Plumbing a Schertler Dyn-M to a 1/4 inch Female Carpenter Jack?

[Treblemaker]

A few weeks back someone posted a cafe classified offering a Schertler Dyn-M plumbed to a Carpenter Jack equipped with a 1/4 inch female plug. This would enable a mandolin player to use any standard guitar plug and not have to deal with the clunky dangling cable and low z male plug that comes with a standard Dyn-m.

I thought it might be a scammer who posted and after checking the Cafe Classifieds I can see that the ad was pulled cause it's not searchable.

Presuming it is a doable project, I am wondering if this is easy to do oneself?
These Schertler's are way out there in the realm of the ridiculous in terms of cost.
I bought one used for a bit less than $300.

What is the trick for altering a cable that feeds a three pin, low impedance male jack and morphing it to fit a tip/ring, female, high impedance input mounted on a carpenter jack?

Can this be done or is it a can of worms?

[mandroid]

I am wondering if this is easy to do oneself?

1)They are very tiny wires. and , 2) voids any warrantee immediately..

Are you good at soldering tiny wires already?

I leave mine as is , and coil the extra wire up and put it in my pocket ,
after plugging it into a Microphone cable .

treading on the heavier duty Mic cable , with no consequence.

[I swapped the end of the Mic cable with one from Nutrik, with an on/off switch]

then if you need the unbalanced 1/4" plug , there are XLR> M-1/4" adapters to do that .
as well as one that goes direct from XLR to F-1/4"

[Tim2723]

Like 'Droid says, it voids the warranty on a very pricey bit of kit and those wires are microscopic. Unless you're good - and I mean really, really good - with tiny wires and the proper use of heat sinks, leave it to a pro. So to answer your question about being easy to do yourself: No.

I have not seen a commercial TRS Carpenter jack (big C on Carpenter please, it's a guy's name), but there is a way to marry two of the leads to make a two-wire rig. I don't know how it's done, but my local tech did it with one of my microphones. I know that doesn't answer the question, except to say that it's a can of worms if you don't have the expertise.

[Treblemaker]

Thanks for the replies.
Challenging is what I assumed....
I bought my Schertler used so the warranty is probably already voided.
Probably just leave as is.... I think the guy who posted the pic I cross-posted was probably a scammer, but I'll never know...?

[mandowilli]

That would be a can of worms.

There is more involved than just splicing a few wires. The shertler impedance is 1500 ohms or low impedance and must be plugged into a low impedance input (xlr). A 1/4" jack is high impedance and must be plugged into a high impedance input (1/4"). To rewire the shertler (low impedance) to high impedance (1/4") and plug it into a high impedance input (1/4") would "load down" that input and result in unsatisfactory results.

The only way to successfully do it is with a line matching transformer which will change the impedance from low to high.

http://www.coutant.org/matching/5.html

A can of worms, no?

[DerTiefster]

1) Almost guaranteed to work: Carry a Schertler-happy pre-amp on your belt. Connect it to the Schertler. Feed out to a jack for some other device.

2) Works from first principles (may not carry over to practice): A low-Z source can feed a high-Z load just fine. You should be able to make an XLR to whatever female jack you want patch cable, and if you feel you have to impedance match, just use a terminating resistor in the cable. My guess is you won't have to do that. I have read that Schertlers can be patched pretty well directly into lots of stuff w/o problems.

3) Shame on you for buying that Schertler. Lucky for you I dallied for days before asking about it. I agonized over it from a couple of hours after it was posted until not long ago.

I hope you find good and productive use for it. If you tire of it, you might consider selling it to me.

[Tom Wright]

Der Teif has it, lots of modern electronics can be switched to the right sensitivity. My portable M-audio recorder can receive 1/4" three-wire (tip-ring-sleeve) inputs, at three sensitivity levels.

Why not use mini-XLRs for a short permanent cable, and connect to preamp or PA with the appropriate length?

http://www.switchcraft.com/category.aspx?Parent=891

[mrmando]

The very Schertler that Ted inquired about is now on eBay.

[Jim Nollman]

Thanks for all the answers about a question I'm also trying to solve. The only thing i disagree with here is Tief's "shame on you". This is a great mike, and provides a terrific solution if you happen to own a mandolin with tonal character. It's probably not worth the extra cost for amplifying a mandolin without good tone.

