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Old 12-08-2005, 01:31 PM
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Default ES configuration that may or may not help others

I tried out my new 814CE in our main sanctuary last night. My normal configuration had been to use a standard 2 conductor instrument cable into my Baggs PADI, and then take the XLR out of that into the snake.

Wanting to keep the tone shaping control of the PADI, I had opted to use this same configuration with the ES system. It seemed for some reason however that although it's ok according to Taylor to use an unbalanced instrument cable, I was getting some signal loss. The sound guy was having to compensate by either cranking up my input gain at the board or having me crank up the gain on the PADI. Either option also cranked up all the channel noise and any residual noise the ES was picking up. It was acceptable, but barely...not really.

Using the Taylor supplied TRS > XLR cable, I tried plugging right into the snake and my levels increased substantially such that the input gain at the board could be lowered significantly, elimnating all noise, hiss etc.. The problem was now that I had lost the tone customization that came with the PADI and I didn't necessarily like the raw ES sound. I was particularly interested in being able to scoop the mids and adjust the parametric sweep on the PADI for best sound. This capability to my ear eliminates the mid ranginess of the ES, sometimes heard as a hot or metallic B.

The question. Was it possible to have a balanced TRS output connection at the guitar, have the signal travel a balanced TRS cable all the way to the point of input into the PADI and then convert to unbalanced 2 conductor at the jack?

I went to Radio Shack and found this little silver bullet looking gizmo. It's a balanced XLR to 1/4" instrument matching transformer. It's about 3 inches long and 3/4" in diameter. It simply plugs into the XLR end of the Taylor supplied cable, contains a matching transformer inside, and on the other end has an instrument jack male output pin. I plugged this into my PADI. The difference from the unbalanced instrument cable was significant. The levels were up, the signal was strong clean and quiet. Switching back the the plain old instrument cable again dropped the levels significantly, and we again had to crank the board gain up such that the channel became noisy. We did try more than one instrument cable just to eliminate faulty cable as the cause.

What this gadget did was create a cable for me that is balanced TRS male on one end to insert into the guitar, a balanced cable run to the other end, and then a 1/4"unbalanced instrument jack output on that end to insert into the PADI, an amp, a direct box, or anything that takes an instrument jack in.

I am extremely pleased with this 15 dollar investment and will never use a plain old instrument cable again. For all I know they may make cables that accomplish this Balanced TRS to Unbalanced Instrument conversion, but I'm happy enough with this. If I ever want to just plug straight into an XLR connection instead, I simply pull the bullet out of the end of my cable.

My levels are up, I have my tone customization. Life is good!

If you are plugging straight into the board at XLR, this won't help you. If on the other hand your application uses a standard instrument cable, this might clean things up some.

Radio Shack P/N:

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/cable...ce-transformer

This worked for me. I make no claims for how it will do for anyone else.

Last edited by Joe F; 02-18-2016 at 05:20 PM.
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Old 12-08-2005, 02:18 PM
moo cow moo cow is offline
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hey joe f, thanks for the run down of your set up.
i too, have been trying to figure out how to acccomplish what it seems like you have done. so basically you have a balanced trs cord coming out of your guitar to boost the signal and clean up the noise, right?
then you convert the balanced to unbalanced before the PADI?
then run a balanced xlr out of the PADI to the board?
what happens if you run the balanced trs cable out of the guitar straight into the PADI? or is your cable trs/xlr? seems if you have a trs/trs cable it would do the same thing maybe? or maybe i have confused myself. which wouldn't be the first time!!
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Old 12-08-2005, 02:26 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by moo cow
hey joe f, thanks for the run down of your set up.
i too, have been trying to figure out how to acccomplish what it seems like you have done. so basically you have a balanced trs cord coming out of your guitar to boost the signal and clean up the noise, right?
then you convert the balanced to unbalanced before the PADI?
then run a balanced xlr out of the PADI to the board?
Yes, that is my setup. The cable that came with the guitar is TRS > XLR.

Quote:
Originally Posted by moo cow
what happens if you run the balanced trs cable out of the guitar straight into the PADI? or is your cable trs/xlr? seems if you have a trs/trs cable it would do the same thing maybe? or maybe i have confused myself. which wouldn't be the first time!!
I plan to try a balanced TRS to TRS cable also just to see if that is an option. I don't know if the PADI will accept a TRS input, but if I can find a TRS-TRS cable to try, I'll see. All three leads have to be accounted for though, which is what the transformer does. I'm not sure if the PADI will know what to do with the third lead. If anyone already knows the scoop on the PADI input, that would be great too!

