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I am a senior citizen, and need a little help. I have always run cables across the floor to the mixer when our group gets together to play music. I moved last year, and thought I might try to do something a little more professional in my music practice area.

I am looking to install four musical stations or "chairs" in my basement, and each chair will have access to two Neutrix Combo Inputs. (see link below: XLR and 1/4Inch in each plug-in). When I was finishing the basement I only ran two cables to each face plate location. Now I am looking to do some soldering and connecting the in wall cables to the Mixer on one end and wall plates on the other end.

Initially I thought I would dedicate one input for instrument, and one input for microphone. Now I am seeing that if someone plugs the mic into the guitar input, or guitar into the mic input, it will send the signal to the wrong plugin on the mixer and possibly give me some serious problems.

Can anyone advise if I can connect the microphone side of the two connectors together and run them on one wire to the mixer and terminate it on an XLR input, and then connect the instrument side of the connectors together and run them on one wire, to the mixer and then connect the 1/4 inch input on the mixer.

I am thinking that this would solve the problem of plugging the wrong connector into the wrong socket for one. But I am not sure if "daisy chaining" the two connectors will cause me any problems that I do not know to ask about right now?

Thanks for the advise.

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    I'd be tempted, if your patching is dedicated at the control room end, to also make it dedicated at the studio end. Wire up one T(R)S, one XLR rather than the dual-purpose sockets.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jan 7, 2021 at 19:59
  • I’m not clear what ‘serious problems’ you’re concerned about that’s leading you to cook up an idea like this. When you prepare for a session, wouldn’t you simply ask or check what’s plugged into which jack and set up the mixer accordingly? Even if you guess wrong, what’s the worst that can happen?
    – Data Processing
    Commented Jan 9, 2021 at 6:12

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 I am not sure if "daisy chaining" the two connectors will cause me any problems

It could cause some confusion if one of your musicians need to use 2 XLRs or 2 ¼" jacks.

However another issue is impedance. Whilst low impedance balanced microphones are happy running over lengthy cable runs, high impedance unbalanced sources like guitar pickups may well not be and you may find you lose unacceptable amounts of treble in the cable capacitance. It depends on how long the cable runs are in your basement. I suggest you wire one circuit up and try it out.

If it is a problem then one fix is to use a DI (direct inject) box which will convert a high impedance unbalanced source to a low impedance balanced circuit which can go to a XLR connector. An alternative for electric guitars is to use a guitar amp and mic up the speaker.

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  • The longest run is 20 feet across the room, (plus up and down inside the wall) so I am looking at a cable length of not more than 36 feet. All the other runs are shorter, and the shortest one is maybe 14 feet. Then I have the length of cable from the instrument or mic to the wall. I have a few 10 foot XLR and 1/4 inch cables for that. Your thoughts before I wire that jack up and try it? Our lead guitar player uses an amp, but the rest of us are Guitar, keyboard, and mandolin so we use the 1/4 inch. Everyone uses a Shure 58 mic.
    – Dusty0b9
    Commented Jan 10, 2021 at 12:14
  • I am planning on using this cable for both the xlr and 1/4 inch jacks... primecables.ca/… another question I have is should I run the two wires to hot, and the shielding to the sleeve, or just one connector to hot and the shielding to sleeve???
    – Dusty0b9
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 15:41

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