Like Mandroid i stuff the XLR connectors into my pocket which always feels much too funky a solution for such expensive technology. But once done, i can move freely about the stage, and never think about the wires until the end of the show.

I'd be interested in buying a small box for a belt loop that provides XLR I/O and maybe some apparatus for winding the extra foot of wire coming off the Schertler. Oh, and let's add an on/off switch so I can temporarily disengage from the sound system while tuning. But let's not add a preamp, since a Schertler sounds best straight into the board. Is there such an animal? I have no skills in building electronic gizmos from scratch, so if one of you other Schertler owners happens to build one, please build two and I'll buy the second one.

[DerTiefster]

I said, "Shame on you" because I had -my- eye on the Schertler. No other reason. I hope it serves him well. (Sometime a humor smiley seems like overkill to me and I don't use them. Ah, the risks of subtlety....)

[Eliot Greenspan]

Thanks for all the good info. Sounds above my soldering abilities. I bunch and stuff the extra thin wire in pocket, but sometimes forget at the start, or get a hard yank when taking off the mando between sets and have thought about the Carpenter jack solution. I just went and checked out their web site and now their internal install version comes w/ a male XLR jack. Pretty sure the NewMads and other internal installs are wired for 1/4". Interesting to see if any luthiers do an internal install w/ an XLR jack built into the tailpiece....

[Jim Nollman]

I just wrote the US rep for Schertler, with a link to this thread. I invited him to chime in, in case he can recommend something better for us than (1) stuffing the XLR end into our pocket, or (2) soldering solutions that void our warranty. My goal is to get the company engaged enough, to build us a better connector.

[Treblemaker]

Kudos to Jim Nollman for taking my thread beyond my expectations.

I hope Schertler provides info, but I'm guessing whatever they suggest will cost us all more....?

I use my Schertler equipped mando to plug into an effects rig and not just straight into a PA and having an impedance transformer sticking 6 inches out in front of an Ernie Ball Volume Pedal is risky. It's easily kicked or jostled and simply not a practical reality.

Brand new these units sell for nearly $500. You'd think they'd make it easier and more practical to deal with for that sort of price?

[Jim Nollman]

Ted you have me very curious about what boxes are in your effects rig. I am presuming you are using them with that stunning Austin Clark 2-point. I played that very mandolin at WinterGrass a few years back. That experience piqued me to go find a jazz mandolin of equal character.

Better than going direct into the effects rig, maybe you already own some flavor of small acoustic amp to eliminate the transformer clutter. On the rare occasion I use effects, I plug my Schertler into the mic XLR input of my Fishman Loudbox amp. I then plug the effects rig into an effects loop on the back of the Fishman. I don't like to use a Schertler with ANY kind of amp. That's because my own experience tells me that most every amp, acoustic or otherwise, is tweaked to accommodate the midrange tone of guitars and pianos. For that reason, I connect the Fishman's preamp-out into the sound board and completely eliminate the Fishman's amp stage.

I am guessing that all of us who use wonderfully-toned acoustic mandolins on stage, must have developed several different techniques for sound reinforcement. I bought the Fishman, not because I wanted to use it to amplify my BRW oval hole, but because I appreciated all the many ways i could mix and match stomp boxes, microphones, High Z, low Z, etc. These days, I do use the Fishman as an actual amp, only occasionally, and when playing blues with my Godin A8.

[mandroid]

I can only wonder if its up for sale because the modification/bodge, was less than successful..

any how .. AFAIK, [looking at the manual for my ETEK mixer

the + hot lead remains the tip of a 1/4" phone jack, pin #2 on XLR..

TRS ring is 'cold', signal return, #3 , sleeve/#1, is ground, the braid around the cable

unbalanced/ TS , shorts cold and ground together .. return is thru the braided shield on 'instrument cables'

Oh and I believe the Dyn V is already supplied with a short lead.

Off to the jam .. the beer resistant Mix A5 had one of those C Dyn S things built in..

[Paul Cowham]

1) Almost guaranteed to work: Carry a Schertler-happy pre-amp on your belt. Connect it to the Schertler. Feed out to a jack for some other device.

I like this solution, what Schertler-happy pre-amps would you (or anyone else) recommend? I guess being light, sounding good and not too expensive with muting capability would be the type of things I would go for.

[Jim Nollman]

Here's my correspondence, so far with Schertler USA. I cc'd this latest letter to their head office. It's in reverse chronological order.

