Wallplates like these certainly do exist, and when wired properly they can work great and look great. You may have to buy a plate with pre-cut holes and buy the jacks separately (gives you some flexibilty with XLR or 1/4", or you could even use combo jacks from neutrik which are very cool. I've even seen people buy a huge blank wallplate from home depot and make the cutout with the right tools - if you have the tools to do it - talk about inexpensive!

Hope that gets you started! Good luck!

The advantage of using a snake is that it is movable within the room. I use sub-snakes (high-quality) all the time, and they are a better way to go when I'm cutting drums in my big room.

I agree that there are some very cheaply made snakes on the market and I would suggest avoiding anything poorly made that has to pass signal.

If your rooms are small and you can deal with a lot of mic cables on the floor, then wall plates are the way to go.

Gentlemen, start your soldiering irons.

Chris

There are some mighty fine quality snakes out there...finding a good name brand (not the bottom end of the line) should suffice just fine.

I have a 16X4 snake installed, and have never had any problems or issues...I DO wish there were a couple more T/S connections with speaker wire gauged stuff, as it makes it really easy to have guitarists and their amp heads sit in the CR, with the speaker cabs in the tracking area...

I agree with you Chris. Go for the wallplates if it works in your room. If you want to use snakes, make sure its good cable. Theres plenty of good brands out there, just make sure you get what you're looking for. Snakes are commonly used in live shows because the idea is to get a lot of channels from the stage to the FOH. Depending on your room, this may not be the case.

Good Luck!

Yup plug in your soldering iron. Some good quality multicore, Neutrik plugs and a wall box.

Dunno about the US equivalent, but over here in the UK http://www.studiospares.co.uk is the cable/connector mart. You must have an equivalent in the US.

I do infact solder, but soldering...64 leads onto XLR connectors isn't too appealing to me. :? Plus, what raw wire would you use?

I think when the time comes I'll just buy a good 20 channel snake or so. That way I can use it for live stuff as well as recording.

I've priced good quality snake cables, and they were not cheap!!!
Way,way exp.
I found by making them myself I could make a 24 channel snake (with mogami cable and Neutrik ends) for around $500 to $600 dollars. Sodering is NOT hard. It just takes a couple of hours to get it down.

I know you arent excited about all the soldering, but... I wired my studio all with Gepco X-Band snakes. It was a joy to work with, and I have no complaints about the quality. It even specs very nicely next to mogami, and is cheaper.

Jon

I have wired most of my studio with Mogami Cable and Neutrik connectors. I have a few snakes laying around that I used mainly for mobile gigs. You can get some really nice wall plate looking stuff and even some nice rackmount stuff for panel-mount xlr's.

Check out http://www.triktags.com and http://www.redco.com.