Does anyone know the EXACT kind of cable that was used for the Alpha?
written by: dhjdhj
Wow!Does anyone know the EXACT kind of cable that was used for the Alpha?
David
Before you go to all the trouble (and potential unreliability) of making a panel mount rack connector work, I should point out that the Basestation Pro is made to be 1U high, deliberately so that with a little minor metalwork you can mount it directly in a rack. You'd need to make a pair of rack ears for it, which any vaguely competent workshop should be able to do for you. In your shoes I'd just mount it in a rack, plugs facing out and connect directly to it that way. Years of building, maintaining and using live gear have taught me to keep the number of connections to a minimum possible, and although that won't look as neat it will probably be a lot more reliable than anything else. Don't mount the base-station without ventilation above it - it's convection cooled, not fan cooled, and needs air.
If you are set on extending the connector, then the best way you can do this is just buy an instrument cable and cut one end off, then solder that to a chassis socket. I will send you a chassis socket for free, but we don't make our cables, Neutrik make them for us. The connectors require special crimp tools that are quite expensive, and they are fiddly to get right so I don't advise you try to do that end, I cannot see how it would be cost effective for you. The cable is a specific type and impedance, we tried quite a few (as well as having some made) before we found this one - it was the only one that worked well, handled nicely and had adequate screening for EMC compliance (which is tough at those speeds). It took us nearly a year to find it, and we don't keep stock, once again Neutrik keep it for us, so I can't send you any.
The cable carries two twisted pairs for data, which runs a 40MHz in a bespoke error correcting data protocol. It's quite impedance sensitive (it terminates into data transformers), so I don't know how well you'll fare with extra, non matched junctions in the loop. In short, your milage may vary, so please bear in mimd this may not work that well. And you _will_ be non-compliant FCC wise if you do this, there will be high speed RF data spraying all over the place from the back of that chassis socket.
Let me know if you'd like a chassis socket, and where to send it to. If you order a cable to cut in half, we'll put it in with that.
John
Wow!
John, I can't tell you how much I'm impressed with the attention to detail around the hardware design of the Alpha. To be blunt, one of the reasons I haven't gotten around to getting a second one for backup is because I just feel my Alpha will never break as long as I don't actually drop it!
I've actually spoken to someone at Neutrik about the cabling/connectors and they put me in touch with a local company that actually works with their components and so we've been investigating the possibilities.
As it happens, the base station is already installed in my rack but it was not installed with rack ears and it lives a little bit "inside the rack on a shelf. Hence I have to reach in to connect in or remove the minicon plug and that has always bothered me, particularly since everything else is exposed through panel connectors.
However, I think I will take your advice and arrange to have rack ears made for it, that's a great idea, although I've no idea how I'll find someone in the area to do this.
If only you could make a wireless system that would work for the Alpha. When I walk out to the front of the stage with the Alpha, I'm always petrified that the guitarist bopping up and down behind me is going to trip over the cable!
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