Chris,

I think most performers understand that if you walk 13 feet from a 12 foot connection something’s got to give. The problem is that the Schertler is a fantastic and expensive mic, but the connectors-in-the-pocket (which is the most common real world solution to your connection technology) makes that much too easy to happen. I know of no other instrument design that forces the user to put a wad of cable into his pocket only for fear that the thin, hardwired mic cable will easily break if it is not tethered in some way. But you give us no way to properly tether it, so we stick it in our pockets.

The other thing you seem to be offering me as a solution is to cut the XLR, then solder some other connector, but then live with the fact that it compromises, as you suggest, the "robustness" of the mic. Not an option.

Let me try this again. I use my Schertler at least once a week, and I really need you to hear me. If not for me right now, then maybe for the next-gen buyer of your mic. And let’s start with the fact that everybody agrees that your stick-on mic is fantastic.

A thin cable is hard wired to the mic, and dangles off of it. It’s only a few feet long so the ONLY thing you can do with it is attach it to an XLR extension cable and then into an amp or board. It’s even too short, as is, to connect to something on the floor, including your own preamp. Few us buy your preamp, because we all agree that the Schertler sounds terrific right into the board. The fact is, we are all connecting a very thin and vulnerable wire to a thick cable via a rather bulky male/female XLR.

So here’s the problem. Most of us users have solved this problem of thin to thick via bulky XLR by sticking the XLR connectors into our pocket. It is the way many people I know use the Schertler.

I wrote you yesterday, because there’s an entire discussion on this funky connection problem on one of the big music forums. I was only writing you to ask if you can offer us a more elegant solution than sticking a wad of wire in our pockets.

I think I will post this discussion on the Mandolin Café. There’s 8 or 10 other Schertler users who are also trying to solve this common problem.


On 7/21/11 11:32 AM, Chris at Schertler wrote:

Jim,

Thank you for your email.

Schertler considers DYN-Series pickups to be professional-quality microphone and therefore equips them with professional-quality XLR connectors, like all pro-quality mics.

However, to wire a DYN-Series microphone to a mono 1/4”, have an experienced technician do the following:

Connect the ground of the XLR (pin 1) and the cold (pin 3) to the sleeve of the jack.
Connect the hot of the XLR (pin 2) to the tip of the jack

If you make the change to a standard 1/4” instrument cable and/or use a Carpenter jack, you will still be tethered to an amplifier or mixer, and you may lose some of the “robustness” of the pickup. A million electric guitarists and bassists have learned that if they are connected to an amp with a 12’ cable and walk 13’ feet away, something disappointing will happen. Either the cable will pull from the instrument, causing at minimum a loud noise and potentially damaging both the instrument and the amp, or, depending upon angles, the amp may tip over. Obviously, the same is true for a DYN mounted on an instrument. The most likely result is the DYN will be pulled off the instrument, possibly damaging the DYN when it hits the floor. Solution – either remember that your instrument is attached to the amp, or consider a wireless system.

If you continue to use the DYN as is, you might consider wrapping the cable around the strap button to provide some strain relief. One of the benefits of the DYN’s low-impedance, balanced output is the ability to simply add a microphone cable to extend the length without added noise or signal loss.

Regards,

Chris
Schertler USA



On 7/21/11 10:32 AM, "Jim Nollman"wrote:

Chris,

There’s a fair number of mandolin players using your microphones. We all admire the capabilities of the Schertler. And yet we all agree that the physical connector at the end of the unit seems like a funky afterthought by your engineers. You can read a thread about mandolin players and Schertler mic’s here.

http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...Carpenter-Jack

Maybe you will be willing to chime into this thread, and offer us all some practical solution beyond stuffing it into our pockets. That’s how I’ve been dealing with your funky XLR connector since the start. Until I got used to it, on a few occasions I nearly destroyed my expensive mandolin by forgetting that it was still attached to me when I left the stage. Also notice that some users have even been willing to take a soldering iron to that dangling XLR, even though it voids your warranty. There’s got to be a better way.


Best regards,

Jim Nollman

[Jim Nollman]

And the latest.

Jim,

We have been the US Schertler distributor for 10 years and this is the first time we’ve heard about the “connector-in-the-pocket” issue. Many players have mentioned adding a mic cable without a problem.

I have forwarded this thread to the Schertler head office in Switzerland for their thoughts. Will keep you informed.

