Church and H.O.W. – Forums for HOW Sound and AV - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Church and HOW Forums > H.O.W. AV Archive

Stage snake hookup

(1/1)

Pastor Brian Lewis:
I have a older stage snake that was given to our church, but it did not have the box on it.  We ordered the box with XLR connectors but our wire has 2 wires in each jacket and there are 3 connectors on the XLR connectors, does it matter which connector that I would not use?

Brad Weber:
Pastor Brian Lewis wrote on Thu, 22 July 2010 21:04
I have a older stage snake that was given to our church, but it did not have the box on it.  We ordered the box with XLR connectors but our wire has 2 wires in each jacket and there are 3 connectors on the XLR connectors, does it matter which connector that I would not use?

Any chance you are not counting the uninsulated drain wire, or shield itself if a braided shield, as one of the wires to connect?

Line level audio connections in a snake from the stage to FOH should be balanced, which means three conductors, while microphone connections require three conductors.    Thus in a stage snake each cable for a mic and line level connection would have two insulated conductors, a drain wire and be shielded.  If a cable has two larger conductors, no drain wire and no shield then it is probably intended for speaker runs.

Paul Wilson:
If there is a shield wiring mesh type stuff that is your ground. You will need that if you want balanced signal. If you don't have that I would recommend getting new wire and making sure you have balanced signal. This will save you a lot of heart ache in the future.

But if you don't care or can't afford it. this is what you do.

Pin 1 is ground. If you don't have a ground, then take a wire and solder it to pin 1 and to a metal chassis of some kind. (On the snake end) The goal is to simply ground the wire so electricity has somewhere to go in case of an overload.

Pin 2 is hot: connect your positive

Pin 3 is cold/neutral: connect your negative

If you are not sure which is which you have to look at the other end of the cable to see which wires are soldered onto pin 2 and 3. as long as they are the same on both ends you should be fine.

Navigation

[0] Message Index