les_garten
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2008
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[size=small]Grado GS1000 XLR Project
[/size]
I just received an Audio-GD Phoenix and need to balance my cans. Occasionally here someone asks how to change out a 1/4" TRS plug for an upgrade or they ask about how to change out to balanced connectors. So I thought I would take some time and shoot some PIX of this conversion. Hopefully it will help somebody in the future and allows me to contribute something other than B*tching! So here goes!
The subject is a Grado GS1000i with the 8 wire connector. It is the same Idea for the 4 wire connector, just half as many of each color. On this cable we'll have 2 Positive(Signal) Wires for each driver and 2 Ground wires for each driver. After this conversion, we'll call them Hot(+) and Cold(-), or Live(+) and Return(-).
First task is to map out which colors are Ground, Left, and Right. Get a bright light and look into the Grado grills. On the Left you'll see 2 Blue wires and 2 Red wires. On the Right, you'll see two White wires and two Blue wires. We've just discovered that the Blue wires are ground(they are common to both sides), and the Left signal wires are Red and the Right Signal wires are White. That's Wire ID method #1. Method #2 is the best method, but you'll need a DMM, which you should have on this Hobby anyhow, especially if you want to learn cabling. DMMs run from $10-$500 or so. For cables you don't need much.
Read through everything once before doing anything.
So, I re-sampled the PIX down to BIG Thumbnails. Click on the PIC for the Hi Res PIC showing the detail, they are linked. .
[size=x-small]And now on to the Show![/size]
>>
The Client
>>
The Victim
>>
Here we have a Fluke 87 DMM testing the TIP or Left Driver. This headphone has 32 Ohm drivers. 1/4" Jacks are called TRS Jacks standing for TIP, RING, and SLEEVE. The Headphone Jack has the TIP which is the Left Driver, The RING which is the Collar between the Two Black Insulators, and is the RIGHT Driver, and the SLEEVE which is the area closed to the Handle of the Jack and clamped here with the BLACK Alligator Clip. The SLEEVE is the Ground Connector. By attaching your DMM to the SLEEVE and TIP as Shown in the PIC, I see approx 32 Ohms displayed. I know my driver is good. If you have the Headphone on your Head and touch TIP and SLEEVE, you will hear a Faint static sound, this also aids in ID as we'll see Later.
>>
Here we Have the Grado TRS Filleted to show the Guts of the Connector. This is how you would change out a connector that you couldn't see into the Cups to visually ID he Signal and Ground wire colors. This is Method #2 of IDing the Wire Colors. You can see we have two RED wires, Two White wires, and 4 Blue wires. You want to Look at how the Jack is laid out. Here you can see that the Blue wires are soldered directly to the SLEEVE. This IDs them as the Ground wires. So you just have to figure out which wires are th LEFT and RIGHT signal wires. We know from before that the TIP corresponds with the LEFT signal wire. Set your DMM to Ohms, if it has a Beep indicator, turn it on. Touch the Leads, it should go BEEP indicating you have a Closed circuit between your Positive and Negative LEADS of your DMM. This is what we are looking for. If you don't have a BEEP indicator, you read the OHMs to see if you have a Closed circuit. You should see close to 0-.2 Ohms when you ID your wire. I'm kinda rambling here, but hang in there, it will make sense in a minute.
So in the Picture shown, I touch one of my DMM leads to the TIP and touch the other LEAD to the White wire and nothing happens. I touch one to the TIP and the other lead to the RED wire and get a BEEP. Eureka! We've just ID's the TIP Color as RED for the Left(TIP) driver. This will be the COLD connector on our XLR. Now put one of the DMM leads on the SLEEVE and the other lead on the WHITE wires, BEEP. We've ID'd the RIGHT channel signal wire and Color ID. When you are IDing the Channel wires, make sure you are reading close to Zero ohms. Now touch from the RED wires to the BLUE wires, we get a BEEP and show 32 Ohms. That's the circuit we are measuring through the LEFT driver Voice Coil. If you've never done much with a DMM, you should be having fun now! Play around with touching all the TRS potions and wires in different Combos to see how may Ohms are registered and understand what you are getting. If you have 600 Ohm Beyers, you'll get you know, around 550-625 Ohms or so. So to recap, your DMM here will show open(nothing) if there is not circuit, it will show Zero if there is a perfect Circuit, and it will show the OHMs of your drivers if you are connecting the Signal(+) and the Ground(-) together. his assumes you drivers aren't blown. DMM will not hurt your drivers just to do a test like this. Except for possibly one instance. If your DMM does not automatically set the range of your OHMs test, MAKE SURE YOU SET THE RANGE BEFORE TOUCHING YOUR HEADPHONES. Don't set a test range of 10,000 Ohms to test 32 Ohm Grados. Cheap Meters will have to have the range set.
