Solutions: doors and guitar cables

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losthighway
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Solutions: doors and guitar cables

Post by losthighway » Sat Jun 07, 2014 1:32 pm

Hey all.

I'm putting together ideas for my new studio that I'll be building at the end of the summer. One detail I've been thinking on is guitar cable runs going to amps in another room.

In my old studio I had cracks under the doors just big enough for a guitar player to have an amp in the iso room while she stood in the live room with the drummer. Obviously you get better isolation out of doors with weather stripping that completely seal/don't let guitar cables through.

I was also thinking of having a sliding glass door to the iso room, instead of a wood door plus a window for when singers are in there. Then when you have an amp you can leave the door open a crack, still losing that seal and some of the isolation.

Do people ever do short cable runs between walls with female 1/4" jacks on each side to get unbalanced cable runs to go from a guitar in one room to an amp in another?

How else have you seen people deal with this?

I've seen the speaker cable through the walls trick for heads and cabinets, but I also record a lot of little combo amps.

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ubertar
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Post by ubertar » Sat Jun 07, 2014 2:12 pm

A possible alternative is to use a battery-powered amp, like a Pignose.

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Post by kslight » Sat Jun 07, 2014 8:41 pm

There is a company called Flexygy that sells "flat" cabling?I've never used it for that purpose but I have some snakes I built with it that you could very easily run under doors if required.

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Post by dino » Sun Jun 08, 2014 3:38 am

Putting chassis mounted female connectors through the wall would be a good option. You might want to use electrical conduit boxes for RF rejection.
The only caveat might be the length of the cable between the guitar and amp. Anything much beyond a normal guitar cable in length may bugger up your tone. The guys at Little Labs have a guitar cable extender that supposedly alleviates this issue.

http://www.littlelabs.com/std.html[/url]
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Post by losthighway » Sun Jun 08, 2014 7:40 am

Yeah, I have on STD that I like quite a bit. I started considering the possibility of more of them in the future. Maybe it's all about xlr wall plates connected by std's. The only bad part there is it could go: guitar, guitar cable, pedal board connections, STD converter cable (1/4" to xlr), xlr cable, wall plate, inter wall balanced connecter cable (should be soldered in), wall plate in iso room, xlr cable, std coverter box, 1/4" cable, amp input.

That's by no means a catastrophic series of events, but the moment something gets funky there are about 10 different connection points to troubleshoot.

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Post by LowG » Sun Jun 08, 2014 7:44 am

Conceptually 2 female jacks wired through the wall is exactly the same as having a true bypass effects pedal in the signal chain. Seems like it should be fine since most people use pedals all the time.
True though that long cable runs should be avoided, but that is obvious.

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Post by DrummerMan » Sun Jun 08, 2014 7:59 am

Redco has nice wall plates for this, if in fact you have the option of doing it (which it sounds like you do)

This may already be obvious to you, but if you have a split amp/cabinet then you can always keep the head in the room with the guitarist and just have the cabinet in the iso room, using the wall plate to pass the speaker cable through. That's better right?

That being said, I've done plenty of 50' patch cord runs from the control room to a combo amp in another room without noticing anything wrong about the sound.
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rhythm ranch
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Post by rhythm ranch » Sun Jun 08, 2014 10:37 am

I'd go for wall plates. Seismic Audio also has good quality (and less expensive) plates.

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Post by norton » Mon Jun 09, 2014 6:24 am

+1 for the wall plates wired through. If that doesn't work for you get a hole saw for your drill and a piece of PVC pipe. Drill a hole, cut the pipe push it through...and boom! Instant cable pass.

But I do prefer the wall plates.

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Post by The Scum » Mon Jun 09, 2014 9:29 pm

Wall plates, certainly. Solid connectors and shielded cable.

If mr guitar is such a golden ear that he can tell the difference that a couple more connectors and a little more wire makes, then they probably want to be in the room with the amp to begin with.
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Post by Nick Sevilla » Sat Jun 14, 2014 6:53 am

A wireless guitar system.
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Post by drumsound » Sat Jun 14, 2014 10:29 pm

INto my booth, a hallway and the bathroom I have two four gang plates on each side. One has 4 XLR the other 4 1/4" that are 2 instrument, 1 speaker and 1 TRS. It works great and I'm very happy with it.

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Post by vvv » Sun Jun 15, 2014 8:33 am

drumsound wrote:... and the bathroom ....
Now that's a studio! 8)
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Post by IanWalker » Mon Jun 16, 2014 11:20 am

For wall plates I have successfully mounted 1/4" jacks in a standard coax cable wall plate before. (a la this: http://pimages.solidsignal.com/PVCWP20IVYHF_medlrg.jpg)

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Post by cgarges » Mon Jun 16, 2014 5:13 pm

I put stuff like that all around Old House when we moved into our new location last year. Basically, every room has a pair of instrument and speaker cable pass-throughs in wall boxes. We also did two pairs from the control room to the studio AND to two of the isolation booths. I also did six-pin Leslie connectors so I can have the Hammond C3 in one room and the Leslie isolated (great for cutting vocals with an organ player) or for doing guitars, keyboards, or vocals through the Leslie speaker.

I had a bad experience with Redco about halfway through our build, so I didn't use them for the wall panels. They originally quoted ten days on the wall panels, then told me it would be over a month when I actually placed the order. I eventually used ProCo and the panels came out great, but I had problems with five different companies trying to get those things made.

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