> Chris, you unmasked me as an idoit.
Hummmmmm makes you stupid. Been there, gone nuts myself. It is often something so very simple that everybody can see it except the guy who is suffering. Chris just explained it best.
One of the "hot" lines was really the shield. You had 30 feet of exposed un-shielded wire going to a high-gain input. While the input was differential, the line was not catching the same hum on both "hot" pins, because one side was inside and the other was the outside.
Without termination, big buzz. With most passive mikes, the mike Z is high enough that the buzz is not swamped. With solid-state condenser mikes, their very low Z swamps the buzz darn well. Also you would typically turn-down the preamp before connecting a hot condenser, or the studio acoustic noise in the hot condenser mike drowns-out the hum.
I used to run a lot of unbalanced dynamics: with the hot on the inside of a shield, it is often low-low-hummm.
I run a lot of unbalanced and un-shielded line-level stuff. If the level is fairly high (not even +4/+20dBu) and the source Z is low (100Ω or less), in many rooms hum is not a problem. $2 electret, 26dB gain, 47Ω Zout, 100 feet of speaker wire and unshielded network wire, no hum and nearly-no click when the elevator clacks off.
As for the solder cups: tin both sides, then I hold the connector and wire up to a soldering iron setting on the bench. I think I have a No-Hands but have never used it. I've often soldered on top of a ladder or molding.
If the joint will stand a 5 pound yank, it is probably electrically good and (with cable-clamp) may survive hard use.
Hummmmmm makes you stupid. Been there, gone nuts myself. It is often something so very simple that everybody can see it except the guy who is suffering. Chris just explained it best.
One of the "hot" lines was really the shield. You had 30 feet of exposed un-shielded wire going to a high-gain input. While the input was differential, the line was not catching the same hum on both "hot" pins, because one side was inside and the other was the outside.
Without termination, big buzz. With most passive mikes, the mike Z is high enough that the buzz is not swamped. With solid-state condenser mikes, their very low Z swamps the buzz darn well. Also you would typically turn-down the preamp before connecting a hot condenser, or the studio acoustic noise in the hot condenser mike drowns-out the hum.
I used to run a lot of unbalanced dynamics: with the hot on the inside of a shield, it is often low-low-hummm.
I run a lot of unbalanced and un-shielded line-level stuff. If the level is fairly high (not even +4/+20dBu) and the source Z is low (100Ω or less), in many rooms hum is not a problem. $2 electret, 26dB gain, 47Ω Zout, 100 feet of speaker wire and unshielded network wire, no hum and nearly-no click when the elevator clacks off.
As for the solder cups: tin both sides, then I hold the connector and wire up to a soldering iron setting on the bench. I think I have a No-Hands but have never used it. I've often soldered on top of a ladder or molding.
If the joint will stand a 5 pound yank, it is probably electrically good and (with cable-clamp) may survive hard use.