>>
Here I took a Box Cutter and "Scored" the outside sheath of the wire. I don't cut thru. I just score it and peel it apart with my fingers. You don't want to nick the wires. Next step we figure out which Ground wires mate up to which Signal wires. In the meantime strip off about 1/4" of insulation on all your wires. Usually I just grab them with my fingernails and pinch the insulation off. Young guys with Good teeth bite it off. You can tell Ol' guys, their teeth are screwed up. Practice snapping the wire off with your nails, you'll be happier in the end and it's a new skill you learned. All the ends shown here I snaped off.
>>
Here I am touching the RED wire, and I need to find the Ground wires that complete the circuit thru the Voice coil of that driver. So one lead on the RED and touch the BLUE wires and listen for the BEEP or read approx 32 OHMs. Mark the ends of the two BLUE wires that BEEP with a sharpie. Now you know which Grounds go with the WHITE wires and which go with the RED wires. One thing you should notice here, when we checked the TIP before we got 31.7 OHMs, here we get 33.5 Ohms, that's because we're using ONLY one RED and ONLY one BLUE to make the circuit thru the Driver instead of 2 REDS and 2 BLUES.
>>
Always MAINTAIN a clean and uncluttered workplace. It cutz down on Mistakes. OOOPs, what happened here! need to edit this PIC out.
Here you see some stuff you'll need, Like Solder, an Iron, FLUX makes your life much easier, an assortment of soldering tips helps. Helping hands(Third Hand) you can get from MPJA.com for about $5.95 or so.
>>
Here you can see that the wires are married up and tinned with solder. Look at one of the BLUE pairs, you'll see the sharpie ID marks to ID those going with the RED pair. The unmarked ones obviously go with the WHITE pair.
>>
At this stage make sure you start threading on your Heatshrink, Techflex, Multifilament Nylon, etc. The Dish washing liquid I used as a Lube to get the wires easily thru the heat shrink. The soap dries like a paste after you shrink the heat shrink. If you can get by without using it, GREAT!
>>
Here you see the Neutrik Strain relief, end pieces threaded on. I promise you, if you do many connectors, you'll forget this one little step. That mistake usually leads to Alcohol consumption in most of us, myself included. The alcohol consumption usually leads to more mistakes in subsequent steps. Vicious Cycle, Beware!
>>
>>
Let's go over the XLR pinout.
Well most manufacturers use pin 2 hot:
Pin 1 = Shield ground
Pin 2 = Positive balanced signal
Pin 3 = Negative balanced signal
Mnemonic: XLR = Shield,Live,Return
Looking into the female connector with the locking tag up top
right is #1, top left #2, bottom #3
___ ___
/ v \
| 2 1 |
\ 3 /
\_____/
Since our cable has no shield, we won't be using PIN1.
Here we are in the Helping hands with Our signal wire(RED) or HOT wire or LIVE wire in position 2 and the BLUE ground wires in Position 3. The Connector Cup was prepped with a FLUX pen prior to positioning the wires. Trim your wires so that the wire goes all the way into the cup and the insulation is "almost" up against the cup. Look on the end of the XLR connector, the pins will be labeled 1, 2, 3 for ID purposes. Pay close attention to this. Remember you are coming from the rear with the wire and may be turning the connector upside down to solder. This makes your numbers move around in Space. Double, Triple check before soldering.
>>
Soldered! I usually Pull it out of the Helping hands and check for 32 Ohms across the driver for Good measure. Finish putting your Connectors together. Do the same for the other Channel.
>>
Voila, we had FUN, and Saved $$$$
*** Always wear Eyeglasses or Reading Glasses or some type of protection for your Eyes when Soldering. There is a lot of splatter of Boiling Flux. I've got splashed in my eye before and it can make for an unpleasant couple of days.
*** I used Cardas Quad Eutectic Solder. It is so easy to work with and Melts so easily, it's a Dream. Kinda expensive if you don't shop around. But worth it IMO.
If anybody finds something to change or add or any mistakes I made, Chime in and I'll fix it.
This should also suffice for a how to Upgrade a TRS Jack Tutorial as well.
