Clear shrink is a good idea. Also though, my company owns several thousand mic cables and we do not use shrink when we make them. The failure rate of the connections at the XLR is very low and not an issue. Most of the failures we get are either cable getting torn on a sharp object, or if very old, the conductors breaking just outside the strain relief. I find that just the overall heat shrink is the best use vs results and only use individual shrink for extreme exposure to salt moisture applications.
UK BBC* policy was to use Hellerman rubber sleeve to insulate the screen wire with another rubber sleeve placed half over the outer cable sleeve and the screen so that the first rubber sleeve is held in place. There are 3 pronged pliers that open when squeezed, combined with Hellerman oil (or wireman spit) which will evaporate, leaving enough friction to hold it all together. * Guess where I did most cable work.... Ohh, XLR male to male cable, now there's an interesting thing.
Another great series as always Dave! Question, could you elaborate in one of the next videos on uses for the chassis ground? For example, some of the cables you showed had two layers of shielding. Would it make sense to use the inner layer as the pin 1 ground and the outer layer as the chassis ground with that type of cable?
Hmmmm, I can not think of a reason to separate the two shields. Pin 1 is the ground connection and the gear it is connected to will determine how the ground is connected to the chassis.
Thanks dave.... I've always done the cut the braid (or sheild) wire shorter so any tension appears on it or breaks it first. Always been told this is so your lead will keep working with a broken shield connection. BTW we say Can - Air in the land down under. Cheers buddy
Great video Dave. Hopefully you could give me an explanation for this issue. All 3 XLR cables connected to E945 and worked fine on QU16 mixer. However, none of them works with the ECM8000 condenser mic. I made sure that 48V was turned on and even tried ALL 16 channels without success. I was so confused and tried my lass option which was using a short XLR cable from the talk mic and it worked with no problems. One thing I noticed was when I plugged in the ECM8000, I could see the meter jumped up instantly but that was the only signal I saw on all 3 XLR cables. How is this possible when cables worked perfectly on dynamics but failed to ork on the condenser? I wish I had another condenser mic to try but I did mot. Hope explain this issue for me. Thanks Dave
Sounds like the XLR cables are unbalanced with either pin 2 or put. 3 shorted to ground or they don't have the pin1 vonnected. Both of those would cause what you experienced
Hi Dave, thanks for the awesome videos! I can’t find anything explaining what different lights happen when there are problems on cables. Example I have a cable with pins 1 and 3 “touching” it lit when testing. What does this mean? My cable still gets audio and sounds fine! Do I need to worry? Thanks!
Maybe you can help me, I've been looking for a better way to test cables I've made. I don't like the off/on light testers. I want to know if the ground is good, test for induced noise and all that. Do I need to pull out an oscilloscope to test each cable I make? I've just got some noisy cables that keep testing as good.
I would say making an XLR female with a 150ohm resistor between pin 2 and 3 as shunt. Then test with a console and headphones with the gain turned up should or would be the best way
Depends. Solder the shell does help shielding but also exposes the shield to touching things that can create problems. Also shorting the shell to pin 1 ground will alter the way equip ground lifts function For cables being extended, shell grounded tends to help in high noise environments but for most cables it's better not to ground the shell
Do you generally use Black in a Black/White pair for Pin 2? I have always been told low-voltage is "White Hot" so pin 2 always gets the White conductor of a Black/White pair.
Yeah, that a good question. With wall voltages black, red and blue are hots with white and green and colds. With low voltage white is often a hot or in polarity and black is cold or out of polarity. And with older pin 3 hot gear, white went to pin 3 which was in polarity but now pin 2 is in polarity so pin 2 should be white or hot for low voltage. As my daughter Sammy says when soldering up ythe custom SoundTools orders "pin twho" meaning - Two is White
I want to make a Cable Like xlr male to Usb-A Take the input from xlr male jack and forward its output to usb female... Please help me its pins diagram
We Have To WAIT!?? A whole week per episode! NOOOO……. I can’t handle the suspense, haven’t you heard of binge watching Mr. Rat? Do I have to Bit Torrent the whole season?
Ha! I wish I could create content faster! That said, the whole series is already posted on the member side and quite a few other vids as well. The public side of my UA-cam is maybe 5 to 8 weeks behind the member side, us vids that will never be public as well.
@@DaveRat I was afraid of that. Lol. As an aside, I'm currently (yet slowly) building the proper home studio of my bucket list dreams. So far it'll involve six 96-point Bittree Patchbays, and everything connected on the other end including 64-channels of interface I/O, a Soundcraft Ghost, an Audient 2802, and obviously a lifetime of other Analog Acquisitions, all requiring freshly soldered Mogami and Neutrik. This is the life we chose!
Thanks for the detailed analysis of soldering errors, it was useful to see!
Awesome and thank you
I can't tell you how helpful these XLR soldering videos have been. Thank you
love this series !! so much insight on the topic. thank You as always Dave
5hanm you Franco!
Good job on these videos! Thank you!
Thank you Greg
In reference to your catch 22 with heat shrink on each pin, I love my clear shrink tube that still allows for visual inspection.
Clear shrink is a good idea. Also though, my company owns several thousand mic cables and we do not use shrink when we make them. The failure rate of the connections at the XLR is very low and not an issue. Most of the failures we get are either cable getting torn on a sharp object, or if very old, the conductors breaking just outside the strain relief.
