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Wired IEM with Dual (Instrument/Headphone) Cable
- Thread starter drpepper
- Start date
my IEM jack is just a bit shorter than the 1/4" jack for the bass connection which I loop through the strap like you (and many others) do. I set it all up about an hour ago and the IEM jack was looped just over the straplok pin and seemed to give me just the right amount of slack without leaving too much to snag stuff on (which I totally understand). This testing is all at-home right now, so we'll see how it works live. I'll try it out in rehearsal on Wed when I have plenty of time to set-up, then I have gigs on Sat and Sun next weekend so the new cable will get a good workout then. I'm also considering grabbing a short-ish (10-15ft) dual XLR cable for my wired stereo feed instead of using one of my stock of 20ft XLR's. I'm running sound these days so I'm never too far from the board and that way I can separate the whole IEM rig from the general bundle of PA XLR's, power cables and whatnot.
thanks. I'm certainly game to do these kinds of DYI projects, but I am only medium handy, so its always pleasing when it works out the first time.Nicely done!
And that's part of the beauty of putting it together yourself or having it built to your specs, you can make those decisions for yourself. Neither the TC or the first one I put together had the offset length. This time around, I had that figured out.
As a matter of fact, another thought I had was that it might have even been better to include the female end of the headphone cable in the shrink tube. I don't think I'm going to add more shrink tube to do that or try to remove what's there to redo it (if that would even be a practical thing to do), but it kind of highlights that ideas can come after you have a chance to use it or occur to you from seeing other ones.
Oh yeah, I've heard that before but forgot. Thanks for the reminder! Do you know if sheathing a 1/4" instrument cable and power extension cord (or long IEC cable) together for 15ft. will cause any damage to the cables, pedals, or amp? The audio and power will be flowing in opposite directions. (power to pedals, audio away from pedals to amp) Or is the worst that can happen just audio quality/interference related?
I see some big name acts that have just one big combined looking cable running to their pedal board, and I assumed it housed both power to the pedals and audio signal to amps/FOH. I wonder how they do it...?
Thought I'd come back and report that the combo Bass/IEM cable has been working great. Getting the hang of the IEM's and the cable really makes the physical part of the setup totally simple. I'm still working on how to attach the headphone amp to my pedalboard. I originally just put 2 zip-ties on the upper rail and then clipped the headphone amp to that using the belt clip. That worked ok, but after using it live several times, I feel like I should just take off the belt clip and just velcro the thing down to the board like all (4) the other pedals on the board. I can do it easily and still stick with the Metro sized pedal board.
anyway, the combo cable was easy to make and it works great, and the IEM's are really helping me keep the extraneous noise out of my ears. For the time being, I'm going to stick with the ZS10Pro IEMs, but I have been sniffing around the higher end units just to get some ideas.
anyway, the combo cable was easy to make and it works great, and the IEM's are really helping me keep the extraneous noise out of my ears. For the time being, I'm going to stick with the ZS10Pro IEMs, but I have been sniffing around the higher end units just to get some ideas.
i made 2 of these cables this week. They turned out great. I have a 20 ft and a 12 ft. I used the expandable wire wrap and adhesive-lined heat shrink tubing at each end. first performance was a success. I think I'm going to mount a small Rolls PM50SE to my board to keep everything simple and streamlined.
Yes, but I'm certainly open to budget conscious alternatives! I'm using a Mackie mix5 currently, which is fantastic, but it's a bit too big for the pedal board and I'm trying to streamline my setup.
If you already have one, then carry on. I used that same model for quite a while. Just if you were planning to buy one for straight up IEMs, I'd point out that it has features that will go unused (which kind of rubbed me wrong in a minor way...I would have chosen something else to begin with). Also, the 1/4" input isn't exactly the norm, so it's a good idea to carry adapters if you're not always working with the same IEM rig. Another consideration is built in limiting...it's possible that the 50SE has it, but it doesn't appear to be the case, and that's something that some others specifically have. Other than that, it's fine and gets the job done.
I actually mounted the Rolls PM55P on my small board for this purpose. It’s mounted under my Funkzilla in the picture with a 1/4” stereo pigtail coming out next to my tuner. I send the FX loop out from my amp (d800+) which is post eq to the 1/4” in and then a mix from the monitor board into the xlr. That way I can send FOH a pre or post DI signal and still hear my bass eq’d the way I want in my IEM. It also allows me to easily adjust my volume against the rest of the mix.
