John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi all

I am wiring up my new rooms and have hit a bit of a snag....I dont know what I'm doing. Not wanting facts to get in the way I have bought the following gear.

Switchcraft Q-G CF receptacles http://www.switchcraft.com/

Belden 1513C cable http://www.belden.de/modules.php?name=C ... ick[40]=jo

Neutrik NC3MX-B http://www.neutrik.com/start.asp.

My problem is that the cable has two conductors per channel and one drain wire. Yet the Switchcraft and Neutrik have 3 poles. My assumption is that the hot(2) and cold(3) is connected to the two conductors and that the ground/sheald(1) is connected to the foil or drainwire. BUT in practice, how is this done, given I have twelve channels hanging off the one same drain wire or foil? Do you create a junction box arrangemetn ont eh drain wire and add cables back from each of the XLR scokets/plugs?? Can someone that knows what they are doing help me here???

Also, di I need to connect all the Ground pins on the rack together with a single cable that then goes to the drain???

Thansk in advance

With the multipair cable, you should have 2 conductors and a shield in each pair. You may have an additional foil and shield that surrounds the entire multipair cable for extra shielding. If it's this extra shield, you can A: ground it to a multipin connector (if using) or B: just cut it off.

For the internal pairs, Pin 1 is Shield; Pin 2 Hot; Pin 3 Cold/Common

The foil...just cut off.

Thanks ArronW

The difficulty I have is that the spec of the cable is...individual Aluminum foil-polyester tape(beldfoil) shilded pairs... this means I have a foil shield to connect to pin 1. How do I achieve this???


Again thanks for your help.

Regards
Mick

The cable spec site is...http://www.belden.de/modules.php?name=C ... &langx=jup

So you're saying there is no drain wire in each pair, only foil?

That sucks.

I haven't actually worked w/ that stuff. I've always had a drain/shield wire, and made sure of it. Sounds like this stuff would be used more for unbalanced wiring.

OK, I'm an idiot ... I have now found a little drain wire buried in the foil of the strands. When I started stripping back to try and tie the foil together to teh pole with soulder I found the strand when it neatly buried itself into the top of my finger...ouch!!!

So all's well that ends well. I was actually going on the documentation that only mentions the overall drain wire. Only when I actually started to fiddle witht he cable that I found the "missing" wire. See, it doesn't pay to let facts get in the way of fiddling!!!

Thanks to all for your feedback. This is a great forum.

Regards
Mick

Good deal. Glad to see it all worked out.

Happy Soldering...