from CR to SR----unbalanced

[damster]

Hi all.....got a question.

I have installed an unbalanced tie line into my studio from Control Room to Studio Room and was wondering if it was common to lose signal intensity over lines like these.I mostly notice this on distorted electric guitar where the gain drops consideraby when played from the CR but when moving the guitar into the SR where the amp is the gain returns to origional intensity.Is this a wiring problem?cable lenght/quality problem?Any symptoms I should be looking for?Is there a way to correct this?

[mihau]

hi, would please tell me how much aprox. in db lower is the signal in CR.

How did you wire cable and do you have DI?

take cere, MU

[Kev]

This can happen with long guitar runs...

Are you using a stomp box??? Put the stomp box in the CR and then it feeds the long run to the amp in the studio.... this can help.

[daniel_c]

Smart Research make a couple of boxes that will sort u out here Smart Research

but if you are looking for a cheaper option , you can try this.

Take 2 passive DI boxes , one goes into the control room and the guitarist plugs the output of his pedals in here.

plug the output of the DI into your mic lines to the studio where the amp is located.

put the other DI box near the amp and plug it up in reverse. plug your studio mic line into it ( you may need a sex changer lead) and plug the DI's jack socket up to the amp input.

Play and have fun!

Hope this helps

D

[knightfly]

Yeah, Daniel's got it goin' on - Only thing I might add is the "why's" - On that long a run, you need to get rid of the un-balanced line (noise) you need to get rid of hi impedance (signal loss, mostly hi freq, due to cable capacitance/hi-Z combo creating a "tank" circuit that will drain the highs off)- and you need to get rid of the load on your guitar pickup (the stompbox is a good (read cheap) way to do that. Guitar pickups can be anywhere from about 5-6 k impedance, up to as high as 50k, occasionally even up to 100k (rare). Inexpensive DI boxes usually have passive transformers in them, with the hi-Z side at about 10-20 kohms, and the lo-Z side (XLR) at typically 600 ohms. By patching two of these the way Daniel mentions, the output of your stompbox(s) should be a near perfect match for the input to the DI, as well as isolating your guitar from loading - the balanced mic line will be operating at its optimum 600 ohms balanced, and the amp at the other end gets the Hi-Z, higher voltage signal it wants. Also (here's the REALLY neat part) If none of this works, since Daniel said it first, it's ALL HIS FAULT... Steve

[damster]

Thank you sooo much for the replies guys.
Sorry for taking so long to come back around......but with the two passive D.I. trick, will this work if I dont have a guit. pedal inline? I am using the killer dist. from my tube amp and was wondering if this trick will still load the pickups too much without an amp in front of it(a.k.a. pedal of some sort)?

The way the tie line is currently wired is a 6'guitar cable is plugged into my unbalanced patch bay to a 10' unbal cable(ground is shield) wich is attached to the studio wall mount.From there it is a 6'cable to the amp. I would say I am currently losing about 6dB of signal(enough to really take the bite off of a heavily distorted signal).All audio cables in the studio cross power cables at 90 degrees if they cross at all(if this helps in any way).

[Kev]

Originally posted by damster:

but with the two passive D.I. trick, will this work if I dont have a guit. pedal inline? I am using the killer dist. from my tube amp and was wondering if this trick will still load the pickups too much without an amp in front of it(a.k.a. pedal of some sort)?

It can help with noise but not going to help with the level and could potentially loose more level. Re-read what knightfly had to say about impedance.

Can you have the amp near you and run an extension speaker instead.

Otherwise a very high quality , low capacitance, low impedance cable with no joins may help to get some level back over that distance. You have a number of connections in the current set-up and one or more of them may be of poor quality.