Re: [LAU] Video micing question

On Monday 22 April 2013 07:41:06 Ralf Mardorf did opine: 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 -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> is up! My views <http://www.armchairpatriot.com/What%20Has%20America%20Become.shtml> When you're dining out and you suspect something's wrong, you're probably right. A pen in the hand of this president is far more dangerous than a gun in the hands of 200 million law-abiding citizens.