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Hi All Has anyone got any experience opening up a Trantec S4000 (S4.5) beltpack? I'm needing a cheap and cheerful hire rack. Mainly for schools work. Don't really want to be spending huge bucks on them, and don't want to be too gutted if they get damaged. There are some very affordable S4000 systems out there at the minute, and they should more than meet my needs. But.... I'm on 4 pin mini xlr's for all of my other systems, and it'd be really nice to have some commonality across my stock. I'm tempted to try and convert them. The S4.5's are on Lemo 0B. From what I can see the Lemo is a 9mm diameter hole, whereas 4 pin mini xlr is 11 or 12mm. I have access to a 3d printer and am reasonably adept at 3d design, so can come up with adapters, shims or whatever else is needed to (I think) do a reasonable job of the mechanical side of things. But having not seen a beltpack yet I'm not sure what's going on inside of one. Could do with knowing if that Lemo is pcb mount or panel mounted with flying leads (like the S5.3's are). The photos suggest to me that it's panel mount as there looks to be an external flange suggesting an internal nut. How much space have I got to play with on the inside? Any help much appreciated. Chris

Thank you all. I'll leave it at full length and come up with something better for the drum! When I bought my desk from SSE many years ago, it came with a pair of 90m cat5's and it took me ages to work out the significance of 90 over 100. Felt like a really random length to have made them, until I remembered the 100m limit.

Hi All Those of you who tour (or work) in larger receiving houses, what's a rule of thumb front of house multi length that seems to work in most places you go? I'm just building up a new cat5 multi and have a lovely drum I could potentially wind it on to, but I've got about 7m more cable than will fit on it. Am considering cutting it down, and will if it doesn't make the difference between it being long enough or not! I've done this size venue before, but have always used existing cat5 runs. As my needs are growing I'm building my own loom to do the job instead. I'll probably be going mainly between front of house and the pit, although do sometimes end up with radio mics in stage right wing too. Depends on the theatre and show.

Could be a few things. First, check the DMX channel chart for the fixtures you're using. Some cheaper generic led fixtures combine multiple functions on to one channel. For example they might say dimmer is 0-100, then strobe is 101-200 etc. Your controller will be fading up from 0 to 255, so will go through the dimmer but then reach some other function. Next, check for fixtures (or the desk) being in some sort of sound to light or master/slave mode. Again, cheaper fixtures do this and one fixture will send DMX to the others on the circuit. The theory being that if they were in slave mode, they'd come up with their own (rubbish) light show. Useful possible for bands and DJ's. Utter pain for us. Go through and make sure none of them are doing this. Also, go in to the room and clap loudly. See if anything changes. This'll be a big clue. You could also do with a DMX terminator on your line. Some fixtures have them built in, but not all. I wouldn't be looking at mic cables as the first source of trouble. Yes it's not "right" but it's also something lots of people do without issue.

Thanks both I had a look at Cranford's multi while I was at Plasa Focus. Looked good but this is very much a budget project. I've bought 6 pre made cat5e patch leads (ended up the cheapest way of doing it) which I'll be reterminating with whatever option I go for. I'm wondering if I can incorporate the suggestion of a rack panel in to my desk flightcase dog house. Would make a very neat solution indeed. Especially as my router etc. is in there so it could patch to that direct, and that's where my Comms pack lives too. Good call on the screening for the Comms, might still throw a mic cable in there for good measure. I'd wondered if I could come up with some kind of neat torpedo shaped stagebox if I'd gone that way. 6 ethercons in a line shouldn't mean it ends up too large, so I was thinking 3d printed (petg, 100% infill for strength) slimline stagebox with narrowed, rounded ends to aid threading. Think I might end up going tails now though. Thanks all

Hi all. Building a new 50m front of house loom. Got a few venues I go in to now where I pull my own in. All are indoors, theatres, churches or town halls. Desk is Roland and I have 2 lines of REAC audio. Then a general network for radio mic monitoring, speaker management etc. Other stuff I might need is comms and composite video for an MD feed. I'd weighed up putting some rg59 and an xlr in there, but the more I think about it, the more I'm tempted to just go with 6 cat5e's and use baluns or adapters as appropriate. What do you think? Anything else you'd chuck in there? I don't need power. Also, how would you terminate? Tails seems most useful as most of my kit sits in the same place, so I could go straight to the device with the tail. But, if I put ethercons on then they're not going to work for everything as lots of my devices that they'd naturally go straight to (router, laptop, access point) are standard rj45. I then need to have adapters. A small stage box on either end (6 ethercons in a line, so nice and compact) or drum mounted sockets if I put it on a reel would be neat and allow for ethercon or standard rj45, but I then need more patch leads and if I do a box at each end, that means 3x as many connections to go wrong. I'm following the thread elsewhere in the forum on how to make up looms. 6 cat5e's loomed with Hellerman sleeve, with expandable braid outer. It wouldn't therefore be impossible to add to it in the future, but I'd like to not have to. So, what do you do? Any gotchas?

