Rob Flinn
Well-known member
Hello folks,
I love my MCI Jh428b, but sometimes wish it had more channels for stereo reverb returns etc. As luck would have it a friend of mine has given me a sidecar of 12 channels that were originally added into his JH538. On his console they were installed into the panel that is in front of the patchbays on the right hand side of the console. Since this sidecar appears to have been custom made for the console it is exactly the width that will fit in the hole in the JH538 which is 38 patch points wide. The power was tapped from the back plain & the bus signals were fed straight into the aux & stereo buses on the JH538. My console is only 28 points wide, therefore I can't install it in the same place like it was on the JH538. The sidecar channels are just that, there are no power supply, mic amps or summing, but they are designed with a JH5xx in mind in that they have faders operating vca's so that it is possible to use them with grouping on MCI desks (my 428b had automation at one point)
I have a rack unit with all my reverbs & FX that sits on the floor just in front on the patchbay section facing left, so I can get to it easily.
My question(s):-
I was thinking that perhaps that I could mount this sidecar on some slide out rails in the top 4u of the fx rack. If I did this would I have ay issues connecting this up to the power & buses of the console. I could use an edac connector to connect it up which would make it easy t remove it from the system without having t cut cables etc etc. The thing that I am wondering is whether the extra bus length using a 3 or 4 metre cable will compromise that system as I've read that long bus lengths are not good and add noise. If this is the case could I add some local summing amps & then feed them into the JH428 buses, or would this compromise the system in the same way ? Or is there another better way to do this ??
Any ideas/suggestions would be appreciated.
I love my MCI Jh428b, but sometimes wish it had more channels for stereo reverb returns etc. As luck would have it a friend of mine has given me a sidecar of 12 channels that were originally added into his JH538. On his console they were installed into the panel that is in front of the patchbays on the right hand side of the console. Since this sidecar appears to have been custom made for the console it is exactly the width that will fit in the hole in the JH538 which is 38 patch points wide. The power was tapped from the back plain & the bus signals were fed straight into the aux & stereo buses on the JH538. My console is only 28 points wide, therefore I can't install it in the same place like it was on the JH538. The sidecar channels are just that, there are no power supply, mic amps or summing, but they are designed with a JH5xx in mind in that they have faders operating vca's so that it is possible to use them with grouping on MCI desks (my 428b had automation at one point)
I have a rack unit with all my reverbs & FX that sits on the floor just in front on the patchbay section facing left, so I can get to it easily.
My question(s):-
I was thinking that perhaps that I could mount this sidecar on some slide out rails in the top 4u of the fx rack. If I did this would I have ay issues connecting this up to the power & buses of the console. I could use an edac connector to connect it up which would make it easy t remove it from the system without having t cut cables etc etc. The thing that I am wondering is whether the extra bus length using a 3 or 4 metre cable will compromise that system as I've read that long bus lengths are not good and add noise. If this is the case could I add some local summing amps & then feed them into the JH428 buses, or would this compromise the system in the same way ? Or is there another better way to do this ??
Any ideas/suggestions would be appreciated.