making the snake!!!

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thajeremy

thajeremy

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I just got 12 male and 12 female XLR connectors in the mail today and Im getting ready to heat up the soldering iron then I thought...hey..I have never done this before...what if i screw up....then i thought id ask here...:).

Anyway...I opened an old cable laying around the house and noticed that there are 3 wires in the cable but one of them splits between pin 3 and the housing of the connector. Is there any tips anyone can give me before I get to work???

The mic cable that I am using is from West Penn. There are 3 wires in there...red, black and shield. I guess it doesnt matter weather the red and black go to 1 or 2 as long as I keep it consistant throughout the snake right? And Im assuming that the shield should be split between pin 3 and the connector housing?
 
thajeremy said:
I just got 12 male and 12 female XLR connectors in the mail today and Im getting ready to heat up the soldering iron then I thought...hey..I have never done this before...what if i screw up....then i thought id ask here...:).

Anyway...I opened an old cable laying around the house and noticed that there are 3 wires in the cable but one of them splits between pin 3 and the housing of the connector. Is there any tips anyone can give me before I get to work???

The mic cable that I am using is from West Penn. There are 3 wires in there...red, black and shield. I guess it doesnt matter weather the red and black go to 1 or 2 as long as I keep it consistant throughout the snake right? And Im assuming that the shield should be split between pin 3 and the connector housing?
Click to expand...

Whoah there, that's a nonstandard cable. Pin 1 is shield, pin 2 hot and pin 3 cold. Yes, as long as you are consistent red/black it doesn't matter, although I'd do pin 2 red. I don't think you have to bother connecting the housing. Rane has something about that on their website.

Here it is:

http://www.rane.com/note110.html
 
mshilarious said:
Whoah there, that's a nonstandard cable.
Click to expand...

does this mean that making a snake out of this cable is a bad idea???
 
I think he was talking about the picture you posted. I've used West Penn myself and it's perfectly fine. In fact I still have about a half a spool of it! EDIT: I got mine with the purple cover! What color did you get?

Yeah, as long as you keep in consistant, you'll be OK. Do you have a multimeter or some other means of testing the cables after you've built them?

And don't forget to slip the jack sleeves on before you solder!
 
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oh ok...cool...about the "nonstandard cable"...we make that tubing where I work so i just grabbed up about 100 feet of scrap oneday and only used about 35 for that snake. cool...i can get to work on my snake then...though Im kinda kickin my self for not putting in a few speaker cables..i have a 500 foot spool of that too...It would have been cool to have some in there to send power through if i ever had a need to do so.

thanks
Jeremy
 
thajeremy said:
does this mean that making a snake out of this cable is a bad idea???
Click to expand...

No I meant your old reference cable. The snake is fine. That old cable is not wired correctly, so don't copy it.
 
thajeremy said:
Im kinda kickin my self for not putting in a few speaker cables..i have a 500 foot spool of that too...It would have been cool to have some in there to send power through if i ever had a need to do so.
Click to expand...
Actually that's probably a good thing. If you have powered lines running right next to mic lines you can get signal corruption.
 
mshilarious said:
No I meant your old reference cable. The snake is fine. That old cable is not wired correctly, so don't copy it.
Click to expand...

AHHHHHH!!!! Now I get it...you meant that $2.49 Musicians Friend cable...:p

I bought the 10 pack...twice..

once about 2 years ago..and i vowed never to do it again. BUT....I did anyway about 6 months ago...1 was a dud right out of the box....the other 9 have been slowly dwendleing away.

this time Im serious...I wont buy them again...shouldnt need to once this snake is done though...
 
Wiring the shield to the shell of the connector can cause ground loops.
 
well...maybe thats what was wrong with my old cable then...
 
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