Senn. G3 with JuicedLink box

[Michael Clark]

I have a JuicedLink CX231. Wednesday I went to a concert. I plugged a Sennheiser G3 transmitter into the sound board at the venue. Into the JuicedLink, I plugged the G3 receiver, as well as a Rode NTG-2 shotgun mic. The NTG-2 cable was XLR to XLR, and the G3 was mini-to-XLR. I plugged the CX231 into my camera (Canon T2i with Magic Lantern installed). No sound, although the wireless reciever was picking up a signal I was able to monitor. If I unplugged the wireless, the shotgun would pick up sound fine through the JuicedLink mixer. And if I unplugged the JL from my camera, the camera's internal mic would pick up sound fine. It was something about running the G3 wireless and the NTG-2 shotgun together at the same time. Is there something I was doing wrong?

[Shaun Roemich]

Was Phantom Power on the JuicedLink on? Some Senny w/l receivers REALLY don't like Phantom power passed to them.

[Michael Clark]

I think it was - good call. Hmm...my NTG-2 is using phantom power though...

Edit: I always thought you had to have an extra battery pack (accessory) for the NTG-2 to not run on phantom power. Never new it unscrewed and had the AA battery right there. Should be good to go now!

[Steve House]

Was the mini-to-XLR Sennheiser's own purpose built cable or were you using a third-party adapter? Some jury-rig combinations of cables and adapters can accidently short the input to ground or short the XLR signal hot to signal cold (pin 2 shorted to pin 3).

[John Willett]

Probably cables.

The output from the receiver (assuming EK 100 G3) is unbalanced - and you really should use the supplied Sennheiser cable.

The input cable to the transmitter - was this a proper Sennheiser one?

You need a special line-in cable if you are going from the line out of a mixer. In the mini-jack the signal goes only to the ring and the tip and sleeve have to be shorted.

If signal was going to the tip it would be mic. level and you would be injecting about 5V into the mixer.

[Michael Clark]

The cable from the sound board was just a standard 1/4" cable, with a mini adapter, to the transmitter. The receiver used the mini-to-XLR that was provided by Senn. Now I'm sort of worried that I caused some irreparable damage though. I only tried the wireless to JuicedLink once (at the concert, and for about 30 minutes). However, during that time the JuicedLink's phantom power was on, which I've now been told by JL is bad.
Fast forward to this morning. I can get power to my transmitter, and everything looks normal. I've got the omnidirectional mic that came with it plugged into it. The "On" light is red (can't remember if it's normally supposed to be green, but I plugged in new AA batteries and got the same result). Trouble is, I'm not picking up anything from the transmitter (its levels are not moving), and therefore the receiver is not showing any movement either. I've tried the frequency I was already set to, I tried auto sync, and I tried "reset" under the advanced menu, all with no luck. I am very new to this wireless system - is there anything else I can try? My guess is that I may have shorted the circuits when I used phantom power, and now it's broken. Any insight would be appreciated!

[Greg Bellotte]

The CL100 output cable for the EK100 is indeed unbalanced, and DOES short pins 1 and 3. Shorting pins 1 and 3 would definitely kill your phantom power, and the only damage I'd think likely is the phantom supply in the JL. This is a good reason to find equipment that allows for individual channel selection for phantom power, instead of one switch that puts it on every input. You could rewire the CL100 and isolate pin 1, leaving the receiver audio on pins 2 and 3, or just run your other mic on battery and leave the phantom turned off. Either solution should allow your mic and G3 to work together just fine.

I'm not entirely sure about the G3, but the G2 units are protected against phantom power. In any case I don't think this is the problem you are having today. You mentioned a reset, but did you reset BOTH transmitter and receiver? And ensure they are both on the same frequency? However the key here is that you said the transmitter is not showing any level. If the transmitter is not sending any level, then I would question the mic being bad. Or did you turn down the sensitivity for the audio board feed and forget to turn it back up for the mic? SENSIT in the menu should be -10 or 0 for the lav mic... Once you see good levels on the transmitter you should then see the same levels on the receiver...

[Michael Clark]

I reset both transmitter and receiver this morning. I have verified they are both on the same frequency. I was actually able to plug the mic into a Zoom H2 earlier and it worked great. When I get home, I will definitely look at the sensitivity. When I refer to testing this morning, I should clarify that I am back to just holding both transmitter and receiver in hand, no longer concerned about using it with the sound board. Thank you very much for the reply!

[Steve House]

You said you used a 'standard 1/4 cable with mini adapter' to connect the sound board to the transmitter and that's setting off some alarm bells. An off-the-shelf 1/4 to mini will put signal hot on the tip of both the 1/4 and the mini plug. But the transmitter input expects a mic level signal on the tip ... for line levels such as sent by the soundboard, the plug into the transmitter needs to be wired signal hot to RING with the tip jumpered to the sleeve. Your standard adapter cable would put a hot line level signal onto the much more sensitive mic level input circuits and if the signal coming out of the board was hot enough, it could have damaged something in the transmitter input.

[Michael Clark]

Well, I'm more relieved than I am frustrated, but I figured out what the source of all this was. Saturday was my first wedding with an assistant (he hasn't shot a wedding before, so I was going to ease him in really slowly). I showed him the wireless receiver and transmitter, showed him how it worked, and told him I'd be back in 5 minutes. When I got back, he had taken the hot shoe mount off the back of the receiver. In my haste, I got the two pieces back from him, and put the mic into the receiver, and the hot shoe mount onto the transmitter. So the two were just reversed. Works great now - so relieved (and a little embarrassed for not checking that the first time!).

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Michael Clark

Well, I'm more relieved than I am frustrated, but I figured out what the source of all this was. Saturday was my first wedding with an assistant (he hasn't shot a wedding before, so I was going to ease him in really slowly). I showed him the wireless receiver and transmitter, showed him how it worked, and told him I'd be back in 5 minutes. When I got back, he had taken the hot shoe mount off the back of the receiver. In my haste, I got the two pieces back from him, and put the mic into the receiver, and the hot shoe mount onto the transmitter. So the two were just reversed. Works great now - so relieved (and a little embarrassed for not checking that the first time!).

Glad there's no damage but my previous post about the cable you used from the soundboard to the transmitter still holds true. The transmitter input takes a TRS mini plug. In order to properly send a line level signal to the transmitter, the tip of the 1/4 TS plug that goes into the soundboard needs to connect to the ring on the miniplug, the sleeve on the 1/4 plug connects to the sleeve on the miniplug, and the miniplug tip needs to be grounded by connecting it over to the sleeve inside the plug.