Tag Archives: Soldering

Workin’ in the Workshop

I spent the majority of my morning and early afternoon soldering up some XLR cables and watching episodes of Futurama on Netflix. I have a ton of cables to make before I will have enough to properly test my new mobile recording studio. I am planning to test it out this coming Friday at Doc’s Music Hall. The plan is to record When, Not If’s last performance at Doc’s before they move down to Austin, Texas. It was only after I decided to debut it on this particular Friday that I realized it was going to be Friday the 13th! What are the odds that it was going to come down to that particular date? Ah well, it’s a good thing I’m not superstitious. Now where in the hell did I put that 4-leaf clover?

Soldering Station

Today I placed an order for a 100′ spool of balanced audio cable and a number of connectors. I want to be able to make cables and adapters in-house rather than purchase them. I’m doing this for 2 main reasons. The first of which being, I can save money. Secondly, I’m tired of trying to make pre-determined cable lengths work when it is clear that I need a more custom length. That being said, I spent a few hours organizing the studio workshop today in preparation for the new cable-making workload. After doing some research I think I have a fairly good understanding about how to assemble the various cables and connectors that I will be using on a regular basis.

After watching a number of video tutorials on how to make audio cables I began to make mental notes on how to set up my work space. I have a plethora of timber in the garage so I decided to use some to create a soldering station. This is the 80% finished product. I still have to install a few metal plates. Alas, it’s not going to win any beauty contests but it’s ultra functional.