How to check quality of snake?

[pearldrum944]

I have been replacing my cabling with higher quality cables (mogami/neutrik) and getting rid of all my old POS musicians friend cables. The snake I use to record drums was custom built about 10 years ago by the previous owner. I believe it's between 50 and 75 feet long, would anyone know how to check the quality of it? The only thing I can think of is measuring the resistance, anyone know what I should get? By the way, I was reading about 1.4ohms with my old 20 foot cables, and am getting about .8ohms now with my new cables. Thanks.

[zemlin]

If you can get both ends close together, start looping all the XLRF connectors to the XLRM connectors until you have one M and one F left - M1 into F2, M2 into F3, etc - plug a mic into the free F end and plug the M into a preamp. Compare the sound to a shorter cable of known quality. That will multiply any issues with the snake many times over. If you don't hear much of a difference, you're golden. If what you hear worries you, just compare one pair of the snake to a good cable.

Use your ears - what else matters?

[The Byre]

The above is a great and simple way to test any cable, but remember that this only works for low imedence inputs (i.e. mic). Line outs over longer distances should be fed into the mic input.

[pearldrum944]

I didn't think about looping the cables to make one gigantic long cable, great idea. I'll have to attempt that when I have time to pull the box end back into my other room. Thanks.

[ktf]

A obsessive/compulsive friend of mine checked 50 feet of all the high end cables with square waves looking for overshoot and other artifacts...Canare won.

[pearldrum944]

Well...I tested it. Overall I would say the cable is pretty good. I ran the test through a 20ft mogami cable, then 20ft mogami cable into about half of the snake, a little over 600 feet. The only real difference was that there was a little more noise going through the snake. I think my snake cable is pretty good. I may end up replacing the connectors eventually....

[Chris Parsons]

Originally Posted by ktf

A obsessive/compulsive friend of mine checked 50 feet of all the high end cables with square waves looking for overshoot and other artifacts...Canare won.

he'd better be recording some really good music...

[Jonathan Starr]

With these babys (Palau Sea Snake) if you don't die within 5 minutes of being bitten, the snake is punk.

[ktf]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Starr

With these babys (Palau Sea Snake) if you don't die within 5 minutes of being bitten, the snake is punk.

I didn't know the islands had snakes. You lucky sob

[Jonathan Starr]

Aggresive little serpent.

Shot that on an island in the Rock Islands of Palau. It chased us off the beach and into our boat.

I'm much more comfortable with the Mogami & Canare varieties.