar unbalanced side impedances will change your tone a fair amount, and not for the better. Still, for about $30 you could try a pair of the "little imps" or equivalent, and see if you can live with it.

Hope that helped... Steve

I see!

So, my next question is...would a preamp work?

I have a little Art TubeMP thing...and I know they're not the highest quality, but if I hooked my guitar to that and then ran a XLR to the wall and then got a Little Imp on the other side into my amp? Would that work?

I'm also assuming that it doesn't matter which side I send the signal through......

what i mean is this:

I'm planning on putting female XLR's in the garage and male XLR's in the office. The signal would work the same both ways right? (I'm ignorant of electrical stuff....sorry). Also, is this the idea configuration for something like this or should I put female's on both sides and just get adapters for the mic cables coming into my MOTU-828?

...I think I'm learning stuff here.....


-brad

[knightfly]

If your version of the Tube MP has a high impedance (guitar) input, then sure - it would work fine. I've not used the things, but have heard no negative comments from people who have them.

As to female/male XLR's, you're right - electrons don't care which way they go through a wire or connector - however, standard practices are that in an XLR connector, signal flow is in the same direction as the male pins are pointing. So the female RECIEVES the signal, and the male delivers the signal. Wiring everything to this standard makes things easier to remember and also to interface with.

I'm not sure if you're ready for this much information, but here's a good primer on connections of various types -

http://www.rane.com/note110.html

Hope that helped... Steve