balanced into unbalanced - I think...

U

ultrajosh

New member
Okay so I have a tape deck that has unbalanced (RCA) inputs and outputs. And I have a hand-built mixer from the 70's. The previous owner pulled a lot of chips so only the pres and eqs and the buss outputs are working.

The mixer has all XLR inputs and outputs - 16 mic inputs and 16 line inputs and then 8 output busses plus stereo out (disabled), echo out (disabled) and some monitor outputs (one of them works). The master section (chips missing) is dead.

I'm having problems getting the buss signals to pass though a patchbay to the recorder. If I take the 8 buss outs and send them into another mixer (Mackie 1202) it works fine, but if I try to go through a patchbay to the recorder it doesn't work.

Maybe it's that the buss signals are balanced going into the patch bay, and I'm sending an unbalanced signal out to the deck? I can't get the meters to move on the deck unless the signal's from another source (e.g. drum machine).

For the Line ins I built a snake with RCAs on one end and XLRs on the other. I wired pins 1 & 3 together - I ran the outputs of the deck to the line ins on the mixer - works great.

However, the snake I have for the 8 Buss outs has female XLRs on one end and stereo-type 1/4" jacks on the other end (I didn't realize they weren't mono jacks when I bought the snake).

Should I build a new snake or modify the one I have? If so how do I wire it? Or is it something else entirely?
 
The problem with balanced connections and multiple equipment manufacturers is that not everyone uses the same pinout. Most are pin one=shield, pin 2= hot and pin three= return. Some manufacturers swap pin two and three. One is always shield. When collapsing to unbalanced, you might be shorting the hot lead to ground, hence, no worky. If that's the case, you can modify your snake easily enough. Can you solder? It's the first requirement in recording you know. :D
 
If that's the issue I'd modify the board, not the snake. And I think a Pin 2 problem would only affect the polarity anyway, no?
 
I need to know what to solder to what. I already tried modifying one of the 1/4 in stereo jacks to convert it to unbalanced - I soldered a connection from the ring lead to the shield. This gave me continuity between pins 1 and 3 on the XLR end and pin 2 went to the tip. But as you say: "no worky". Do I leave one of the pins detached or something? Do I have to change something on the XLR end, too? I need it to go through the patchbay since the mixer has no effects loop.

And how do I check which way the XLR buss outputs on the mixer are set up (I have a multimeter)?
 
The recorder has RCA inputs/outputs and I don't have a female XLR to male RCA connector. That's one reason I'm going through the patchbay.

Another issue is this mixer has 48V phantom power so I don't want to cook anything or anyone. I also have a lot of old unbalanced effects to patch in to the system so I need to get the cable thing worked out.

I guess I can plug a few adaptors together to see what happens when I go straight into the recorder...

...but I AM able to send a signal to the recorder from the patch-bay if it's an input like the drum machine.

The only difference I can figure is that the buss input to the patch-bay is going through a snake that has (stereo/balanced) 1/4" on one end and (I assume) balanced XLR on the other, and what I need is an unbalanced XLR->1/4" cable between the buss and the patch-bay...
 
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