XLR + Headphone Combo Cable Question?

Well done Chris! Gaining soldering skills will stand you in good stead for the future. The kit should NOT have been that expensive (a nifty all up here) ?
I hope you bought Lead 60/40 solder? Pbfree is a PITA and the temperature needed will melt a lot of legacy connector bodies. You CAN still get it and it is not dangerous so long as you follow some basic hand washing rules etc.

Dave.
 
Chris McDaniel said:
Well that was a pain in the dick.
I ended up going with 5 pin xlr cables. I made a little breakout box on my desk mic stands with a volume control box and headphone plug attached, and tore apart my little Xenyx mixing board to replace 2 of the standard 3 pin xlr's with 5 pin ones. I also internally wired in the headphone port to the new 5 pins. I ended up sharing the drain/return wire between the mic and headphones and so far it sounds fine. No static or weirdness. Teaching myself how to solder and buying the solder equipment was laborious and expensive. All the components were an arm and a leg. Once again my DIY hobby has spiraled out of control and cost 10 times as much and taken 10 times as long as I thought, but I don't really see any other options out there for something like this.
Oh well, I'm just surprised it works.

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Awesome!
 
Thanks, and thanks very much for everyone's recommendations. Considering different options was very helpful. I was VERY CLOSE to going with CAT 6A, it's shielded and the tight twists of each pair apparently helps keep out exterior signals. In the end I went with the xlr due to slightly cheaper component costs and the familiar rubberized outside coating. As for the expense, I guess it was about $20 per cord including the actual cord, the 5 pin male and female panel mounts, and the little breakout box I bought. Plus $100 for anyone (like me) who doesn't already have a full fledged solder setup (yes including 60/40 solder!).
I am IN LOVE with only having a couple cords though. It's such a cleaner setup than before, perfect for portability. For a home studio I'll probably stick with separate mic and headphone cords, but for portable podcasting this is just way better.
 
The thing with building one offs is always cost, because even if you buy the bits mail order, as they're so much cheaper than any local store, the price does run away. I bought some new kit for use on stage, and decided that I'd run purpose made power to them, using power on connectors, in a daisy chain, with each device plugging into a small box. Really neat, but I didn't think about quantity of components. 3 sockets on each box, 3 plugs to go into them, so in the end 36 connectors, 6 boxes, and 6 small breakers for safety. Not sorry I did it, because like his topic, it's very neat, but very expensive for basically cabling that really doesn't do anything!
 
Wow...I would never think a 6' cable run would need so much consideration and DIY...I would just plug each of them in and be done with it. :)
Now, if it was like 20' or more...OK, that might be worth the effort...but then, I'm not podcasting, I'm just doing basic studio recording. ;)

I have a 20' guitar + headphone cable harness, just so I could play and move around with both guitar and headphones one...but I just took the guitar cable and a long headphone extension cable, some basic heat-shrink tubing, cut up in 2" pieces, and put the two of them together with that.
 
Reading through the "fun" that was had on this project, I'm very glad I actually PREFER two separate cables for mic and headphones!
 
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