Just want to let everyone know about this new 1776 Belden mic cable. It's a bit more expensive than usual cable BUT it's indestructible!! Seriously - violently pulled, flight cases wheeled over it, rack cases dropped on it and it remains unmarked and working. Deffo worth a look.:
Ha, true I'm most cases, but I'm telling you it would take a lot longer than five minutes to break this stuff.
Belden makes great cable, this is with no doubt. However, after repeatedly making cables for a large church (perpetually poor, you know, cheap, make our own, etc.), I finally put my foot down and coughed up a rather expensive donation of … Mogami cable, Nutrik XLR ends, and my labor (being quite good at soldering, thank you.) to the effort. A thousand bucks of money.
Having tried many different cables, endlessly listening to opinions, it became evident that 4 conductor mic cable had special electro-mechanical properties. Specifically wire-break failsafe operation.
All those “dollies rolling over cables” and such are the death of almost any cable. This is to be sure. But combine that with flexure, tugging, flogging, kinking, knotting, ridiculous twisting… standing on, pianos rolling over, its hard to overstate how much mechanical damage cables acquire in normal, ruffian mediated weekly gig use. I had high hopes.
So one fine afternoon we got “the boys” together at the house, and had a cable-making party. Measuring, cutting, stripping, soldering, neoprene tape wrapping, XLR boot fitting and zipping it up with both-end labeling. Making dâhmned good cables, being the idea. Beer was involved, but being “church”, not that much of it. It was fun.
The thus-made cables worked like a charm. Outstanding.
I cannot say enough about the gold-finger Nutrik connectors.
Nor the 4 wire Mogami cable.
I built a + and - wire (relative to ground) ohmic comparator, to show when one of the polarities of a cable has developed higher resistance due to a single wire break. Its in a 9 volt plastic project box with an XLR-F and XLR-M set of jacks in the side. Plug in both ends… have the Arduino-powered analog-to-digital measure wire resistance. (Uses capacitive charge/discharge only. Works surprisingly well.) Light indicator lights accordingly.
So far only maybe 2 of the 50 cables have tested a partial pair-pair failure. I slitted both of them with a razor their full length… to find the problem … and yep… a broken wire. Mercilessly crushed. But even then, the cables were still working in service. Just picking up some noise in general.
This comment is not a pitch for Mogami by the way, tho it has nice properties of flexibility, strength, 9 available colors, good braiding and so on. There are other brands too. What it really is a pitch for is using 4 wire cable when making microphone cord. I cannot overemphasize this. The total-failsafe-ness is outstanding. And when you've got only a very limited time to set up a gig, get it working, you definitely do NOT want - ever if possible - to be debugging cranky flakey mic cable problems.
At least that's my “vexed goat” point of view.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
PS: As we learned in practice, its a really good idea to use transparent shrink-wrap to cover color tape coded cable identification at both ends of each cable. On a whim, I bought 10 rolls of ANSI standard colored electrical tape at the hardware store. The trick is to use 3 strips of tape at each end. {N№ 1}{N№ 2}{N№ 1} pattern. There is no 'direction' to this. You've got 10 all-solid colors…
blk-blk-blk, brn-brn-brn, red-red-red … whi-whi-whi
And another 90 triplets
blk-BRN-blk, blk-RED-blk, …
red-BLK-red, …
yel-WHI-yel, …
Even “average parishioners” can easily handle the color codes. All races, all walks of life, genders,… You can shout “green on black!” across the stage, and the person at the other end can quickly find it. Nothing to READ. The transparent shrink-wrap ensures that the coding doesn't come off after a few months of use.
BUT… the color coding needs to be done at the time of cable fabrication. It cannot be done after attaching the XLR connectors. You cannot get the shrink-wrap over the color strips. Ever. That's from hard practice. Having “invented this coding” around ⅓ the way thru making cables, let me tell you how frustrating it was to have to desolder one end, to get the 2 tubes worth of shrink-wrap onto the cables. Then re-do the desoldered end. I'll never make that mistake again, for sure!!! “Live and learn?”
Having tried many different cables, endlessly listening to opinions, it became evident that 4 conductor mic cable had special electro-mechanical properties. Specifically wire-break failsafe operation.
All those “dollies rolling over cables” and such are the death of almost any cable. This is to be sure. But combine that with flexure, tugging, flogging, kinking, knotting, ridiculous twisting… standing on, pianos rolling over, its hard to overstate how much mechanical damage cables acquire in normal, ruffian mediated weekly gig use. I had high hopes.
