Topic: running mics through the venue's 'snake'

[ellaguru]

going to run stage lip next week and then a few channels off the board for my 1st multi track with the new gear....when running mics through the in house snake, do i run the pre amp before or after the snake?  other option is the 50 footers, but the snake may be easier to deal with.

thanks
chris

[Roving Sign]

Your pre goes after the snake...presumably back at the mix position...the channels and plug ends are probably numbered.

You will need your own phantom...

Depending on the setup - you might need an extra set of mic cables to get from the end of the snake to your preamp...sometimes its hard to get close enough once the rest of the plugs are inserted into the board. Plus, it will keep you out of the soundguys way...

[easy jim]

In my experience, most FOH engineers willing to let you run mics through the house snake are made more comfortable if you run your mics offline from their system with your own pre-amp/phantom power.  If patched out from the direct output of a channel of the SBD, vs. pulling out the snake tails and 'jumping' them to your pre-amp with an extra set of XLRs, all it takes to ruin things is you mistakenly sending phantom back to the SBD.  (A lot of SBDs, but not all, are equipped to resist being blown out by having phantom sent back to one of its outputs).

[Patrick]

Yep, it's much easier to use the stage snake simply as mic cables rather than taking up channels on the FOH board.  Ask the engineer if there are open mic pockets on stage.  Generally you take the two last inputs on the snake if they're not being used.  Plug your mics in...Go back to FOH and ask him to unplug those two channels.  Plug those cables into your gear, and you're set.  Beware that a lot of engineers are not familiar with this process, so it may take a few explanations as to what you're doing.  Just be friendly and courteous and be aware that he can and may just say no to the whole thing, and you're at his mercy.

Like I said, this is much easier than running your mic's signal through the board's channel strip; keeping both sources (stage and your mics) discrete and separate.  Everyone's happy when this happens...