I also built two of these cables over the past 1.5 months and mounted my IEM belt pack (Presonus HP2) to my pedal board. Both cables are 10ft long, and one is just a back up. I used 3/8” expandable loom/sheath for one and 1/4” for the other. @drpepper was right, I had to remove the slightly bulky 1/4” Neutrik jack connector to fit the cable through the slimmer 1/4” sheath and solder it back on. No big deal, but thanks for pointing it out so I could be prepared!
I’ve done a handful of gigs and a few rehearsals with this new setup and am SO glad I got off my butt and built these. My headphone amp pack runs cleanly off my pedal board power supply (Truetone CS12), and it feels so light and freeing compared to wearing a belt pack. I’ve also had way less tugging on my ears. In fact, all tugging is completely gone where I used to get just a few light tugs each gig wearing my belt pack. No idea why, but I’ll take it! The best part is my setup is faster, and getting both my ears and bass on and plugged in is lightning fast compared to messing with my wired pack. Thanks to @drpepper for starting this thread, offering pointers, and motivating me to do something I’ve been meaning to do for a few years, but just never made the time or effort.
A couple things I found that I’d suggest to anyone building these (sorry if they were mentioned already);
1.). Definitely measure out how far you want the guitar cable and headphone extension cable displaced from each other at the bass end, and then tape them together at the end you plan to feed into the expandable loom. I didn’t do this on my first one and they came out the other end the wrong lengths. I was able to pull one end of the guitar cable while my 9-year old pulled the other end of the headphone cable to correct the slippage that occurred. (Not safe or ideal and I don’t think it would’ve worked with the tighter 1/4” loom.) For the second cable I just used one small piece of gaff tape to hold the two cables together at the end that fed into the loom and they came out the perfect length. Once it came out the other end I removed the tape and added shrink wrap.
2.) Some people mentioned taping or gluing the cables together multiple times throughout the cable length so they didn’t twist around each other, which would make it difficult to wrap the finished product. This wasn’t necessary. With both cables, even the one with the tighter 1/4” expandable loom, you could twist the inner cables around each other while they’re inside the loom. I put shrink wrap on one end after I confirmed it was the right length, then proceeded to try and wrap the cable for storage. With each wrap I could feel where the two inner cables were fighting the wrap, and I could just twist them around each other through the loom to correct it until the entire cable wrapped up nice and clean. They’ve stayed in their positions since and I doubt they’ll ever move/twist on their own.
3.) @drpepper mentioned leaving the headphone jack inside the shrink wrap at the bass end instead of dangling out of it, and I highly recommend this as a MUST. (See pic) With that jack being secured to the cable, I can quickly and easily plug and unplug my IEM to the extension cable with one hand, and the headphone jack doesn’t flop around or move at all.
This has improved my performing life substantially!
headphone extension jack tucked inside the shrink wrap;
here you can see the IEM cable coming out from under my shirt and connecting behind my bass. No tugging, and I move around a fair bit, even lifting my bass neck straight up in the air. (I tried to position the IEM connection not too high, so it doesn't bare any of the weight of my shirt or lift it up for people to see my undersides.)
a birdseye view of the cables going into the tuner and Presonus belt pack on my board. I had no room on top, so mounted the pack at the front of my PedalTrain Jr. with some 3M Dual Lock. The 9V power comes right out the front of the board to the pack. It works great, as long as nobody kicks it!
I’ve done a handful of gigs and a few rehearsals with this new setup and am SO glad I got off my butt and built these. My headphone amp pack runs cleanly off my pedal board power supply (Truetone CS12), and it feels so light and freeing compared to wearing a belt pack. I’ve also had way less tugging on my ears. In fact, all tugging is completely gone where I used to get just a few light tugs each gig wearing my belt pack. No idea why, but I’ll take it! The best part is my setup is faster, and getting both my ears and bass on and plugged in is lightning fast compared to messing with my wired pack. Thanks to @drpepper for starting this thread, offering pointers, and motivating me to do something I’ve been meaning to do for a few years, but just never made the time or effort.
