Dont try to make your own XLR cables

F

fotoflo

Active member
:violin:

I could not and still can not, find a 12" XLR male to female cable. So I bought the parts at Guitar Center and Home Depot and proceeded to make my very own customized 12" cable, complete with heat shrink tubing. Did. Not. Work. The cable made more noise when i touched it than the microphone when it was hooked up. Actually I ended up just spliced it from a 10' cable down to 12".

Where do y'all get good quality custom cables?
 
Not all stock cable is created equal, and the same goes for XLR connectors.

I've had great success making my own cables, to the point where I've replaced all the old store-bought cables from my kit. In particular, I'm glad for the 6' 5-pin cable I use for hand-held effects recording. Now, I'm not particularly handy with a solderring iron, so I always double-check the continuity on all pins before finishing up.

Based on the advice from this forum, I'm using Canare Starquad cable for anything I put together (short of multi-pin snakes), and I've been quite satisfied. As far as XLR connectors, I stick with Neutrik X-series. I haven't yet tried Neutrik's EMC-XLR connectors (the ones with enhanced RF rejection), so perhaps someone else will give an oppinion on them.

If you go over to Neutrik's website, you can find some good tips regarding cable construction.
 
It sounds like you mis-wired the connectors if you got noise by touching the cable or mic connected to it. The wires don't get connected at random. It sounds like you ran the hot to the shield. Anyway Matt used to make custom cables, unfortunately he got tired of loosing money ;~) Fortunately for me I got a few before he retired. You can buy "cheap" cables at Guitar center for less that you can make them for, but they are cheap cables. Places like Location Sound and Trew Audio will probably make up custom cables. There are a few shops locally that will also. You can save a bunch of money if you learn how to solder and get real anal for a few hours while making them. It's sort of a pain at first but practice makes perfect AND then you can fix them in the field in a pinch.
 
I tested the cable (plugged it in) before soldering and it was fine and so thought it was the solder/shielding that was causing the problem. The solder makes that part of the cable stiff so I heat shrinked each line and then the cable. This was Neutrik NC*FX connectors and the Japanese cable. Dont have any more time to futz with it.
 
canare cable stock all the way. you should be able to buy raw stock from various places, maybe even directly from canare, it's been awhile since i looked.
 
Fotoflo,
What I was getting at is that the red white and shield go to specific pins, you cant just pick and choose. Now the red and white can be reversed (as long as they go to the same pin number at each end but the shield must go to the correct pin. It sounds like you have the shield on the wrong pin. You can have a cable wired very wrong and still plug it in and get a signal at the other end. You need to either use a cable checker or a multi meter to actually check a cable.
 
Definitely shield on wrong pin but I would also be curious to know what you bought at home depot because I can't imagine they had any serious 2 conductor and shield type cable there for a mic cable. Whenever I've done this in the past I've bought all my parts at an electronic store.
 
if you have an ohm meter you must test the pins before you plug it in ie. touch pin 1 on each end and get a response then keep on pin 1 and touch everything else on the other connector inclucing the casing and you shouldn't get a response. do this for pin two and three.
 
I make all of my own cables (XLR, RCA & 1/4" balanced & unbalanced) and never had to buy any factory-made cables. For me it's almost like therapy. I'll sit and make a bunch of cables to cover current and some future needs.

I use Canare cable stock, as others have stated, and Neutrik connectors. From Markertek.

The wiring is as follows:

blue - 2
white - 3
gnd - 1

The Canare cable I use has two pairs of conductors inside. One pair is white. The other is blue.

The blue pair goes to pin 1.

White pair to pin 3.

The shield goes to pin 1.

Be careful to avoid bridging gaps with solder. And, as someone mentioned, check for shorts with an ohm meter.
 
Even if you don't make your own cables, I'd recommend getting an inexpensive cable tester like this one:

http://www.americanmusical.com/item--i-BEH-CT100.html

Sometimes I have to run long cables and nothing sucks like finding out after the fact that one of the cables has a problem. It will even detect intermittent connections. I had a Canare-brand cable that was bad when I received it and I could not figure it what was wrong just by looking at the connections. I was thinking cold solder joint. On the tester I could immediately see that 2 pins were swapped. I didn't notice the swap because it never crossed my mind that a well-known brand wouldn't catch it during manufacture.

-Dan
 
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