> I tried to buy some flux at three different places here locally, but
> none of them was selling flux.
H=E5kan,
Have you tried electricians suppliers? You can use plumbers flux if is
a non-acid type.
I soldered up some RCA connectors today and the cored solder didn't
"tin" the tags without extra flux.
> One thing I noticed is that the shield that is soldered to the pin 1
> on the connectors is then "bridged" to the XLR's earth/shield on the
> edge of the XLR connector. Does that make it use recorder as the
> earth/shield? Is it good or bad to do it like that? Does the cable
> get more or less sensitive to cellphone signals?
We discussed connecting the shells a little while ago.
The golden rule is to ground a circuit only once, usually at the
mixer/recorder end. If it is grounded twice to different points you
can get comparitively high currents flowing through the shield. The
complete circuit makes a single turn loop and any AC magnetic fields
will set up current in this loop.
Mains is at +41dBV in America, +47dBV in Europe. Mic noise levels are
more like -120dBV or lower. That's quite a high signal to noise ratio
in cables often running together. That's why we use balanced lines and
screening.
I had a problem with connected shields at the end of 100metre stereo
cables when the connected shells touched and caused a "ground loop"
Either don't ground the shells (clip off the tag) or keep them
insulated from each other and the ground. My other problem was shells
touching a mic stand which
.
was on damp earth which caused fizzle.
I also had a problem with my long outdoor cables because all my mixer
and recorder power supplies were "floating". I measured 12V between
the mixer ground and the company ground. In the UK all our supply
sockets have a ground connection, and I used one socket as my master
ground and all my hums disappeared.
> Can my recorder be broken even if using XLR connectors works fine in
> the same channels?
No, but the XLR inputs may not be fully balanced. If the mics are
"floating" with a two wire connection this is not usually a problem,
but it any part of the circuit is also unbalanced you may be partially
grounding part of the circuit by dipping it in water.
All digital recorders give off digital hash and this is what you may
be hearing. The simple answer is to use the connection that gives less
noise.
David
David Brinicombe
North Devon, UK
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - Ambrose Bierce
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