intermittent distortion on one channel

[nottooloudParticipant]

SQ6 from an AR2412. A month ago I had a kick drum in ch1 abruptly start distorting heavily. I’m thinking, frick, bad mic. Then later in the same set, a floor tom mic in ch4 also started distorting. OK, not likely to be the mics. I EQ’d as best I could, and nobody commented. Next day I came in, put mics to drums, and everything sounded fine.

Friday the ch4 floor tom distortion happened again. Swapped the mic, all good, but a few songs later it was back. So definitely not the mic. Last night, 3 bands all good, floor tom wigged out again during the 4th band’s set. OK, so we have mic, cable to subsnake, subsnake to AR2412, AR2412 to SQ6. Who’s got the issue? Neither the snake or the AR have latching jacks, so maybe something wasn’t seated tight? I did reseat everything when I swapped the mic on Friday. Tonight channel 4 is a hihat. I Yed the hat cable into the usual 12 pair and another 8 pair, which goes to channels on an AR84 feeding SQ channels 25-32. I Yed the 12 pair channel into the usual AR2412 ch4 and another channel on the AR84. Recording all the channels. Kind of hoping it craps out again so I can get some useful information. Got a band rehearsing tomorrow afternoon. I plan to do a bunch of parallel routing, and hope for another failure. Until I can isolate the issue, there’s not much I can do to fix it. The initial kick drum distortion never did return, at least not so far.

Does any of this sound familiar to anyone?

[MartininozParticipant]

Could be a more practical issue such as dry solder joints on the cabling, I had this recently on our floor drum. I changed a few things which didn’t solve the issue, but when I Re soldered the xlr going into the desk it was problem solved.

[nottooloudParticipant]

Two nights on high hat duty and the channel’s been clean.

[BrianParticipant]

Is it possible to switch the analog input to another preamp/analog input in the console/stage box the next time it happens? In other words, physically unplug the input from the current preamp/input and plug it into another preamp/input. That would give you a pretty good indication if the problem is in the console (ie the problem doesn’t follow over to the new preamp – especially if you plug it back into the original preamp and the problem follows) or if it is downstream of the console (ie the problem is still present even when you move to another preamp). This still isn’t a 100% guarantee that it will track down the issue (especially if the problem lies with the cable connector being plugged into the stage box), but it’s certainly worth a shot if you can pull it off. Obviously this might be hard to do during a show (especially since the stage boxes are likely on stage and not at FOH). But if you plan for this possibility and discuss it preshow, perhaps you can get someone to change it for you during the show.

[BrianParticipant]

PS – the fact that it cleared up for a couple of songs when you swapped the mic out lends itself to being a cable issue IMHO. Unplugging and replugging the cable into a different mic might have “fixed” the connection issue temporarily. I would put those cables on a cable tester and shake the heck out of them. I suspect you’ll find some faults while doing this.

[nottooloudParticipant]

Is it possible to switch the analog input to another preamp/analog input in the console/stage box the next time it happens?

I have it Y cabled to an entirely different stagebox. Just need to switch the patching at the board if it happens again.

The odds are somewhat against it being the cable. There are 20 or 30 cables in that crate. The same mic and channel faulted 3 times over the course of a month or more, and those cables have worked otherwise. I will pull the cable out of circulation if/when it happens again, though.

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