What cables does every sound mixer need?

V

Victor Nhat Nguyen

Well-known member
I finally received my 411/400a lectros today. I was excited to plug it into my 552 until I realized... I have no cables.

Yup I'm very new in sound. I asked a friend of mine and he said I need a right angled female to straight male.

Since I'm buying cables anyway. Might as well buy all the one I need in the future. Which cables do you guys often carry and which do you recommend that I carry. I'll list more info below.

My equipment list currently: SD 552, Lectro 411/400a kit with Sanken cos-11d.

Going to buy soon: Battery Distribution System.

Types of gigs: weddings, corporate, independent films.
 
Thanks. You bought direct from a member over there? Did that make you nervous (because no buyer protection in place?
 
THere is always a risk but JWSoundGroup is almost entirely populated by professionals and getting a rep as a cheat is a fast way to no work. Film is a surprisingly small community and Jeff Wexler has a long reach.
Of the groups, this is one of the least likely to have a con artist lurking.

To answer the OP question, what cables do you need... Ones that work!

Someone had to say it.

What you need changes as you go.

I do limited production work but when I do I bring extra adapters for just about everything if I might have to patch in to something. I evan have BNC adapters I can bring if I think that might come up.

Obviously anything your system requires, and at least one backup of each type of cable. A variety of XLR's I usually have a couple of 50's and a bunch of 20's, again IF I know what I'm connecting to I will generally bring twice what I know about.

XLR pads and polarity reversers are handy. My mixer when I'm bringing in a bunch of tracks to the computer has a bunch of the line/mics on 1/4" TRS so I have a bunch of XLR to TRS.

I always bring extra headphone adapters, those things get lost easily.

Double ball hear bungies (the things little girls use to hold their hair in pony tails) are great to use as cable ties.

Head phone splitter is handy sometimes. I also always have some earbuds in the case incase something happens to my headphones.
 
From recording music I found the most important cables are the spare cables, male-male and female-female adapters and a soldering iron! With these three things you can bodge, i mean solve just about any problem on the fly.
 
The XLR mic cable looks fine I don't have either the Lectro or the 552 so I'm not the one to answer that. But that looks right and I would assume there is nothing particularly weird about either but can't say for sure. You could ask TREW though.
 
Both those cables will work with a SD/Lectro . Canare Starquad is good but expensive if you can't make em yo'self.
Most have multiple cables and different length from short links to 100 footers. If your booming yourself (ENG bag style), 25' is kind of long. I use a coiled cable for ENG bag work.
 
That would work.
FWIW, I originally had a 6 inch (to 4 ft.) coiled cable, but it was too short in some situations. I bought a 1.5 ft. (to 5 ft) which worked much better for me. (connected to my internally wired 10' pole)
I would also recommend an ENG breakaway snake [mixer to camera(s) +return] if you don't already have one, for sit-down type interviews.
 
"anything else you think I need"
There's always something.
Cable building/soldering/attenuation skills are practically mandatory ... and can save lots of money as well. (for instance, the raw parts for a 25' Canare Starquad/Neutrik cable are about $20. [Markertek.com] )
Practically every gig I do, movie or ENG, a specialty patch cable is needed with all the different camera and TC configs. At last count, I had about five cables alone to feed scratch audio from an IFB (Comtek) 3.5mm HP level to 3.5mm unbalanced mic level mono unbalanced, for RED Epic/Scarlett; 3.5mm HP level to 3.5mm unbalanced mic level dual-mono for DSLRs; 3.5mm HP level to TA3 balanced line level for RED One; 3.5mm HP level to XLR and 1/4" TRS balanced line level for traditional inputs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top