Hope a few Folks find this useful.
.
[/size]
I just received an Audio-GD Phoenix and need to balance my cans. Occasionally here someone asks how to change out a 1/4" TRS plug for an upgrade or they ask about how to change out to balanced connectors. So I thought I would take some time and shoot some PIX of this conversion. Hopefully it will help somebody in the future and allows me to contribute something other than B*tching! So here goes!
The subject is a Grado GS1000i with the 8 wire connector. It is the same Idea for the 4 wire connector, just half as many of each color. On this cable we'll have 2 Positive(Signal) Wires for each driver and 2 Ground wires for each driver. After this conversion, we'll call them Hot(+) and Cold(-), or Live(+) and Return(-).
First task is to map out which colors are Ground, Left, and Right. Get a bright light and look into the Grado grills. On the Left you'll see 2 Blue wires and 2 Red wires. On the Right, you'll see two White wires and two Blue wires. We've just discovered that the Blue wires are ground(they are common to both sides), and the Left signal wires are Red and the Right Signal wires are White. That's Wire ID method #1. Method #2 is the best method, but you'll need a DMM, which you should have on this Hobby anyhow, especially if you want to learn cabling. DMMs run from $10-$500 or so. For cables you don't need much.
Read through everything once before doing anything.
So, I re-sampled the PIX down to BIG Thumbnails. Click on the PIC for the Hi Res PIC showing the detail, they are linked. .
[size=x-small]And now on to the Show![/size]
>>
The Client
>>
The Victim
>>
Here we have a Fluke 87 DMM testing the TIP or Left Driver. This headphone has 32 Ohm drivers. 1/4" Jacks are called TRS Jacks standing for TIP, RING, and SLEEVE. The Headphone Jack has the TIP which is the Left Driver, The RING which is the Collar between the Two Black Insulators, and is the RIGHT Driver, and the SLEEVE which is the area closed to the Handle of the Jack and clamped here with the BLACK Alligator Clip. The SLEEVE is the Ground Connector. By attaching your DMM to the SLEEVE and TIP as Shown in the PIC, I see approx 32 Ohms displayed. I know my driver is good. If you have the Headphone on your Head and touch TIP and SLEEVE, you will hear a Faint static sound, this also aids in ID as we'll see Later.
>>
Here we Have the Grado TRS Filleted to show the Guts of the Connector. This is how you would change out a connector that you couldn't see into the Cups to visually ID he Signal and Ground wire colors. This is Method #2 of IDing the Wire Colors. You can see we have two RED wires, Two White wires, and 4 Blue wires. You want to Look at how the Jack is laid out. Here you can see that the Blue wires are soldered directly to the SLEEVE. This IDs them as the Ground wires. So you just have to figure out which wires are th LEFT and RIGHT signal wires. We know from before that the TIP corresponds with the LEFT signal wire. Set your DMM to Ohms, if it has a Beep indicator, turn it on. Touch the Leads, it should go BEEP indicating you have a Closed circuit between your Positive and Negative LEADS of your DMM. This is what we are looking for. If you don't have a BEEP indicator, you read the OHMs to see if you have a Closed circuit. You should see close to 0-.2 Ohms when you ID your wire. I'm kinda rambling here, but hang in there, it will make sense in a minute.
So in the Picture shown, I touch one of my DMM leads to the TIP and touch the other LEAD to the White wire and nothing happens. I touch one to the TIP and the other lead to the RED wire and get a BEEP. Eureka! We've just ID's the TIP Color as RED for the Left(TIP) driver. This will be the COLD connector on our XLR. Now put one of the DMM leads on the SLEEVE and the other lead on the WHITE wires, BEEP. We've ID'd the RIGHT channel signal wire and Color ID. When you are IDing the Channel wires, make sure you are reading close to Zero ohms. Now touch from the RED wires to the BLUE wires, we get a BEEP and show 32 Ohms. That's the circuit we are measuring through the LEFT driver Voice Coil. If you've never done much with a DMM, you should be having fun now! Play around with touching all the TRS potions and wires in different Combos to see how may Ohms are registered and understand what you are getting. If you have 600 Ohm Beyers, you'll get you know, around 550-625 Ohms or so. So to recap, your DMM here will show open(nothing) if there is not circuit, it will show Zero if there is a perfect Circuit, and it will show the OHMs of your drivers if you are connecting the Signal(+) and the Ground(-) together. his assumes you drivers aren't blown. DMM will not hurt your drivers just to do a test like this. Except for possibly one instance. If your DMM does not automatically set the range of your OHMs test, MAKE SURE YOU SET THE RANGE BEFORE TOUCHING YOUR HEADPHONES. Don't set a test range of 10,000 Ohms to test 32 Ohm Grados. Cheap Meters will have to have the range set.
