The Steel Guitar Forum

I am thinking of buying a used mixer(MX200, YAMAHA) and a CS800 PEAVEY power amp. Thing is, there is no snake, and not knowing a lot about P.A. stuff, would it be best to have XLR returns or 1/4" on the snake? I know this isn't steel guitar stuff, but I know a lot of you guys understand these systems better than me. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks a bunch...........Carson

Definitely low impedence XLR for all the mixing board inputs. Low impedence is less susceptable to noise, does not loose signal or frequency response on runs over 15 or 20 ft and all better grade mics are low impedence.

Between the mixing board and the power amp regular 1/4" guitar cords work well.

I've built a bunch of snakes, mostly with 1100 feet of Belden 27 pair balanced cable I got at an auction for $60. Now, getting it home was another story...and after removing the wood and plastic coverings from the 6 1/2 foot reel, the smell of PVC in my shop was about the equivalent of being in a shower curtain factory, phew!
Some of these snakes were portable, and some were wired right into a club, when an owner or manager had a clue about how to set up a club sound system. There was also the issue of liability and insurance premiums, with drunks stumbling over all sorts of ugly lash-ups of wiring brought in and duct taped into bad areas by bands.
I would generally make 16 channels of standard XLR to XLR connected pairs for mic's and the rest in 1/4" balanced, for amp sends. Theese 11 pairs were wired with 1/4" Tip-Ring-Sleeve connectors. The balanced pair goes on Tip & Ring, the shield on Sleeve. This gave those channels a fully balanced capability, but if "mono" patch cord with 1/4" phone plugs were used in & out of the snake, the lack of the "ring" segment would simply short out one of the pair's wires to the sleeve, and automatically revert to the unbalanced configuration.
I also used two of the extra channels to run a communications system between the mixer and
stage that used standard telephones with modular plugs, and a power supply/buzzer unit (with a marginally effective 121 db sonalert annunciator on the stage end).
There's nothing like mixing for four and a half hourss a night of extremely loud (and boring)Top-40 music in a bar, is there? What did you say?
This was a much better communications setup than a talkback mic in a noisy rock & roll bar. I still have the 1980 schematic for it, if anyone might have a need for such a comm system. I sold quite a few of them for cheap back then, the attractiveness of using standard phones was a good selling point.
Anyhow, there's the technical info, and a dose of ramble.
The Support/Tech library at RANE Studio products has a handfull of excellent documents regarding the stereo/mono 1/4" autoswitching concept, and a lot of other files on pro audio wiring & equipment use.
http://www.rane.com/digi-dic.htm
http://www.rane.com/library.htm#tech

THe biggest reason to have the returns 1/4" is:

1. Its always dark when you are hooking up a system and they are much easier identified, which leads us to two.

2. Once you have your returns pluged into the mixer you have a nominal outout of the board at up to +20 db. If you were to acidently hook a mick into this output you ruin the mic.

3. There has been times that we used XLR for returns. WHen you do make sure that you use the opposite gender of the sends. THe rule is: the Pins in the XLRs always point the direction of the signal flow. Look at a mic. THe XLR connector has the pins pointing out, away from the mic. THe signal is flowing toward the mixer. IF you use XLRs on the returns or to interconect your components, this will be true as well. The mains out on the board (if XLR) will point out. THe xlr ins on the outboard EQ or amp will point in. And so on and so on.

If you don't plan on having the power amps on stage with you while the mixer is in the audiance, no big deal.

I use a short snake onstage when I'm mixing from the stage. It has no returns just mic sends. When doing a big club, and have a soundman, I use the long snake with sends and recieves.

Hope this helps! You can E-mail if you want

Any snake should have an all-XLR fan-out at the mixer end. The exception is to substitute TRS (tip-ring-sleeve) phone plugs on the mixer outputs. If you drive a long snake, always used balanced connections. As long as the snake mixer fan-out had XLR males for mics and XLR females for power amp returns, should be fool-proof.

Thanks everyone for all your advice. You have been very helpful. If you like, you can close this one now b0b..........Carson