Electrical genitals

An issue that was recently brought to light whilst unloading some recent recordings from our multi-track recorder was that the vocals, although occasional buried beneath the sonic surrounds, were actually (and obviously) still there - merely decidedly low in the overall mix. This was easily remedied by simply lifting the affected track within our editing software, making it more prominent when necessary (normally only the first half of each verse) before leaving the remainder relatively untouched.

Of course, when playing live, this luxury quickly vanishes beneath the general fuzz of on-stage noise, and so mooted for trial at our last practice was the idea of attaching a foot pedal to the microphone, effectively returning to us some basic level control. Conveniently, we happened to have a disused Boss DS-1 laying around.

This pedal will intercept a newly purchased Cannon to Cannon lead, which was cut in half to give us the two desired end connections (one for the back of the mic and one going into the PA) plus two newly severed ends that'll have the necessary jacks attached (one for the DS-1 input signal and one for its output).

There's a level setting on the DS-1, which controls the output volume, and (with the applied distortion amounts set to effective zero) we'll hopefully get a simple boosting/de-boosting of the vocals when the pedal is kicked on and off.

Of additional benefit, we'll hopefully also gain the oft-mentioned ability to apply effects to Tim's vocals (most especially within 'Movement Eight' ) ...

A quick Google search for 'replacing XLR with jack' led me to here; a simple diagram showing the standard method of wiring an XLR to a 1/4" TRS (stereo jack plug). I managed to harvest a spare one of these from the workshop, although another one will be needed to finish the job, of course.

To confirm which connections needed to be made and to where, I stuck the multimeter on 'diode test' and followed the wires from the Cannon sockets (numbered 1, 2, 3) to their appropriate ends, listening for a 'beep' whenever a connection was present (as shown above). Once I knew that the shield (the weaved mass of wires surrounding the four actual wires inside the cable) was 1, blue(s) was 2, white(s) was three, it was simply a matter of connecting them all appropriately.

Note: Before soldering the wires into place, ensure that the eventual sleeve is positioned back down the cable (as above), as once you're done, this pulls down to cover the connections and provides a nice finish.

The final two photographs show the end result (albiet of only one cable!)

Whether or not there'll be any complications with this idea when it crosses that all-important line from concept into practice remains to be seen ...

Edit: Turns out that using a stereo jack was actually overkill, because the DS-1 sockets only have two connections and thus support mono only. The basic idea did worked in practice however, though some unwanted 'noise' started to creep in when lifted to the volumes we wanted to achieve. A fix for this new annoyance shall now be worked on ...