All my DI's are LA audio and they've been fantastic. The 2 channel stereo one is passive and has a whole myriad of connectors. No bells and whistles, just no fuss decent sounding electronics.

A school I work with once did the painting trick with their entrance path. Looked great, but the carpet just inside the school doors was bright yellow! Don't recall it ever fading. The footfall across the temporary paint picked it up and carried it indoors. Once engrained in to the carpet it was far more permanent!

Thank you all. And yes your experiences seem to back up my own. My repaired CPC headset connectors (REAN) seem to have well and truly outlived my Microphone Madness headsets (I'm assuming Switchcraft or an American sourced clone). For the record, the headsets are fantastic, but definitely need reterminating after the 3 or 4 years I've had them. I've also seen the REAN's lose their grip on worn sockets, especially on the Line6 2.4GHz beltpacks. The trantecs last a little longer and thankfully are nice and easy to replace. I've just done a bulk replacement of my trantec beltpack connectors so hopefully am good for a few years. The Line6's got done a couple of years ago. REAN it is then! At the minute Thomann seem to be the cheapest, so there'll be a box of 30 winging its way from them soon.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Braid does indeed sound like a decent option. The stuff I've got here is a little wide but I might find some that's slightly smaller. Turning it around and shortening is what I've done a few times now, but I'm looking to do a bulk replacement on all of them as this keeps happening right when I'm changing batteries before a show. If I'm going to the trouble of bulk replacing all of them then I'd like it to be with fresh. A piece of wire does just work. I've used a single piece taken from a ribbon cable to repair one recently and it works ok, but I don't think it's going to last that long. MLEC is my repairer of choice for anything I can't fix myself, but Trantec seem to sell the replacement battery bays with the wires attached - I'm guessing he'd just replace them with a new bay and not need to have a source of the wire itself.

Hi all Am looking to do a bulk replacement of my radio mic headset connectors. Have just done the beltpacks but am still having the odd connector related crackle. Isopropanol and a little tweak of the pins with a small screwdriver has helped lots, but I can't help thinking my headset connectors are starting to get a little tired. I've bought these REAN ones in the past,which have always seemed ok, but now seem to be the ones that are having the most problems. They've worked hard though so I'm not against replacing like for like. Just wondered if anybody had any experience with any other similar priced ones? CPC seem to have these Pulse ones which seem suspiciously cheap. Switchcraft seems like the only other real option, but as I'm likely to be replacing 30 odd of these things, £11 versus £3 starts to add up. I know you get what you pay for, but I'd be maybe looking to go back to the REAN ones instead unless there are any other similarly budget conscious options out there? Thanks all

Hi All Doing some repair work on some radio mics, but as this is more about a source of a specific type of wire than anything else, I thought I'd stick it in General Technical Chat for better visibility. I need some of this stuff; Flat insulated wire (link is to a google photo) The copper inner is around 1.5mm wide. The clear insulation is around 3mm. It goes between a battery door and the pcb. It really does need to be replaced with something similar. I've done a temporary fix with some very thin normal wire but it has to bend in the flat direction and has to fit through a small flat hole. I've looked at things like induction loop tape, but it's far too wide. I'm starting to think it's going to have to be sellotape and flat copper tape. Be nice if I could find something off the shelf first though. If anyone has any hints or ideas then let me know! Cheers

Our local venue has just purchased a pellet burning boiler. Venue manager reckons it's a fair chunk cheaper than gas, which was costing him £70 an hour to heat the place (big old Victorian building with cast iron radiators and very little zoning). If you've got space to put the pellet silo then it's worth looking in to. It's supposedly greener too, although I still find the idea that burning anything could be classed as green a little odd!

It did make me utter the Yorkshire Warcry "ow much??" but in comparison to the cost of the project, it was just about justifiable.

Oh he has done it! He has found the world's classiest potentiometer! (Fans of the musical Our House will get the reference!). Turns out if you want to find a dual gang potentiometer on CPC, you need to make sure you don't filter for dual gang! https://cpc.farnell.com/vishay/14920f0gjsx13102ka/potentiometer-1w-dual-1k/dp/RE04604 Aside from being linear I reckon it's just what I need. Big more than I wanted to pay, but not heaps. Have found a 5k as well, but the consensus seems to be that 1k is best. Thanks all for your input!

