safe way to connect wireless to output from sound board

[Richard Crowley]

“Please note that the instrument systems use the ring of the mini TRS transmitter jack for line input, thus pin 2 of the female XLR connects to the ring of the mini TRS.”
https://www.fullcompass.com/product/270066.html

My reading is that the CL2 cable works only with the instrument transmitters, and not the regular microphone models. The information from Sennheiser seems virtually non-existent.

I would feel comfortable with a complete kit of adapters and attenuators, and an input cord designed for your transmitter(s).

[Eric Toline]

So far you’ve covered all the bases very well except one. You’re assuming the board output connection is going to be via an XLR connection. Depending on the board it could be an XLR, 1/4″ TRS jack or a pair of RCA females. You should have adapter cables for each so you don’t get surprised.

If the output connection is RCA then the adapter cable will have to be RCA to XLR-M unbalanced. To make an unbalanced RCA to XLR you have to connect the RCA ground to pins 1 & 3 in the XLR and the + to pin 2.

Eric

[Bob Cole]

[Richard Crowley] “My reading is that the CL2 cable works only with the instrument transmitters, and not the regular microphone models.”

Sorry – don’t understand what you mean by “instrument transmitters.” Do you mean the beltpack transmitter to which we customarily run the lavalier microphones? e.g. SK100. As opposed to the SKP100, the “butt-end” which attaches to the base of a stick mic?

[Bob Cole]

Thanks – great points. I’ll get out the soldering iron.

Bob C

[Ty Ford]

Bob,

There’s mic, consumer line and pro line level; and these are general ranges, not specific levels. Then there’s balanced or unbalanced plumbing.

In addition to the output possibly being balanced or unbalanced, where balanced may be mic or line and unbalanced may be -10 consumer line level, don’t expect the console outputs to be either mic or line. As often as not, they range somewhere in between. That’s why I sometimes run the output of the console to my mixer, then use it to trim out the level to feed either mic or line to the wireless.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Richard Crowley]

From the information available on the Sennheiser website, there are two different lines of transmitters. There are transmitters intended for use with microphones (body pack as well as plug-on), and then there are transmitters designed for use with musical instruments (like electric guitars, etc.) It appears that only the instrument transmitters have the built-in pad on the ring terminal. It appears that the microphone transmitters (which you seem to have) do NOT have a built-in padded input, so they DO require attenuation external to the transmitter. It sounds like the cable you mentioned (which has no attenuation) is intended for use only with the instrument transmitters (which you do not have).

NOTE: I am trying to interpret the sparse information on the Sennheiser website and from 3rd party sources. I do not have (and have never used) a Sennheiser instrument transmitter, so I have no first-hand experience with this. Of course, since you have your transmitter(s) and you have the cable, you are in a perfect position to do the actual experiment with the actual equipment. If you start with a very low-level (mic level) signal and slowly increase it, you won’t damage your transmitter during the experiment.

[Ty Ford]

Richard,

Thanks so much for your extra effort. YOu’re a real asset to this forum.

I’ve used my Sennheiser G2 to make my acoustic guitars wireless on several occasions without a problem. I wonder how mine may be different.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Richard Crowley]

It appears that both the microphone version and the instrument version feature a sensitive (mic-level) input. The difference appears to be that the microphone version provides power (as for electret microphones), but does not have the built-in line-level input. While the instrument version has a line-level input, but does not provide power for the microphone.

So there appears nothing to preclude using the “microphone” version for a musical instrument. There may be a difference in the receivers, also, but I have not investigated that.

[Craig Alan]

This is such a common need: getting a proper feed from a house mixer to our cams. It would be great to have a wireless system designed for this purpose. On the other hand, the mix from house boards are not usually set well for the house never mind for a cam.

However, what if you went from the house mixer xlr out to a SD 302 mixer. Adjust the inputs on the 302 depending on the type of signal.

Then could you output mic level from the 302 into handheld transmitter of the G2/G3 kit? Of for that matter skip some of the workarounds from the above posts and just use the G2 handheld transmitter. It does not provide phantom. And it is designed for xlr.

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