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[David Parker]

I work mostly small stages. The drums get the majority of the mics, so I put the stage box next to the drums, actually, at times, under the cymbal stands. I have 6', 10', 12', 15', and 20' mic cables, all different colors. Takes about 10 minutes to neatly wrap all the mic cables. The 4-6' cables I use on the closest drums I roll up together. When I worked larger stages subsnakes were my friend. Anything you can do to use shorter cables helps.

[Tim Weaver]

Are you using any subsnakes? If not, look into it.

Also, is this for a particular band setup, or are you the PA provider here and looking to speed up your setup/teardown?

[Kirby Yarbrough]

Wrap short cables in pairs.  I do mostly smaller stages with a DSC subsnake and 3x or 4x powered wedges across the front, so I'll use color taped 10' cables for the inner wedges and 20' for the outer wedges.  At the end of the show, pick up the mics, shut down the wedges, unpatch the subsnake and wrap the cables in pairs by length.  Same thing with the USC subsnake, since most of the drum and backline mic cables are either 10' or 20', sometimes 25'.

[Don Gspann]

I hope you aren't winding them on a cable reel or something.
[/quote]

Why do you say that? When you have a stage full of cables, I don't have all night to coil cables. I've been using cable reels for over 30 years with no problems. I have reels that hold close to 1000' of cable and small reels that old just a dozen or so. I still use most of the cables I made 30 years ago! I don't have any more breakage other that what occurs on a gig. So what's the issue. No twists, and I'll be home while you're still hand coiling cables.

[John Roll]

What I used to do was to use a garden hose reel for the mic cables.  The kind that you turn vertical rather than horizontally. Make sure it has a stable base.

At the end of the night-strike everything else except the mic cables.  I always grabbed my mics first-put them away-then moved the stands off to a side near the stand box.  This cleared the stage (except for monitors) for the band to strike their gear.

Hopefully by the time you have everything else taken care of (FOH-amps-speakers etc) the band will be off the stage.

Now you plop down next to the stage box with the reel and wind them up end to end.  Unplug just one at a time.  Grab a damp rag in one hand if want to clean them a little bit while winding them up.

Only take a couple of minutes, and is a lot easier than trying to get them from around the band gear while it is on stage.

When setting up, just place the reel near the snake head and grab the outermost female end (the male ends go on first) and just pull it to where it needs to go.  unwind as needed to plug into the stage box.

This works best if the mic cables are all pretty much the same length.  Yes you end up with slack, but you can usually put it around the mic end of the cable.

If you like to keep the cables seperated by length-this doesn't work well at all.

If you put a piece of colored tape around each end, you can quickly tell the length.  Just one piece and have the cables in multiples of 10'.  So brown is 10' red is 20' orange is 30' yellow 40' etc.

Anyway it worked well for me.

Ivan,
Where are you located? My cousin told me about someone he saw when he lived in Texas, who did a similar thing to what you do...

[Frederik Rosenkjær]

I have the following mic cables in my house box:

12 x 1.5m (~4.5ft)
8 x 3m (~9ft)
15 x 5m (~15ft)
10 x 10m (~30ft)

All 1.5m cables are wrapped up together in one bunch (over-under), as are all 3m cables.

The rest are wrapped infidually.

I'm a big believer in snakes and remote boxes - speeds things up tremendously. With these in place, I'm having trouble seeing how mic cable wrapping could take up 80% of tear-down time, if you're also carrying the entire PA, console, monitors etc...(?)

[David Parker]

I have the following mic cables in my house box:

12 x 1.5m (~4.5ft)
8 x 3m (~9ft)
15 x 5m (~15ft)
10 x 10m (~30ft)

All 1.5m cables are wrapped up together in one bunch (over-under), as are all 3m cables.

The rest are wrapped infidually.

I'm a big believer in snakes and remote boxes - speeds things up tremendously. With these in place, I'm having trouble seeing how mic cable wrapping could take up 80% of tear-down time, if you're also carrying the entire PA, console, monitors etc...(?)

this sounds a lot like my current mic inventory. I formerly spent 80% (more or less) of my time rolling mic cables too. 8 or 10 25' mic cables on drums, and several cables doubled to make the reach across the stage, that all adds up. I formerly hired help, and put the help on the stage rolling mic cables while I tidied up the rest of the system. We usually finished about the same time.

[Ivan Beaver]

Ivan,
Where are you located? My cousin told me about someone he saw when he lived in Texas, who did a similar thing to what you do...

I am in Atlanta.  However I also did this when I was in the Wash DC area and a couple guys that worked for me moved to TX, so who know.

I don't think it is all that unique.

[David Parker]

I am in Atlanta.  However I also did this when I was in the Wash DC area and a couple guys that worked for me moved to TX, so who know.

I don't think it is all that unique.

not at all unique, I've had several people in the Houston area suggest I use a reel. I tried it and didn't like it. Not to say it isn't a good way to do it, because a lot of people do like it, just didn't work for me.

[Tom Young]

BTW, if your mics ride with the clips, look into Atlas LO-2 quick release devices.

++

Not sure if anyone has added this additional reason to use quick disconnects for mic's: they also protect the threads on the stands.

All-in-all ..... a very good idea and real time saver.

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