I'd seen those, but 100mW seemed a little on the low side. If folks seem to think it'll be ok then it's a decent option.

10k was the lowest resistance dual gang pot I could get through CPC, who I've realised through this process are definitely no longer an electronics components company! RS have a fair few more, however the only dual gang 1k log pot they've got is 24 quid! Can get a linear one for 7, but I'd really prefer log. At this rate I may as well buy a PM1.

Yeah I'm switching all 3 legs - my comms beltpack is a Bluecom one, so it's a H-Bridge output. Fair point about it being intermittent, given it's audio. That 200mW is likely to be DC isn't it. Looking at a 10k log pot at the minute.

Hi All I'm trying to do what sounds to be something pretty simple - build a volume control for my desk headphones. I'm currently tweaking my flightcase (see other thread) and one of the negatives from the change is that my volume control (under the wrist rest at the front of the desk) ends up being hidden. I can get a connector in to the socket but won't be able to adjust the level. This isn't the end of the world as I'm building an interface panel that lets me switch between a coms circuit and my desk, so it seems straightforward to stick an attenuator pot on there, turn the desk volume up full before I stick it in the case, and just passively attenuate. As far as I can see I just need to use a dual gang logarithmic pot as a potential divider. Here comes the problem, I'm struggling to find such a beast that looks like it'll handle the power. There's one on CPC that'll handle 200mW, but that just feels a little too low. My normal headphones are either Sennheiser HMD-46's which are 300R, but could equally be a pair of DT-250's which are 80R. Am I worrying over nothing, or do I need to find something more capable? If so then what??? I've tried a few different search terms but can't seem to find anything suitable. I know Behringer have their PM1, which seems to be exactly what I want in a box, but what's inside one of them? £30 seems a lot if all I need is a few quid's worth of potentiometer.

Arduino's and sketches are a bit of a nightmare for me, so I don't blame you. Just built a project with four little oled displays. They use the adafruit library but they're smaller than the usual number of pixels. Somebody has built a modified library with some extra lines of code for the smaller display. I carefully renamed the original and put the new library in place. All worked beautifully. Now I need to go back to an old project using a larger, standard display, and despite switching the libraries back to original, it won't compile. It's absolutely doing my nut! Seems to still want to use the new library even though it currently has a completely different name and extension!

What Stuart said. 16 is asking too much. You need to be looking at an alternative band. You should have channel 65 as part of your channel 38 licence. This would be my preference, followed by channel 70. Other options from different brands include VHF and 2.4GHz.

Instead of leaving the spanset in permanently, could you leave in a loop of rope with a karabiner attached? Attach spanset to karabiner, pull one side of rope loop to hoist spanset up the other side and over the beam. Once down the other side, detach spanset from karabiner and rig to it as required. Rope loop is now ready to do it all again next time.

I've toyed with the idea several times, but the project is well beyond my skillset. I can imagine though a Raspberry Pi (maybe a zero) in a beltpack, running something like Zello. You'd need a server on the LAN somewhere, which could be another pi or a laptop that controlled the system. I think it's achievable, and once someone has done the hard work it could be shared as a disk image for easy install. Bit of GPIO for ptt, call light etc. and you'd be away. Deciding on the audio hardware is probably the hardest part. I guess Bluetooth headsets would be easiest but it's hardly heavy duty and is another thing to go wrong. PC headset in to the pi would probably be best. Then the thing just needs powering, and probably a way of interfacing to wired comms too. Big project, but probably not too difficult for someone in the know.

I'm teetotal, though coca cola is my vice, so the temptation to put a bottle holder is very much there. I only drink water at the desk though. I do find taking a few seconds to take a drink really helps the concentration. Have started work. So far I've got a pull out headphone bracket and the dog box is nearly complete. Waiting on a friend to return my oscillating multi tool saw thingy before j can attempt to cut the keyboard drawer. Have also run a router along the underside of the case to recess some led strip to illuminate the floor under my desk. Partly for finding stuff I've dropped but mainly cause it looks cool so why not? Am managing to much improve my desk lighting as well during this project. Lots of playing with angles of led strip today, and hitting the 3d printer tomorrow with some initial attempts at mounting hardware. Thanks for all your suggestions so far.

Keyboard was one I'd thought of ages ago and then forgotten again, thank you! I've got a bit of dead space under the desk and am pretty sure I can get a keyboard drawer in there. Also got plans for a nice pull out headphone hook next to it as well.