Belden Cable at cost: What to buy?

  • Thread starter Thread starter kEVINk
  • Start date Start date
K

kEVINk

New member
I am helping a friend build a recording studio, and his father has some mysterious connection at work where he can get belden cable at factory cost. We're looking at using this for all of our internal studio wiring, as well as patchbays and mic cords.

To people that have used this before, is there a model you would recommend? I'm not really familiar with this product and don't want to just base my decision on "which one is most expensive?". I had previously planned on Canare, but I think the price is going to be hard to beat. We plan on raiding Marketek for the rest of our connectors and gee-gaws.

Thanks for any help!
k
 
Hold off a week on your decision, and I will be offering a mic cable and line level cable comparison CD for around $10 or less that includes all the popular brands, including:

Monster
Mogami
Canare
Belden
Sundholm
Gotham
Some other "expensive" brand Recording Engineer is sending me
APC
Horizon
ProCo
Whirlwind

You might be surprised at some of the differences in cable.

Ed
 
If you go with the Beldon, try 8451. It's shielded three conductor (a twisted pair and shield/drain wire) 22AWG. It's what I used in my studio and lots of it. I've had NO problems with it. Personally, I like Switchcraft connectors. Your milage my very.:D
 
Sonusman,
I'd definitely be interested in that; let us know when it is available! Would you post that in this forum, or somewhere else?

Track Rat,
You'll have to forgive my inexperience with this, but is the 8451 most appropriate for wiring from the mixer to XLR plates? I've been reading over lots of posts, particularly from you and skippy, where you use different wires for mic cables and such. Can we use this cable for everything in the studio, such as instrument and mic cables?

Do you have a source for the Switchcraft connectors that you would recommend?

If we are grouping inputs around the room in groups of eight (say, four XLR connections and two or four 1/4" connections), would it make sense to buy a single cable with 24 conductors? (Again, sorry if my terminology is confusing....) As opposed to eight three-conductor wires?

Thanks again for taking the time
 
The 8451 type is what you'd want to use for that application (XLRs to mixer? patchbay). As far as microphone "patch" cables, I wouldn't use it for that because the shield is a bonded foil wrap and it would come apart over time because of movement. For those you need the heavier type of cable with a braided shield. If you're putting in 1/4" high Z type of plumbing in the walls, the Beldon works well for that too BUT you want to keep those runs as short as possible, no more than 20' total (that means the whole circuit, source to recorder). Personally, IMHO, I'd stick with a single cable rather than the multi cable set up. :D
 
After looking at the Belden site, it would seem that the 8422 is specifically for microphone cables.

Yes, my "mixer to plate" statement was incorrect, we will be running the lines to a patchbay in the control room.

Could we also use this mic cable for patchbay cables, since the wear issues are similar?

Yes, the 1/4" connections could be a problem. Initially, I had no intention of having 1/4" connections anywhere in the studio, because of fears of interference. My plan was to mic cabinets in "closets" (acoustically dead rooms) and to also have a DI box that would convert the signal to XLR, eliminating the need and problems I've read 1/4 can bring (meaning at least two XLR lines from each closet).

However, I've been looking at the long posts by skippy, and I'm reconsidering. Not because I necessarily understand everything he's doing, because I don't, but that in the future there might be some pressing need for a few of them. To be honest, I don't know what that would be, but I'd rather throw and extra hundred bucks of wire in the wall than to be hobbled six months from now for some reason I can't even fathom yet.


By using cabinet closets, we're going to need a headphone monitoring system from the get-go. I know that there are some out-of-the-box systems that use a coax cable, which to me seems preferable to using 1/4".

So maybe I should ask: Do you use 1/4" lines from control room to recording room, and if so, what for?

This is quickly deteriorating into a newbie thread, apologies.


I appreciate the help!
k
 
Yup. Wire is always cheap while the walls are open. Furman makes some headphone distribution hardware that uses Cat5 phone/data cable (read: CHEAP!) that you might also want to consider. You don't have to roll your own the way I did, not by a long shot.

If I had it to do over again, I'd also run 2 runs of MIDI to each location. I'm already cussing myself for not thinking of that. And 2 runs of Cat5. Wire is _cheap_.
 
I don't have the Beldon p/n handy but I prefer the star quad. Beldon and Mogami are my favs. Beldon has a more durable shield that is a pain is the ass to work with. Mogami has a easier shield to work with. The star quad is two twisted pairs and a shield. It is very quiet.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top