pre constructed mixer->recorder snake

[kristian]

anybody know where to get any of these that are quality? not Hosa or those multicoloured ones, those might be the same, but ones where you can repair etc. i was thinking of building them but it will be a HUGE wad of wires. it will be about the same cost, but ones moe space conserving/ easy to carry around. of course i could just buy like 5 feet of multipair cable. im gonna stop talking now.

 

[sonusman]

Look around...

Just about any of the quality cable manufactures will make you any combination of number of audio lines, and any connector on either end you want. These are usually special order items, but the cost is usually not too far out.

Try an electrical wholesale outfit. I know of at least three in the Portland Oregon area that carry Canare wire, and they can make any thing I could possibly want.

Ed

 

[Gear_Junky]

I use a Hosa snake and I love the color-coding. I also use Hosa patch cables. I haven't noticed any problems. I do know that my guitars sound better with Monster cable than generic cable, but the idea of paying for Monster patch-cables and a snake makes me shiver.

 

[kristian]

yea, but what happens when one of your connectors 1/4" or what not busts itself? you cant unscrew it. thats why im looking for maintainable ones and other reasons.

 

[skippy]

Companies like Full Compass Systems (and many others) sell multipair by the foot, and it is the only way to go for this purpose. Building your own also gives you a very good reason to put a good patchbay setup in between the recorder and the board, which you _do_ need if you have more than maybe 4 channels. It is very nice to be able to route the direct out from channel 13 to the channel 2 input on the recorder (for example) without having to dig around in all the rope salad that always grows behind the board. I'm a great believer in having all connections at the recorder and the board be plug-in-once-and-forget. Do them right, cover them up, and with any luck at all you'll never see them again.

I've used Belden, Gepco, and ProCo multipair in the past. I used up about 400' of 8- and 16-pair going from the board to the bay, and the bay to the multitrack, when I built the new room. Both Gepco and ProCo currently label their individual pairs with an inkjet printing process as the cable is laid up. I prefer the numerical method to color-coding when building patchbays, because it gets very crowded and _very_ confusing if you use a gazillion jacket colors. I then use a Brother labelmaker and clear heatshrink tubing to permanently label the connectors.

I ought to post a picture of my rig someday. I have a 208-point bay, and the connections at the back of the board total 98 points... Doing that with individual, unlabeled cables would be insanity-on-the-hoof!

Buy the multipair, solder up the patchbay and connectors, and you'll have a nice, long-lived, easy-to-maintain rig. Forego the patchbay and use a cheapo molded-connector snake (having no patchbay means that you'll forever be plugging and unplugging the snake for every minor reconfiguration), and you can pretty much guarantee maintenance headaches down the road.

Sad, but true. I learned that the first time around. "I didn't have time to do it right, but somehow I found the time to do it _twice_..."

 

[kristian]

Yea ive been looking at my cull compass catalog. and i think im just paranoid. i just think that i will break one of the pair within the cable and have to buy a new. but i think they are made not to break . and i only need a few feet so the cable isnt going to be the costly part. i think i will just make it with multipair cable.

 

[kristian]

shielding?

um, do i go with individually shielded pairs, or a common shield. myself i believe individual since at the end of the snake they arent going to be under that common jacket anymore since they have to go to their seperate places. whatcha think?

 

[skippy]

Individually shielded pairs, for sure. The nonshielded (or overall-shield-only) pair cables are meant for telephony and instrumentation, not audio. They may be a few bucks cheaper, but they will give you unacceptable noise and crosstalk performance. The individual shields are really a requirement for any serious audio use.

IMNSHO, you also want individually *jacketed* pairs. This saves a lot of labor at the fan ends, because each pair is properly insulated and protected where you split it out of the overall cable and terminate it at its individual connector. There are some cheaper cables (ProCo, Belden) with shielded but non-jacketed pairs, and you certainly can use them- but then you have to heatshrink each individual pair to keep the shield foil from becoming damaged on the run to the connector. This stuff is often used for live-performance mike snakes that have a connector box on one end, because the non-jacketed-pair cable is slightly smaller, lighter, and softer (so it spools and drapes better for portable use). And if you're a manufacturer, you can charge a lot of money for all that pretty handwork you have to do heatshrinking the fan.

For a home studio snake where you'll have a fan on each end, especially one where you plan on plugging and unplugging, the individually shielded and jacketed stuff is absolutely the way to go. It costs a little more up front, but it'll save you significant building time and will probably prove to be more reliable in the long run, unless you're willing to put a lot of work into making a heatshrink stress relief for the individual fan runs.

From the Full Compass catalog, I'd go with the ProCo AC series, or the Gepco GA series. Of those two, I like the Gepco better, because it strips much more cleanly for quick termination. If you have a lot of it to do, that adds up. In terms of audio performance, they are pretty much equivalent...