Chris

[Treblemaker]

Jim,
Thanks for kick starting a discussion with Schertler and sharing it with us.

As for my effects rig - I do have a an effects loop in the two amps I most typically use for mandolin: an '86 Mesa Boogie Mark III and a late 90's Polytone Megabrute. I sometimes use them and sometimes don't but the same danglng dilemma exists with the Schertler pugged into an impedance transducer with a quarter inch male plug for an input. This means there is risk of this connection breaking if someone brushes by the cable when plugged into an amp, or the possibility of literally breaking the transformer itself.

You probably have me confused with another picker. I don't own a two point Clark - though I was at Wintergrass playing with Belle Monroe & Her Brewglass Boys a few years back.

My typical effects rig is: 2004 A Lawrence Smart F5 Mandolin with Schertler > Transformer > Ernie Ball Volume Pedal > Fulltone Fulldrive II (or Ibanez Tube Screamer) > Subdecay Quazar Phazer > TC Electronic Chorus > Alesis Nanoverb > Amplifier.

I only wish I could use a Schertler and simply do what I do with my guitars and basses - use a 1/4 inch instrument cable.

TS

[mandroid]

what Schertler-happy pre-amps would you (or anyone else) recommend?

New guy

I find the fact that it doesn't 'need' one , a savings,
the one they sell is a splitter/preamp, a dry signal out one jack ,
the tone controlled signal one out the other .. If you use a stage monitor ,
powered, free standing self controlled , that may be OK..

Given acoustic amps have 2 channels, 1 a Microphone with a preamp
for a singer's microphone .. Its Built in.

So, no added preamp really needed.
big gig , house board will put you in one of their Mic channels

same deal , each channel has a Mic Pre amp.

there are many makers of Mic Preamps as a separate piece.. too.
one in a small sub mixer is more versatile.

[Eliot Greenspan]

I had been using a hi to low z/xlr to 1/4" transformer as well, but have now been taking the Schertler to a Presonus Tube Pre and running that 1/4" out into the rest of my rig (MXL 10 Band EQ>Volume Pedal>Tuner)

[Paul Cowham]

New guy

I find the fact that it doesn't 'need' one , a savings,
the one they sell is a splitter/preamp, a dry signal out one jack ,
the tone controlled signal one out the other .. If you use a stage monitor ,
powered, free standing self controlled , that may be OK..

Given acoustic amps have 2 channels, 1 a Microphone with a preamp
for a singer's microphone .. Its Built in.

So, no added preamp really needed.
big gig , house board will put you in one of their Mic channels

same deal , each channel has a Mic Pre amp.

there are many makers of Mic Preamps as a separate piece.. too.
one in a small sub mixer is more versatile.

Thanks for replying to my query mandroid, however it didn't really answer it. The schertler may not need a preamp from a technical perspective, but the short and somewhat delicate thin lead that you get with a schertler means that it may not be possible or desirable to go straight into the board. The opening post showed a possible solution to this problem, but this seems to be impracticle to do without real expertise.

I liked DerTiefster's suggestion of attaching the schertler's lead to a preamp on your belt, but I'm not sure which preamp for this purpose would work best (i.e. the best preamp to use wouldn't necessarily be one that you would clip to a belt as it may be too heavy).

Any suggestions for a good value lightweight preamp with a mute switch that would work for the schertler and attach to a belt?
many thanks,
Paul

[Perry]

FWIW

I used to own a stick on Schertler. Now I own an internal which routes to 1/4".
I do not notice a difference in "robustness".

[Eliot Greenspan]

"I liked DerTiefster's suggestion of attaching the schertler's lead to a preamp on your belt, but I'm not sure which preamp for this purpose would work best (i.e. the best preamp to use wouldn't necessarily be one that you would clip to a belt as it may be too heavy)."

JFYI, if you feel like the pre-amp is not essential piece of gear, but rather a solution to the short/delicate wire.... then this isn't a lot different than the solution many of us use, of connecting the Schertler to a longer, traditional XLR cable, bundling up the thin Schertler cord and xlr connection (I use long twist ties to keep everything together) and sticking that in your back pocket w/ the thicker XLR cable running into your amp, board or effects line-up....

[Eliot Greenspan]

FWIW

I used to own a stick on Schertler. Now I own an internal which routes to 1/4".
I do not notice a difference in "robustness".

Did you have a luthier do this post-build?