A couple things I found that I’d suggest to anyone building these (sorry if they were mentioned already);
1.). Definitely measure out how far you want the guitar cable and headphone extension cable displaced from each other at the bass end, and then tape them together at the end you plan to feed into the expandable loom. I didn’t do this on my first one and they came out the other end the wrong lengths. I was able to pull one end of the guitar cable while my 9-year old pulled the other end of the headphone cable to correct the slippage that occurred. (Not safe or ideal and I don’t think it would’ve worked with the tighter 1/4” loom.) For the second cable I just used one small piece of gaff tape to hold the two cables together at the end that fed into the loom and they came out the perfect length. Once it came out the other end I removed the tape and added shrink wrap.
2.) Some people mentioned taping or gluing the cables together multiple times throughout the cable length so they didn’t twist around each other, which would make it difficult to wrap the finished product. This wasn’t necessary. With both cables, even the one with the tighter 1/4” expandable loom, you could twist the inner cables around each other while they’re inside the loom. I put shrink wrap on one end after I confirmed it was the right length, then proceeded to try and wrap the cable for storage. With each wrap I could feel where the two inner cables were fighting the wrap, and I could just twist them around each other through the loom to correct it until the entire cable wrapped up nice and clean. They’ve stayed in their positions since and I doubt they’ll ever move/twist on their own.
3.) @drpepper mentioned leaving the headphone jack inside the shrink wrap at the bass end instead of dangling out of it, and I highly recommend this as a MUST. (See pic) With that jack being secured to the cable, I can quickly and easily plug and unplug my IEM to the extension cable with one hand, and the headphone jack doesn’t flop around or move at all.
This has improved my performing life substantially!
headphone extension jack tucked inside the shrink wrap;
here you can see the IEM cable coming out from under my shirt and connecting behind my bass. No tugging, and I move around a fair bit, even lifting my bass neck straight up in the air. (I tried to position the IEM connection not too high, so it doesn't bare any of the weight of my shirt or lift it up for people to see my undersides.)
a birdseye view of the cables going into the tuner and Presonus belt pack on my board. I had no room on top, so mounted the pack at the front of my PedalTrain Jr. with some 3M Dual Lock. The 9V power comes right out the front of the board to the pack. It works great, as long as nobody kicks it!
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Doing the combined cables is a good Idea for sure but there's still other things I'd do to make using iem's easier having a digital mixer and splitter made life way easier for my band. it's not a necessity per say but taking the monitor mix away from foh and allowing us to save our presets made life so much easier. I recommend adding this to a bands setup before going wireless it can get abit expensive depending on how many channels and what level of gear you buy. My band started off with a behringer analog mixer and headphone amp but we slowly scaled up getting a slanted mixer rack case, the behringer p16 personal mixers and 16i setup. Later we snagged a behringer xr18 digital mixer with the p16d interface and we pivoted over to the digital mixer and interface for our live setup and used the 16I and analog board for a studio/ rehearsal setup from there we just slowly upgraded things a piece at time getting wireless units and a x32 rack with the midas hub 4 interface and midas dp48 mixers. Next step will be upgrading our wireless units and getting a full network for the iem wireless using a rf venue frequency analyzer with a antenna combiner and a helical antenna
I'm not sure that I've caught your meaning, but most of your post seems to contain the kind of misconceptions that this thread was intended to dispel. Even if it's not your intended meaning, the misconceptions are fairly strongly implied in the way you've said what you've said.
For example, you start by saying that sure, the dual cable is fine, BUT there are OTHER things that improve IEM use, and then you go on to point to having a digital mixer and splitter. Again, it's possible that I'm misunderstanding you, but the logical implication there (i.e., of "but" and "other") is that dual cables for wired IEMs and digital mixers/splitters are somehow mutually exclusive...they are not. In the vast majority of circumstances wired or wireless IEMs are functionally interchangeable.
The rest seems to go from point to point with similar suggestions and logical implications along the way that wireless IEMs are necessarily something to aspire to on the upgrade path or natural evolution that runs from wired IEMs to wireless. While I understand the organic impulse to see things this way, these are simply two different ways to accomplish the same goal of getting an audio signal from a mixer to earphones. One isn't inherently superior to the other. Each one has its own set of aspects and benefits, and each of those can individually be valued and weighed as a potential advantage over the other, in context and in the judgement of the person making the comparison. Where there is a decision to be made, the factors can be weighed together in deciding, on balance, which has the overall advantage and/or is more appropriate for a given circumstance.