So one fine afternoon we got “the boys” together at the house, and had a cable-making party. Measuring, cutting, stripping, soldering, neoprene tape wrapping, XLR boot fitting and zipping it up with both-end labeling. Making dâhmned good cables, being the idea. Beer was involved, but being “church”, not that much of it. It was fun.
The thus-made cables worked like a charm. Outstanding.
I cannot say enough about the gold-finger Nutrik connectors.
Nor the 4 wire Mogami cable.
I built a + and - wire (relative to ground) ohmic comparator, to show when one of the polarities of a cable has developed higher resistance due to a single wire break. Its in a 9 volt plastic project box with an XLR-F and XLR-M set of jacks in the side. Plug in both ends… have the Arduino-powered analog-to-digital measure wire resistance. (Uses capacitive charge/discharge only. Works surprisingly well.) Light indicator lights accordingly.
So far only maybe 2 of the 50 cables have tested a partial pair-pair failure. I slitted both of them with a razor their full length… to find the problem … and yep… a broken wire. Mercilessly crushed. But even then, the cables were still working in service. Just picking up some noise in general.
This comment is not a pitch for Mogami by the way, tho it has nice properties of flexibility, strength, 9 available colors, good braiding and so on. There are other brands too. What it really is a pitch for is using 4 wire cable when making microphone cord. I cannot overemphasize this. The total-failsafe-ness is outstanding. And when you've got only a very limited time to set up a gig, get it working, you definitely do NOT want - ever if possible - to be debugging cranky flakey mic cable problems.
At least that's my “vexed goat” point of view.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
PS: As we learned in practice, its a really good idea to use transparent shrink-wrap to cover color tape coded cable identification at both ends of each cable. On a whim, I bought 10 rolls of ANSI standard colored electrical tape at the hardware store. The trick is to use 3 strips of tape at each end. {N№ 1}{N№ 2}{N№ 1} pattern. There is no 'direction' to this. You've got 10 all-solid colors…
blk-blk-blk, brn-brn-brn, red-red-red … whi-whi-whi
And another 90 triplets
blk-BRN-blk, blk-RED-blk, …
red-BLK-red, …
yel-WHI-yel, …
Even “average parishioners” can easily handle the color codes. All races, all walks of life, genders,… You can shout “green on black!” across the stage, and the person at the other end can quickly find it. Nothing to READ. The transparent shrink-wrap ensures that the coding doesn't come off after a few months of use.
BUT… the color coding needs to be done at the time of cable fabrication. It cannot be done after attaching the XLR connectors. You cannot get the shrink-wrap over the color strips. Ever. That's from hard practice. Having “invented this coding” around ⅓ the way thru making cables, let me tell you how frustrating it was to have to desolder one end, to get the 2 tubes worth of shrink-wrap onto the cables. Then re-do the desoldered end. I'll never make that mistake again, for sure!!! “Live and learn?”
Virtually identical specs to the industry standard "indestructible" mic cable Belden 8412, except for the recommended max pulling tension: 8412 is 100 lbs, 1776 max is 250 lbs!!!! Ideal for impromptu mountain climbing! If your helpers are pulling harder than that you need better helpers. But at $5 per foot vs. $1.50 per foot for 8412, that is a serious price difference.
It would work well for the washed up 80's Rocker lead singer who HAS to swing his mic around by the cable because it's his "thing"(think Sebastian Bach from Skid Row)
I second the recommendation for Neutrik XLR ends. Their strain relief is fantastic. Most of the cables I have to fix are a result of Switchcraft ends. Our $0.50 per foot ProCo cables hold up just fine if they have Neutrik ends on them.
It would work well for the washed up 80's Rocker lead singer who HAS to swing his mic around by the cable because it's his "thing"(think Sebastian Bach from Skid Row)
I second the recommendation for Neutrik XLR ends. Their strain relief is fantastic. Most of the cables I have to fix are a result of Switchcraft ends. Our $0.50 per foot ProCo cables hold up just fine if they have Neutrik ends on them.
I've used Canare Star Quad for years and 1000s of shows with great results. The 4 wire stuff is a bit fiddly tho. At home I normally use Mogami, also for interconnects. Thanks for the hint on the Belden 1776, sounds like tough stuff! 
At $5 per foot, even in bulk, that's a helluva lot more'n "a bit"...that means that ONE 50-foot cable would cost $250!!!! Too rich for my blood, Homer...............
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