[LAU] Video micing question

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 22 April 2013 07:41:06 Ralf Mardorf did opine:

> On Sat, 2013-04-20 at 22:44 +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 04:16:10PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > Another voice of experience from having attended the wars,  thanks
> > > Fons.
> > 
> > Another essential tool is a bottle of acetone and earbuds
> > to clean out the thick layers of soldering flux that some
> > butchers leave...
> 
> I wouldn't clean such jacks, but ditch them.

You must have a jack store just around the corner, and a big budget then.  
For me, fresh plugs & jacks were 700 miles and 4 days away in Chicago and 
the evening news goes to air at 17:00 sharp, the Neutriks(sp) are 
expensive, with the gold plated contact models over $5 copy at the time.  
So if they weren't broken, they were cleaned up and pin stuck in beside the 
female contacts to tighten them up and re-used.

And yes, when I bought them it was in bags of 24 each.  Along with 1000 
foot spools of Susan Clarks (Clark wire & cable in Chicago) star-quad mic 
cable.  There is no other like it, soft, pliable /and/ long lasting.  
Belden's version is hard shelled, so hard it telegraphs into the connector 
and breaks itself off in 10% of the time it takes to break the star-quad.

Quality was recognized it seems, more than once our greenhorn news folks 
attended some doings where there were 5 or more other news crews there, and 
cable losses during the cleanups after the show seemed to me to be 
excessive.  More than once they took good mics and cabling and came home 
with junk because somebody else beat them to it when picking up their 
stuff.  And yes, they wore a chewing out for taking a $250 mic & $50 cable 
& coming home with a $20 radio shack mic that looked "something" like the 
one they took.

That is of course what happens when you are in a market below 160, because 
you are a 'school station' whether you like it or not.  They spend a few 
months working for you fresh out of 'journalism school', and they are 
either good enough they are gone on to a bigger market with a bigger 
paycheck, or bad enough to be sent back to flipping burgers.

And guess what else I use that same cable for?  Because the currents aren't 
excessive, 4.2 amps peak, it makes great motor cables for the essentially 2 
phase stepper motors that run my cnc lathe and milling machine. Any other 4 
conductor + shield(mylar foil shield covered by an 78% braided drain) cable 
would have failed from the flexing years ago.

Cheers, Gene
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