G'day, my name is Gary for the YouTube channel Simple Audio Tips.
Have you found at times that the simplest tasks
are often the most difficult to practice.
Rolling up microphone leads, even though it seems simple, can be quite difficult to master.
I'm going to show you two tips that will help you
keep them tidy and make them last much longer.
A microphone cable can get quite badly twisted if the right method is not used
to roll it up and and I'll illustrate why.
I'm going to illustrated it with this piece of packing tape.
I'll roll it around my hand
just to illustrate what will happen if you don't roll it correctly.
Now that looks really neat doesn't it, but as we pulled off we can see
all these twists start to form.
This is one effective way I was shown
to roll a microphone cable so that you ensure no twists form.
The idea is that you put a half twist one way,
a half twist the other
And don't just keep laying the cable on like this,
that will cause the microphone cable to twist.
We'll go half twist one way,
and then a half twist the other
I'll do it slowly so that you can see it
So you roll one on there like that.
Then this one you've got it let it flow over your arm
Roll one on,
and one under.
roll one on,
and one under
and you continue that way right to the end.
Now you are putting a half twist one way,
and a half twist another way, if you want to be accurate.
but when you pull the cable out
it's equally stressed so it's not a problem.
Now the second tip in keep in your microphone cables tidy
is to make sure we restrain them in some way
once they're rolled up.
I keep the little velcro straps that come with the microphone lead when you purchase it
but you may not have that, you might have some other way of doing it.
I'd love to hear from you in the comments section if you'd like to put that in.
if you've got one of these little velcro straps
you can to simply roll it round
then restrain your cable like that
but there are other ways you can do it as well and I'll show you
a couple of different methods
just using things that you might have lying around.
One of the worst ways to
restrain a cable is using insulation tape.
now it might be cheap, it might be quick,
there might be plenty of it around but the sticky residue that it leaves
is just too hard to clean up.
It's quite unprofessional to use it.
If you insist on using insulation tape to tidy your leads,
make sure that you prepare your tape beforehand
Just stick it onto itself so that it forms a barrier
between the sticky residue and your lead.
So you place it on
stick that doubled over tape around your cable
you see that's not sticking to the cable at all,
goes onto itself.
Once you've got it to there, leave yourself a little pulltab
You can slide that tape along, it's not sticking
That's a very cheap way to do it
and you're not getting any of that sticky residue on your job.
And you can easily remove it
and your cables are ready for use.
Of course, the best way to restrain your cable
is using the manufactured velcro strips that come with the cable.
If you don't have one of those, if you lose them
go and buy yourself some velcro on a roll.
and that is velcro can be purchased from any
of the main electrical suppliers and you can just cut that off at the length you need
and place that around your cable.
I thinks there's 25 metres in a roll, so that'll last you for ages.
Well, I hope those two tips are going to be of some help to you
and you'll find that your microphone leads will last much longer
Look, if you enjoy our video make sure you give us a thumbs up
and consider subscribing to our channel because here at Simple Audio Tips
we're dedicated to make sound gear easier to understand.
We're gonna upload more videos very similar to this
to help you answer those questions that you might have been asking for a long time.
until our next audio tip, we'll catch a later.