I find that just the overall heat shrink is the best use vs results and only use individual shrink for extreme exposure to salt moisture applications.
UK BBC* policy was to use Hellerman rubber sleeve to insulate the screen wire with another rubber sleeve placed half over the outer cable sleeve and the screen so that the first rubber sleeve is held in place. There are 3 pronged pliers that open when squeezed, combined with Hellerman oil (or wireman spit) which will evaporate, leaving enough friction to hold it all together.
* Guess where I did most cable work....
Ohh, XLR male to male cable, now there's an interesting thing.
👍
Another great series as always Dave! Question, could you elaborate in one of the next videos on uses for the chassis ground?
For example, some of the cables you showed had two layers of shielding. Would it make sense to use the inner layer as the pin 1 ground and the outer layer as the chassis ground with that type of cable?
Hmmmm, I can not think of a reason to separate the two shields. Pin 1 is the ground connection and the gear it is connected to will determine how the ground is connected to the chassis.
Thanks dave.... I've always done the cut the braid (or sheild) wire shorter so any tension appears on it or breaks it first. Always been told this is so your lead will keep working with a broken shield connection. BTW we say Can - Air in the land down under. Cheers buddy
Cool cool thank you Peter!
Cheers Dave👍
Cool cool Mark!
Great video Dave. Hopefully you could give me an explanation for this issue. All 3 XLR cables connected to E945 and worked fine on QU16 mixer. However, none of them works with the ECM8000 condenser mic. I made sure that 48V was turned on and even tried ALL 16 channels without success. I was so confused and tried my lass option which was using a short XLR cable from the talk mic and it worked with no problems. One thing I noticed was when I plugged in the ECM8000, I could see the meter jumped up instantly but that was the only signal I saw on all 3 XLR cables. How is this possible when cables worked perfectly on dynamics but failed to ork on the condenser? I wish I had another condenser mic to try but I did mot. Hope explain this issue for me. Thanks Dave
Sounds like the XLR cables are unbalanced with either pin 2 or put. 3 shorted to ground or they don't have the pin1 vonnected.
Both of those would cause what you experienced
i always make the grounds a little tight so that's the pull point for the cable.
👍
Hi Dave, thanks for the awesome videos! I can’t find anything explaining what different lights happen when there are problems on cables.
Example I have a cable with pins 1 and 3 “touching” it lit when testing. What does this mean? My cable still gets audio and sounds fine! Do I need to worry? Thanks!
Maybe you can help me, I've been looking for a better way to test cables I've made. I don't like the off/on light testers. I want to know if the ground is good, test for induced noise and all that. Do I need to pull out an oscilloscope to test each cable I make? I've just got some noisy cables that keep testing as good.
I would say making an XLR female with a 150ohm resistor between pin 2 and 3 as shunt.
Then test with a console and headphones with the gain turned up should or would be the best way
Should i solder the ground to the casing on one end, both ends, or niether end?
Depends. Solder the shell does help shielding but also exposes the shield to touching things that can create problems.
Also shorting the shell to pin 1 ground will alter the way equip ground lifts function
For cables being extended, shell grounded tends to help in high noise environments but for most cables it's better not to ground the shell
Do you generally use Black in a Black/White pair for Pin 2? I have always been told low-voltage is "White Hot" so pin 2 always gets the White conductor of a Black/White pair.
Yeah, that a good question. With wall voltages black, red and blue are hots with white and green and colds. With low voltage white is often a hot or in polarity and black is cold or out of polarity. And with older pin 3 hot gear, white went to pin 3 which was in polarity but now pin 2 is in polarity so pin 2 should be white or hot for low voltage.
As my daughter Sammy says when soldering up ythe custom SoundTools orders "pin twho" meaning - Two is White
Who makes the yellow handle stripper that seems to work great?
www.amazon.com/IRWIN-VISE-GRIP-2078300-Self-Adjusting-Stripper/dp/B000OQ21CA/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=Automatic+stripper+wire&qid=1624508836&sr=8-5
Hi Dave.. I have been following your channel. I need to know a correct wireless vocal mic settings. Including on console gains.
Hmmm, that is so variable and dependent on many factors
I want to make a Cable
Like xlr male to Usb-A
Take the input from xlr male jack and forward its output to usb female...
Please help me its pins diagram
Hmmm, to adapt analog to digital you need a format conversion box of some sort
Search analog to USB converters
We Have To WAIT!??
A whole week per episode!
NOOOO…….
I can’t handle the suspense, haven’t you heard of binge watching Mr. Rat?
Do I have to Bit Torrent the whole season?
Ha! I wish I could create content faster! That said, the whole series is already posted on the member side and quite a few other vids as well. The public side of my UA-cam is maybe 5 to 8 weeks behind the member side, us vids that will never be public as well.
Seriously, after almost 40-years of soldering cables. I think I may have made Every example on your desk. Do I win something?
Yes! You win the solder master award that involves a life of continuing to occasionally solder
@@DaveRat I was afraid of that. Lol.
As an aside, I'm currently (yet slowly) building the proper home studio of my bucket list dreams.
So far it'll involve six 96-point Bittree Patchbays, and everything connected on the other end including 64-channels of interface I/O, a Soundcraft Ghost, an Audient 2802, and obviously a lifetime of other Analog Acquisitions, all requiring freshly soldered Mogami and Neutrik.
This is the life we chose!
👍