Sennheiser G3 XLR Cable Differences? (Blue-banded XLR vs non)

G

Gary Huff

Carbonite Member
Yesterday I had a two mic setup with two Sennheiser G3 lavs (500 and 600Mhz), connected to a Tascam DR-100 and feeding a padded cable from Line Out to the Mic In on a Canon 60D, and the 600Mhz had a lot of noise on it and the voices had this strange tinny distortion sound that slightly echoed. I did a scan for clear channels (I was out away from pretty much everything) and still had this problem, but I discovered that if I pinched the XLR cable connector at the 1/8" plug side it made the noise die down (like an RF hit but sustained) but I still had the vocal distortion. I had no problems with the 500Mhz unit, which led me to find out that there seem to be two different kind of XLR cables for these units. They are both labeled as CL100 on the cables themselves, but this cable:

165699.jpg

is thicker and I did not have any problems with it connected to the 500Mhz model. The cable connected to the 600MHz model was the more typical that I've seen like this:

e08d1e1ff9e6635d5e088d58f18876e9.jpg

The major difference (aside from the blue band), being that the first cable is a helluva lot thicker than the second.

I would have liked to swap cables to positively identify the culprit, but the shooting situation didn't allow for it. On top of that, I tested out it out this morning back at home and both sound fine to me now.

Does anyone have any experience with the these different cables? Is the thicker blue-banded XLR cable more robust when it comes to interference? If there is a difference, and if it would be advised for me to replace the second cable with another blue-banded one, how do I go about making sure I get one of those? All of the U.S. distributors of these cable have so far only had photos of the second type.
 
David, from what I can tell neither of them is balanced, but that could just be from the fact that both cables are clearly different, yet Sennheiser plopped the same part ID on them.
 
As Gary stated, the portable G2 and G3 receivers are unbalanced, perhaps the thin cable is aftermarket. (and faulty) I own two G2s and two G3s and have used others' as well and have never seen that style of cable in the bottom pic. (which appears to have a TecNec locking 1/8" connector) All the 'stock' Sennheiser cables I've seen have molded 1/8" connectors as in the upper pic, which ain't all that great either but I've never had noise issues with them.
BTW-- Phantom Power should not used either.
 
Rick R said:
All the 'stock' Sennheiser cables I've seen have molded 1/8" connectors as in the upper pic, which ain't all that great either but I've never had noise issues with them.
Click to expand...

Very strange, because the Sennheiser website has the second pic as their image of the cable.
 
I see that Gary...
Perhaps the cable is faulty and also could be affecting reception, as the output cable's shield is the secondary antenna on the G3 portable recv.
Testing it with an ohm meter 'may' show a problem.
 
Gary Huff said:
Yesterday I had a two mic setup with two Sennheiser G3 lavs (500 and 600Mhz), connected to a Tascam DR-100 and feeding a padded cable from Line Out to the Mic In on a Canon 60D, and the 600Mhz had a lot of noise on it and the voices had this strange tinny distortion sound that slightly echoed. I did a scan for clear channels (I was out away from pretty much everything) and still had this problem, but I discovered that if I pinched the XLR cable connector at the 1/8" plug side it made the noise die down (like an RF hit but sustained) but I still had the vocal distortion. I had no problems with the 500Mhz unit, which led me to find out that there seem to be two different kind of XLR cables for these units. They are both labeled as CL100 on the cables themselves, but this cable:

View attachment 57742

is thicker and I did not have any problems with it connected to the 500Mhz model. The cable connected to the 600MHz model was the more typical that I've seen like this:

View attachment 57743

The major difference (aside from the blue band), being that the first cable is a helluva lot thicker than the second.

I would have liked to swap cables to positively identify the culprit, but the shooting situation didn't allow for it. On top of that, I tested out it out this morning back at home and both sound fine to me now.

Does anyone have any experience with the these different cables? Is the thicker blue-banded XLR cable more robust when it comes to interference? If there is a difference, and if it would be advised for me to replace the second cable with another blue-banded one, how do I go about making sure I get one of those? All of the U.S. distributors of these cable have so far only had photos of the second type.
Click to expand...

CL100 is an unbalanced cable - the second looks a bit home-made and may have been made up by the Sennheiser distributor.

If pinchimg the cable changes things I would suspect a fault.




Rick R said:
As Gary stated, the portable G2 and G3 receivers are unbalanced, .
Click to expand...

This is NOT TRUE.

Only the EK 100 is unbalanced. The EK 500 and EK 2000 are balanced. The balanced cable is the CL 500.
 
I believe the lower picture is of the CL100 for the G2 series or, at the very least, one of the options.

One of the changes, as far as I know, from the G2 to the G3 is that they use the third conductor (ground or shield - the disjunction is inclusive) on the "updated" (read thicker/blue banded/whatever) CL100 cable as a second receiver antenna for diversity. (http://www.sennheiserusa.com/media/...tionManuals/ewG3_EK100_Instructionsforuse.pdf - page 5)

Screen Shot 2012-08-06 at 4.47.33 PM.jpg
 
Gary Huff said:
Well, to point out again, the picture is identical to what Sennheiser has on their very own website for the CL100.
Click to expand...

The picture with the thin cable is on the Sennheiser USA website, not on the main Sennheiser website.

The CL 2 line-in cable (which is the only picture I could find on the main Sennheiser website) looks like this:-

Sennheiser_CL100.jpg

It's HERE and you can see that the construction is the same as the good one with the thicker cable you posted (only the XLR is female instead of male) which indicates that the moulded plug and thicker cable is made by Sennheiser themselves and that the version with the thinner cable and the solder jack plug was made up by the local agent themselves (in this case Sennheiser USA) as the one with the thin cable is not on the Sennheiser website, only the Sennheiser USA site.
 
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That's the problem I'm having. I've seen the photo of the blue-banded XLR cable in suppliers from overseas, but being in the U.S., I'd hate to have to order from Germany in order to get the cable I need, but the problem is that all the typical suppliers I use that are in this country all have pictures of the thinner cable for the CL100.

Maddening.
 
Gary Huff said:
That's the problem I'm having. I've seen the photo of the blue-banded XLR cable in suppliers from overseas, but being in the U.S., I'd hate to have to order from Germany in order to get the cable I need, but the problem is that all the typical suppliers I use that are in this country all have pictures of the thinner cable for the CL100.

Maddening.
Click to expand...

I would contact them to see what version of the CL100 it is exactly. The link you provided indicates a cable for the G2 series (look at the page title in the browser). Often web masters copy/paste images without context and I think you'd be hard pressed to order G2 stock at this point. At the very least, any dealer worth his/her salt can find out for you.
 
Gary Huff said:
That's the problem I'm having. I've seen the photo of the blue-banded XLR cable in suppliers from overseas, but being in the U.S., I'd hate to have to order from Germany in order to get the cable I need, but the problem is that all the typical suppliers I use that are in this country all have pictures of the thinner cable for the CL100.

Maddening.
Click to expand...

Talk to Sennheiser USA direct and discuss it with them.

Make sure you talk to Technical and not Sales.

If all else fails, ask for Uwe Sattler (Technical Director).
 
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