Pin 3 hot... should I change it?

[jwhmca]

I have a Soundcraft series 200 I'm doing a full rebuild on. Should I change this unit over to pin 2 hot? what are the issues if any? Is it just a polarity issue?

 

[JW]

I never do that because undoubtedly I will eventually sell the piece of gear and the next person will wire up their patchbay according to the documentation, which says it's pin 3 hot.

If you do rewire it, put a visible note in the back of the board that says this has been done.

 

[JohnRoberts]

There is a temptation to not mess with it. This could be a lot of work, but since you asked, to make it agree with modern standards and convention. A + voltage on pin 2 of the mic input, should be a positive voltage on the tip of any TRS SE insert jack, and a + voltage on pin 2 of any output XLR.  I have seen consoles where mics were pin 2 hot and XLR line outputs were pin 3 hot, so also confirm what you have wrt to all three obvious points of I/O. IIRC there was an old pin 2 hot mic standard that predated the later AES general interface standard.

JR