Last edited by Joe F; 12-08-2005 at 02:32 PM.
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Old 12-08-2005, 07:47 PM
MattM MattM is offline
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Hey Joe,
An 814? What happened to the 614?
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Old 12-08-2005, 08:05 PM
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LOL!

I made the mistake of visiting Holloway's music in Monroe. The sponsors of Monroestock. They had a NOS 814 there with my name on it. I was very pleased with the 614, or so I thought until I heard the 814 unplugged. IT was the sound I was looking for. More detail on the 614 bass response thread.
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Old 12-08-2005, 10:29 PM
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I use the Ultrasound DI Plus so I can't necessicarily speak to the PADI. If the guitar input on the PADI is balanced then use a 1/4" to 1/4" balanced TRS cable and that should work. If you use a matching transformer adaptor you're going to have the same effect you have now. Going balanced to unbalanced through an adaptor will result in the same signal loss you have now.
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Old 12-09-2005, 08:12 AM
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Actually, as described, my results were quite contrary to that. All of the signal loss and noise was gone. This is possibly because the unbalanced path was now about an inch (inside the PADI) as opposed to a 10-15 foott unbalanced cable between the guitar and the PADI. In any event the difference in my real world application was very significant. YRMV
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Old 12-18-2005, 09:39 PM
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moo cow has given this a try and his preliminary results seem to track with what I am seeing. Levels up, noise down.

http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...ad.php?t=72200
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Old 01-09-2006, 08:41 AM
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I thought I'd give this a bump in case additional people may benefit from it.

More folks are trying it and reporting good results over in the "ES Boost" thread.

http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...ad.php?t=72200

Happy Monday.
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Old 04-01-2006, 06:26 AM
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Wow! Thanks for that tip. I'm going to pick one of those gizmos up for my 810.

Now, a question. If you use the effects loop on the Baggs ParaDI, does your signal go through the following states?

Balanced: gtr --> baggs
Unbalanced: Baggs FX loop
Balanced: baggs ---> PA

If so, does that little unbalanced segement of the chain degrade the overall sound? Guess I can lay down $15 and see for myself.

Thanks again for the tip.
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Old 04-01-2006, 08:03 AM
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You should have no degradation. Just get that balanced signal all the way to the Baggs, then convert it to unbalanced at the input jack and take it from there unbalanced through the effects loop and back out the Baggs XLR as a balanced signal. I do it all the time.
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Old 04-01-2006, 08:23 AM
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Joe

Just this past month I went to a Kordex 1/4 TRS to 1/4 TRS cable from my ES to my Ultrasound DI Plus and XLR from the DI Plus to the snake and I am getting same results as using the Radio Shack adaptor. IMO actually a little better. Tone quality seems to have improved with the higher quality Kordex cable.
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Old 04-01-2006, 08:58 AM
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That's nice to know Nelson!

I'm not familiar with the Ultrasound. Perhaps it accomodates a balanced input. With my PADI, a TRS to TRS cable was no better than a standard instrument cable because the ring conductor does not connect to anything at the input jack.
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Old 04-01-2006, 09:14 AM
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I agree that the ES system is not that great...I run my 314CE through an Alesis mixer into a couple of 15" JBL Eons..and nothing I could do really made the guitar sound the way I wanted it to with the ES cable.. so I dumped the ES cable, went back to a standard cable through a Boss 7 band graphic EQ into the mixer and now it sounds incredible. I was able to compensate for the slight signal loss from switching cables by just boosting the gain a little at the EQ..I have no noticable noise increase..or maybe it's just that it sounds so much better now that I don't even notice. It's a shame that they make such a big deal out of this ES system and it pretty much sounds like crap when used as instructed....
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Old 11-17-2007, 07:32 PM
bsaffin bsaffin is offline
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I wasn't able to get this to work. I have a standard 1/4" - 1/8" cable I use from the ES to a Mac line-in, and it works ok, but the signal seems noisy and weak. When I saw this I thought I'd give it a try. Got the XLR-1/4" transformer, plus a 1/4-1/8 converter to connect to the standard Taylor TRS-XLR cable. With this I don't get any signal at all. The 1/4-1/8 cable still works, and the TRS-XLR cable itself tests out ok. So I'm not sure why the transformer isn't working for me.

Anyone have other suggestions that might allow me to use the balance cable in this setup? I know I can get an m-audio or tascam, etc. interface, but was hoping to make this work.

Cheers...Bruce
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