TomHoward

Do you reckon you can get away with a mic splitter on the one channel or I fit a redundant one to the other?

There's angled wall plates as well - either euro modules with the passthrough at an angle so the cable inside the box is neater, or passthroughs with a 90degree turn in to use a shallower box.

Solder is not common on HDMI, you can do that you describe but use a flying lead one to avoid the big hole, or you can use a cable with a right angle connector to reduce the depth a bit.

You don't have to chisel out the whole box, if you are relatively accurate you can holesaw a hole in the back of the back box, and use a 20/30mm SDS drill just to make a deep-ish hole just behind the connector, then loop the cable back into the box. Not neat but it works.

Thanks, it's got to be the same mic as basically it's how the vocal mic is always set up, the signal just needs splitting.

It's split at line level after the ISA One, I guess spitting line level as you say is practically accepted, but I'm not sure if there'll be enough of a difference to disrupt one side of stereo.

I want to passively split one side of a pair of mic pre-amps (2x ISA one) which are sometimes used as a stereo pair.
They usually feed the last two channels of a 24-input card (Motu 24ai) but the a single one (say ch24) also needs to feed a single channel recorder, for doing quick and dirty voiceovers in hardware.

Does it matter to passively split one side, or should I add an isolator? Will it affect the line level enough to be a problem if they are used as a stereo pair?

I'm probably worrying about this too much and it's fine but I don't want to cause a problem as it's relatively high end setup.

Just checked ours are 6mm pan head which is right on the nose with the backplates and just sticks about 0.5mm through at the back. Longer wouldn't be too bad. Loose nuts you'll have a nightmare with 6mm, buy the MFD plate.

You'll want pan head if you are mounting the XLR on the back of the plate to poke through, countersunk if you are mounting it on the front. All the D series works on the back apart from the locking jack socket with the red lever on thicker plates, you can't push it back far enough to get the jack out. It's okay on those Penn elcom plates but not good on custom ones or many rack mount D series panels

Photo of the backplates attached, they’re 38p and will save you a world of pain fiddling with M3 nuts 

Was that with loose nuts though or with the threaded back plates?

I think the fixing screws are for the plate onto the back box, the two 3.5mm screws you'd get with a plugtop rather than for the XLR.

You need some M3 x 5mm (approx) and save yourself a world of fiddling by ordering two of these and snapping them onto the back of the XLR connectors.

You can get a XLR connector which already has M3 tapped holes rather than countersunk holes (like this) but they're harder to find and probably cost more than standard XLR plus mounting plate 

I have a few 18" drum fans for control positions / side stage, and they are much too noisy to leave on in a show, but perfect for the obligatory "Oh! Your biggest fan is here" or "Have you met tonight's biggest fan?" every time you enter a room with one.

If it’s important it doesn’t wobble you may want to make a couple of wedges or a V shaped back to fit the round beam

What I’ve done before for hanging projectors on rough beams was,

Bolt 2 half couplers to a 4-6ftish piece of timber eg 6”x2” using countersunk bolts or T-nuts or something to give a smooth back

Ratchet strap this to the underside of the beam with 2 or 3 endless straps or as many as you are happy with

Put an appropriate length piece of Ali scaffold pole or ladder truss in the couplers - pole can be hard to get hook clamps over as it may be close to the timber, unless you drop with studding etc 

Clamp to the pole / ladder

Prepare for a lot of dust on top of the beam and for the beam to be marked by the straps if it is rotten.

Good morning,

Does anyone know a commercially available Bluetooth receiver to line level output that can be custom named somehow?
I see there are some custom boards that support flashing, and it can be done with an microcontroller and DAC, but I only need 4-6 of them so might be easier to buy off the shelf if there is anything available.

It’s worth a message to http://www.k-edwards.co.uk

Or KevinE on here 

Is the Performer 200 plastic bodied or cast? That’s quite an output for the cost, although rather wide 

Are there two stages? An article refers to an artist using “Stage B”, I always thought those turnarounds were all live so I didn’t know what that meant… it could be a misprint / misinterpretation though. 

We have just been round the houses with this and tested a lot of units inc the Colorados and settled on Viking Lightings own brand VK150 Parco 150W RGBW unit. It’s IP rated and not a massive sized fixture from the audience perspective but it had nice deep colours and was cost effective for us at around £320 a unit.

Looks like desoldering wick braid, would you get away with it being uninsulated?

or maybe some very thin headshrink over some solder braid if it doesn’t make it too stiff?

Yikes, the canford is very neat but a serious price.