For me and, I think, most people, the most relevant factors are freedom of movement, setup effort, signal robustness and cost. Based on context and personal preferences and needs, any one of those can carry a level of weight from very little up to overriding the others. For example, if the person making the decision feels that freedom of movement of wireless is a necessity, that can be an overriding factor where wired isn't even an option. While you could set a drummer up wired or wireless, more situations will lend themselves, on balance, to wired being the more appropriate (i.e., "better") choice. It wouldn't make much sense to make that decision in that way and then say "But we're going to upgrade the drummer to wireless asap." In my case, since I already choose to run my bass wired, the dual cable impacts the factors in a way that I cannot see or calculate an overall advantage in wireless IEMs...freedom of motion is the same because it's limited by the instrument cable, ease of setup/cable runs goes to wireless, signal robustness goes to wired, cost goes to wired. Weighing each of these differences with regard to their degree of difference and significance, wired using the dual cable comes out on top for me. If I had to wear the headphone amp as a belt pack and run two or three separate cables all the way to my hip, that would change the way I see things. If they were equal in cost, that would change the way I see things. If I had never personally experienced any issues with a wireless signal, that would change the way I see things.
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You kind of jumped ship from what this entire thread is about (wired IEMs) and wandered into splitters, wireless units, antennas, etc. While I’m confused as to why your band spends so much money on personal mixer units rather than using the available free apps on your phones/tablets to control your individual mixes, delving into this or splitters or wireless IEMs is kind of beside the point here.
I will say that two of my three bands own X32 racks, (the third band uses an XR18), they all use a splitter whenever going into a house/venue PA, and we have full wireless IEM setup, including rf frequency analyzers and helical antennas. Still, the drummer, keyboardist, and myself prefer to run wired IEMs while the singers, guitarist, and horns all go wireless.
I see wired IEMs with the dual instrument/headphone cable, of which the build and design is point of discussion here, as superior in meeting my own personal performance needs. I’m glad this thread was here to give me some pointers and mistakes to avoid before I dove into building my own.
I've been itching to do this (wired IEMs with a multi-cable) for years. Just about to pull the trigger on all the parts so I can make the cable myself when a question came to me... I did read the whole thread but maybe I missed this.
How do you handle changing basses? With a belt pack, when you unplug your bass the cables are secured to the pack on your body somewhere. But with the free-hanging cable I picture it... uh... hanging free and tugging on the IEM cable.
How do you handle changing basses? With a belt pack, when you unplug your bass the cables are secured to the pack on your body somewhere. But with the free-hanging cable I picture it... uh... hanging free and tugging on the IEM cable.
I don't really have any planned mid-set bass changes, but when I have two basses that may be used, both have straps on them. Same as set breaks, I disconnect the IEMs first, pull the cable from the bass (hang it on my mic stand), and take the bass off...reverse order to put the bass back on or switch.
I don't see it being worthwhile to try to arrange things to eliminate the potential for the strap getting tangled with the IEM cable without disconnecting.
I don’t switch basses in shows, but my IEM stay “on” from sound check, through set breaks, to the end of the gig. The jack end of the IEM cable dangles out from the back of my shirt with no tugging or problems. (I always run the IEM cable down the back of my shirt, preferably between an undershirt and over shirt like in the pic below from last weekends gig). On set breaks I let the ear pieces dangle over the front of my shoulders and tuck the cable end/jack into the pack pocket of my pants. For for changing basses I’d leave the ear pieces in and let the jack end dangle for a few seconds, not tucking it into my pocket. I don’t think there’d be any tugging issues.
For a bass switch, I would simply unplug the IEM from the multi cable first, then unplug the instrument cable from the bass, take that bass off, put on a new bass, plug it in and then plug the IEMs back in. I always run my IEMs under my shirt and there is no tugging to speak of. I don’t think switching basses would be any different other than one extra thing (IEMs) to plug/unplug. Going with the multi cable has all but eliminated any tugging I might have incurred when wearing a belt back.