>>
Here I took a Box Cutter and "Scored" the outside sheath of the wire. I don't cut thru. I just score it and peel it apart with my fingers. You don't want to nick the wires. Next step we figure out which Ground wires mate up to which Signal wires. In the meantime strip off about 1/4" of insulation on all your wires. Usually I just grab them with my fingernails and pinch the insulation off. Young guys with Good teeth bite it off. You can tell Ol' guys, their teeth are screwed up. Practice snapping the wire off with your nails, you'll be happier in the end and it's a new skill you learned. All the ends shown here I snaped off.
>>
Here I am touching the RED wire, and I need to find the Ground wires that complete the circuit thru the Voice coil of that driver. So one lead on the RED and touch the BLUE wires and listen for the BEEP or read approx 32 OHMs. Mark the ends of the two BLUE wires that BEEP with a sharpie. Now you know which Grounds go with the WHITE wires and which go with the RED wires. One thing you should notice here, when we checked the TIP before we got 31.7 OHMs, here we get 33.5 Ohms, that's because we're using ONLY one RED and ONLY one BLUE to make the circuit thru the Driver instead of 2 REDS and 2 BLUES.
>>
Always MAINTAIN a clean and uncluttered workplace. It cutz down on Mistakes. OOOPs, what happened here! need to edit this PIC out.
Here you see some stuff you'll need, Like Solder, an Iron, FLUX makes your life much easier, an assortment of soldering tips helps. Helping hands(Third Hand) you can get from MPJA.com for about $5.95 or so.
>>
Here you can see that the wires are married up and tinned with solder. Look at one of the BLUE pairs, you'll see the sharpie ID marks to ID those going with the RED pair. The unmarked ones obviously go with the WHITE pair.
>>
At this stage make sure you start threading on your Heatshrink, Techflex, Multifilament Nylon, etc. The Dish washing liquid I used as a Lube to get the wires easily thru the heat shrink. The soap dries like a paste after you shrink the heat shrink. If you can get by without using it, GREAT!
>>
Here you see the Neutrik Strain relief, end pieces threaded on. I promise you, if you do many connectors, you'll forget this one little step. That mistake usually leads to Alcohol consumption in most of us, myself included. The alcohol consumption usually leads to more mistakes in subsequent steps. Vicious Cycle, Beware!
>>
>>
Let's go over the XLR pinout.
Well most manufacturers use pin 2 hot:
Pin 1 = Shield ground
Pin 2 = Positive balanced signal
Pin 3 = Negative balanced signal
Mnemonic: XLR = Shield,Live,Return
Looking into the female connector with the locking tag up top
right is #1, top left #2, bottom #3
___ ___
/ v \
| 2 1 |
\ 3 /
\_____/
Since our cable has no shield, we won't be using PIN1.
Here we are in the Helping hands with Our signal wire(RED) or HOT wire or LIVE wire in position 2 and the BLUE ground wires in Position 3. The Connector Cup was prepped with a FLUX pen prior to positioning the wires. Trim your wires so that the wire goes all the way into the cup and the insulation is "almost" up against the cup. Look on the end of the XLR connector, the pins will be labeled 1, 2, 3 for ID purposes. Pay close attention to this. Remember you are coming from the rear with the wire and may be turning the connector upside down to solder. This makes your numbers move around in Space. Double, Triple check before soldering.
>>
Soldered! I usually Pull it out of the Helping hands and check for 32 Ohms across the driver for Good measure. Finish putting your Connectors together. Do the same for the other Channel.
>>
Voila, we had FUN, and Saved $$$$
*** Always wear Eyeglasses or Reading Glasses or some type of protection for your Eyes when Soldering. There is a lot of splatter of Boiling Flux. I've got splashed in my eye before and it can make for an unpleasant couple of days.
*** I used Cardas Quad Eutectic Solder. It is so easy to work with and Melts so easily, it's a Dream. Kinda expensive if you don't shop around. But worth it IMO.
If anybody finds something to change or add or any mistakes I made, Chime in and I'll fix it.
This should also suffice for a how to Upgrade a TRS Jack Tutorial as well.
Hope a few Folks find this useful.
.
