Help with wiring custom snake????

[owen_vallis]

I'll try my best to keep this making sense, but I've had to learn alot about studio wiring in the past few days.

Here is what I'd like to build as of right now.

1st room will be used for drums mainly or any other large group needs.

Snake for room 1 is 30' 12 wire snake with 8 Male xlr and 4 female 1/4" jacks going into the control room to 12 1/4" TRS (eventually I'm going to hardwire the control room to a patch bay, but I have to figure out the signal paths first so I'm leaving them flexible)

2nd room is a small iso booth mainly for vocals (originally a large closet)

Snake for room 2 is 25' 4 wire snake with 2 Male xlr and 2 Female 1/4" jacks going into the control room to 4 1/4" TRS (again I'm going to eventually hardwire this to a patchbay)

Now here are my questions.

1) Should I spend the extra money on the Mogami cable? $4.23/ft for 12 strand snake cable is considerably more money than $1.60/ft for CL3 rated multi-pair snake cable at gigcable.com

2) Should the female 1/4" be balanced or mono? I was thinking of mainly using them as headphone returns; however, I'd like to be able to plugin other sources (guitars, synths, recorders)

3) Should I spend the extra $ on soundcraft connectors or save the money and use the neutrik connecters instead?

4) Lastley, should I do anything else/different to avoid problems with shorting my phantom or hurting my mics?

Thanks for all the help guys. This forum seems to have some of the most educated posts I've come across on the net. I'll try and post pics once I decide what I'm going to do. I also came across Middle Atlantic company which seem to make kick ass brush metal 2U face plates that you can fabricate wall mounts out of.

 

[Raw-Tracks]

2) Should the female 1/4" be balanced or mono? I was thinking of mainly using them as headphone returns; however, I'd like to be able to plugin other sources (guitars, synths, recorders)

Use 1/4" TRS (balanced) connections. You really should not be using them for guitars, you should use a DI box for those acpplications. If you have them wired as balanced TRS, you could still use them in un-balanced configurations. In those cases, the Ring and sleave will be shorted together when plugged into the 1/4" TS plug.

3) Should I spend the extra $ on soundcraft connectors or save the money and use the neutrik connecters instead?

I think you are referring to SwitchCraft connectors rather than "soundcraft". In generall, I prefer the Neutrik connectors for most applications. The Neutrik XLR's are much better than Swithcraft because they don't have the little screw that gets lost.

 

[owen_vallis]

Thanks,

That makes sense with the 1/4"input. As far as "switchcraft" goes, I've gotten the impression that people use the neutrik xlr's as the preffered connecter; however, the switchcraft are more expensive aren't they?

 

[Raw-Tracks]

Thanks,

That makes sense with the 1/4"input. As far as "switchcraft" goes, I've gotten the impression that people use the neutrik xlr's as the preffered connecter; however, the switchcraft are more expensive aren't they?

The Switchcraft's may be more expensive, I don't know offhand. Price isn't everything. Many people prefer teh Neutrik's, as do I.

 

[owen_vallis]

I'm finding out that more expensive is not always better. BTW, cool web site for www.raw-tracks.com. It's an interesting idea.

 

[owen_vallis]

I meant to say that the rooms will have female xlr connectors. I got the pieces mixed up.

 

[SonicAlbert]

Try this place:

http://hotwiredcables.com/

Tell them what you need and get an estimate, you might save some money. I've had them make a number of custom Mogami snakes for me, they are affordable and very nice to deal with.