snake versus dedicated wall access

[jbascur]

Hi everyone:
In order to make some investments on advanced I'd like to know howo do you prefer to connect things between control and live room.
Choices I know are:
-Buying a snake 16 xlr + 4 1/4 plug (almost every snake in the market are 50 meters long and I onlu need like 10 meters)
- Building a dedicated acces in walls (this may keep me screwing and soldering towards the walls and buying cables, etc...)

Please your advise.... I wait for your wisdom

 

[alecmcmahon]

personally, i think wall plates look nicer.... though they can be more expensive then a good snake.



say you need 8 feeds from your live room to your control room.... you can either buy 1 snake...

or with the plates..


16 wall plates, and 16 xlr cords..... ( can get pricey you know )

 

[DDev]

There are places that make customized wall plates for a reasonable cost. One such is ProCo (http://www.procosound.com/plateworksindex.htm). I've debated this myself, but think that a wall plate gives you the best bang for the buck. I am going to be doing this myself pretty soon.

Good luck,
Darryl.....

 

[frederic]

Throwing snakes under the door or slipping them through windows is kinda ugly, and a good way to have wiring damaged over the long term.

Permanently mounted wiring in the walls, floors etc is protected and not moved, so if something goes bad, its usually the cords you plug into the wallbox.

And there are a lot of ways to do this, but most studio connectors are mounted via round holes, so its just a matter of sizing the holes correctly and drilling them out in a metal plate where you want them to be. XLR connectors are the hardest to do, because they typically have about a 1" round body, with a square or rectangular top. Those too can be drilled out, using a cheap bi-metal hole saw, much like you'd use to drill a door for a lockset. They come in all sizes at Lowes, and Home Depot, the only thing you want to make sure is that its a "bi-metal" hole saw, so you can drill aluminum and steel with them easily. A drill press, even a smallish/toy one for $75, is a good tool to hold things steady. Hole saws do bite into the steel if you apply too much pressure too quickly.

The easiest way to make a pass-through is to use two metal plates, with a loop of cable that goes from the inner box, down a bit, and back up, to the outer box. This way if you have to remove one of the boxes (or plates), you have some cable slack to allow you to do so. I prefer boxes, but that's just me, you can use two plates and shove insulation between them, resting on top of the cable loops.