Thinking about it further, if we use an active speaker with Bluetooth built in then we can do away with both the line connection and a separate device, so I only really need to combine 2-3 dynamic mic connections to one mic/line level output. Preamp would be better for noise floor but it could be passive attenuation if need be. 

Thanks for the pointers so far.

The Shure mixer is just about on the money in terms of being the simplest.... however we'd need a couple and ideally be able to buy more in the future which makes being a used item slightly more cumbersome.

The Adastra one is interesting in that the Bluetooth is already built in so you wouldn't need a separate unit for phone connection.

The only other thought I've had this afternoon is if I can use a Eurorack mixer module off a modular synth, and mount it up in a wall box with the connectors to save making the thing from scratch - I'm not sure how the attenuation would work with mic level though

I am trying to find if something exists - I am looking for a simple wall box or similar for connection 2-3 dynamic mics and a phone connection (3.5mm or phono), with level control.

It's for a simple mixer for rehearsal rooms, where this will feed into an active speaker, so I just need to control the levels and I can adjust the overall level on the active speaker. (The end user won't be intended to touch the speaker but it might be turned on/off).

I'm trying to replicate the simplicity of the most simple mixer amps, but with active speakers installed. Ideally this could be wall mounted so that the output cabling can be fixed and trunked and can't be unplugged / messed with.

I might end up having to build something with a wall box and a face plate with some pots on it but just want to check if anything is available first.

Yes, that’s true, however if this is 2x1m aluminium instead of 8x4’ steel things might be in your favour.

The only other thing I can thing of is putting each deck on 4 legs and packing the bottom with ply, which covers uneven ground but is more work. 

On 4/12/2022 at 1:42 PM, Stuart91 said:

I liked Tom's suggested technique although our people would regularly only have two staff doing the build. Going to try it myself sometime - there are few things I dislike more than having to crawl around under a stage in a public park...

We did a 32 8x4 steeldeck strike on Saturday on leg savers and we didn't go under one of them, with steel deck you can just manage with two if the person on the short edge can lift with one hand and push down in the far corner with the other so you might get away with Ali. You don't need to carry it right out, just lift the difficult corner up six inches to get it on top of the next deck where you can then reposition to the two short edges and carry it out. One you've got the hang of it it's surprisingly controlled

It goes in the same way, carry it to within about a foot of the corner lapped over the long edge of the next deck, the person who's going to get trapped in repositions to the outside edge at that corner, person (or two) on the other short edge, the deck just needs lifting on the touching long edge and pushing down on the corner that's got the single leg on and the furtherest corner getting trapped in will float into the air. One person can do do both at the easy end if they can lift one corner of the the deck with one hand and push down with the other.

Because the single corner that needs to be pushed down has the single leg on it you just need to keep everything higher up so that leg doesn't hit on the floor

That’s true I hadn’t looked into linadaptors on a pitch yet. That may complicate it. Maybe I should just stick with the tennis ball and pulling a spanset over method 

Because the roof is pitched and because of lower level cricket net rails criss-crossing the room, a tower is really hard work in there as it needs deconstructing down to a point to get under the cricket nets, and with pitched roof needs top platform & section adjusting as you move around.. we have taken a Tallescope there before but it’s difficult to transport the Talle as it’s a job to deconstruct and hardly any smaller once you have.. generally take it assembled on a 16ft trailer which makes it quite a job. 

I think some linadaptor brackets and staggered length steels downwards could work. If they didn’t have heavy shackles left on they shouldn’t swing too dramatically if hit. 

Ironically one of the regular uses of the hall when we aren’t in is an archery group.. 

Thanks for the suggestions, unfortunately the room has cricket nets that come out the length of the room so leaving in cords to the side walls might not work out.

The boomed down rigging points could work potentially. You can reach the bottom of the RSJs at the edges, but not the middle, you could fit clamps permanently but not from the Zarges if I could come up with a better way to attach to them out of reach.
It's a pitched roof with a central ridge which makes the beam clamps a little harder as the roof is about 15degrees off.

Currently I can only reach about halfway up the pitch which means I have about a 6-7m span in the middle I can't reach - my thought is if I put slings in permanently I'd get a scaffold tower out and fit some longer round slings in the middle to reach down to where I could reach them. Or if I find a way to get them over I can fit them from the ground / from a more reasonable ladder height.

In terms of heath Robinson contraptions, it sounds like paracord threaded through a tennis ball combined with an extended one of those tennis ball throwers for dog walkers could work, to pass a cord over then pull round sling up. Or I might try make one of those litter grabbers with a 90 degree bend in it. There's about 6 inches between RSJs and the underside of the roof.