HELP!!!!.....RCA to XLR Termination

Typically you can contact the manufacturer (ie: cardas, kimber etc) and send back to reterminate ($50-$75 per side..perhaps more for xlr) You can also get a "converter" which converts xlr to rca or vice versa. I believe that Kimber makes one of these (cardas too) or you can make one.

Hi Ugin! Here's how I do it. Unsolder old connectors with hot iron using cold scrap wire to soak up old excess solder. Cut off the tinned end of the wire. Remove about .5cm of insulation by holding wire tightly just below so as not to stretch it, and pull insulation up over new end. Buy desired gold or silver plated Neutrik connectors http://www.neutrikusa.com/ or more fancy gold or silver mined on some other planet (hehe). Heat the intersection of connector flanges and wire with hot iron, feed silver-content solder (3% silver from Radio Shack is the cheapest I could find) into intersection, not onto iron! Then lift away iron. Simple? Sure! Just practice on the removed connectors with scrap until you feel confident with the new ones. Remember that RCA's require only two conductors and XLR's have three...American Standard for XLR is 1. ground; 2. cold or minus (out of phase); 3. hot or plus (in phase). For European Standard reverse 2 and 3. So...if the center pin on your RCA has two wires, split them and connect them exactly to XLR's at both ends. If one wire only, connect it to pin 3. If the house burns down, don't blame me, haha. Good luck!

Thank a lot on on the responds. Is too expensive to send it back to factory for retermination, most likely I will DIY.

I would send it back to manufacturer also. I have some Nordost SPM re-terminated by Nordost and they came back looking like I bought them that way. FYI for Nordost owners, they charged me $35 per termination when I had it done plus return shipping.

Rockvirgo, question. So you would use pins 1 and 3 when replacing the rca with a xlr connector? I have a Fostex DAT on the way that only has balanced inputs and outpus, but the rest of my equipment is regular rca single ended so I need to convert one end of the cable to xlr's. Do I hvae this right? Thanks, grumpy.

Hi Grumpy. An exellent technical paper on this subject can be found on the RANE Pro Audio website at (http://www.rane.com/pdf/note110.pdf). It includes illustrations for 22 different output to input scenarios which you may run into. Note that the pin-outs for XLR connections in this paper are for the European standard, which most pro audio manufactures also use. You may want to check with Fostex to see which standard they use as Fostex's main focus is pro audio. Hope this helps.

Hi Grumpybb! If you're lucky the fostex manual may tell you how the XLR's are wired. Whether in or out of phase it ought to still work but it would be nice to get it right. Of course some stuff fitted with XLR's isn't truly balanced anyway. So if you can, find out whether pin 2 or 3 is the hot one inside the DAT. Then again some preamps invert polarity too... Good luck!

Hey Ugin...just to be safe...you should check with the manufactuere of your balanced source (or amp if it should be an amp) and ask them which pin is hot. This will prevent you from burning your house down ;)

Mfgrep is correct; you should check w/the manufacturer. Check your users manual as it often contains that particular spec. The standard these days is pin 2 hot (the argument has died down considerably over the last ten years or so).