Karaoke Forums

I wonder how many folks ever really think about this. I know a lot of people make it their goal to not have to re-patch (plug-in) their equipment at every show. Obviously there are benefits to having your rig setup so you don't have to but has anyone thought about the potential benefits of re-patching every time? I'll start a list of pro's for each and would love to see other folks add to the list as well.

Benefits of not re-patching: Obviously setup will be quicker, if you don't have to individually patch each connection each time. If you run your cables properly with stress relief in the right areas, it could help avoid breakage at the connectors. You don't have to remember where everything goes and risk goofing up your connections and having to troubleshoot. Also you don't have to reach into the back of your rack and try to find the right jacks on each piece of equipment every time.

Benefits of re-patching each time: By exercising the connections every time, you keep the metal conductive surfaces cleaner resulting in less issues with dirty connections. Your cables, if treated properly, could actually last longer. Wires can get brittle when forced to sit in one position for an extended period of time. Once moved to a new position, they could break quite easily. Forcing yourself to learn your patching sequence can help with troubleshooting issues. You'll be very familiar with your signal path and can quickly get to the components you need to check. By reconnecting each time you might also discover connectors that are failing before they have an effect on your show.

So there's some food for thought but I'm looking for more input from others. Personally, I do a little of both. I use a lot of the Hosa snakes for interconnection of components. So connections on the one end of the snake that are burried in the rack usually stay connected, all connections to my console are re-done at each show. Speaker cables re-connected both at the amp and the speaker each time. Seems to work out pretty well but I suppose there could be better ways.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

In the rack I leave them hooked up. I do like to make harnesses and keep them secure from vibrations during transport. a simple light flex of the harness during operation will check for intermittents or trouble. In humid or salt water conditions I periodically inspect the connectors for corrosion and give them a shot of contact cleaner. I also like to use compressed air and blow out the dust from the rack.

In outdoor hot conditions I mount an old computer fan in the rack to exhaust heat. I do have knowledge from extensive PM on other systems or chassis which might warrant a thread sometime.

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Not to hijack the thread but awhile back somebody asked what the inside of my rack looks like. I told him a mess.

photo

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Ollie, that looks good compared to my mess,,,hehe. Mine looks like spagetti...

I am ordering a couple more of the Hosa snakes you mentioned this week to clean up some of the cable mess in my rack and make it easier to hook everything up. This is especially important to me since I have two partners who often use my equipment, and they do not really know why the cables go where they are supposed to go, so when I get the snakes in I am going to label them. I'm getting an out-board FX processor, so with yet more signals running to and from the mixer, I figured this would be essential.

I am tempted to put patch panels on the back of my signal & amp racks too. I don't know why it is so hard to understand where the cables are supposed to go, but I will probably do this eventually too.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

I had a guy that workd for me as well, good worker but couldn't always remember what went where. I bought a pack of colored tape for the end of each cord then colored coded the corresponding jack they plug into. Never had any problems after that.

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The vast majority of my rack is prewired allowing for fast setups and teardowns. I only have to hook up three cables to my main rack to be up and running. 1 Hubble detachable power cable, 1 XLR for my bottoms and 1 XLR for my tops (which are located in a patch panel). All internal connections are handled by patch snakes that I make myself and install inside expandable wire looms to keep the lengths and clutter under control. Four or five times a year I will actually reseat all cables just to maintain a good clean contact area.

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Quickness of mind will deceive the eye

Hmm. I would 70% of my system is prewired, and the rest is not by neccessity.

My micing board in not in the same rack case as my BBE Sonic max, CDG player, and wireless mic bases.

However, I do have everything neatly wiretied and ready as much as possible. Thus when I get to the show the connection I make are:

Connect XLRs to the mic inputs, connect RCA left and right to the audio channel, connect the input of the BBE to the ouput of the mixer, plug the S-video and USB connector to my computer, and plug the XLR output from the BBE to my speakers.

Done.

Everything is sitting there ready to be connected so this take about 30 seconds.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

tony, you have some great ideas for threads! Ive gone both ways, these days i have the powered mixer, wireless sm58 base, hard drive, AV converter and power supply for the laptop all mounted in a rack case. one power wire to the wall from a pre mounted power strip and its all powered. three cords and the mouse for the laptop (it sits on top of the case). two speaker cords. one or two coax cords depending on if I use the bar TV. and 3 wired sm58s. if rushed I could have music playing in under 15 min after i hit the door, karaoke would take another 5 to 10. when i did a lot of shows it was a big deal not to plug everything in all the time...now im just lazy and it looks nice.

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the voices arent real, but they have some good ideas

I'll tell you what, I wish I had some nice cable organizers for my speaker cables. I bought some from Musician's Friend but they will not go around 50 feet of 12 gauge speaker cable. I seen a big local operator (has a ton of EV array boxes and stuff for mid-size concerts) use shoe strings, and that seemed to work okay for him, but I kept losing the shoe strings as they would slide down to the middle of the cable or whatever and the next thing you know, I can't find them.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