Everything You Need To Know About Connecting Microphones to 70V Mixer Amps on Pro Acoustics Tech Talk Episode 27
On this week’s episode of Pro Acoustics Tech Talk, Nathan and Coltin have put together an instructional video on how to hook up microphones to 70V mixer amplifiers depending on whether you have an XLR input or a Phoenix or Euro block.
Hey everybody, welcome to another Pro Acoustics Tech Talk. I'm Nathan, I'm Coltin, and we're here for a little bit more instructional video for you today. Today we're going to be talking about how to hook up microphones to your 70-volt mixer amplifier, regardless of whether or not you have an XLR input or a Phoenix or Euro block type of input.
All right, Nathan. So the mysterious method of trying to hook up a microphone to a 70 volt amp, you know, there's been a lot of questions around, you know, we get asked all the time, you know, what's the, what's the difference between hooking up like a regular XLR cable that, you know, many people over the years have hooked up to a mixer board at their church or you know. This is a little bit different. So, kind of walk me through, you know, the way to do it. Yeah. How to properly do it, more importantly.
You got it. So basically, some mixer amplifiers like our MA Series of mixer amps actually have an XLR input right there on the input section. That makes things very easy. Say you've got a wired microphone, like a conventional live audio microphone like our UC1S, you’ve got a male to female XLR. You just plug it in. Away you go. Easy. So that is one option if there is an XLR input on the back of your mixer amp. Now lots, and I would dare say even most 70-volt mixer amps do not actually have XLR inputs on the back. There's nothing wrong with that. Especially in the case of like our MA120 or RMA120, there's not a lot of room back there. So many times, installed Euro block or Phoenix plug connectors, the green plugs on the back or the black plugs on the back of this Atlas AA50, are there for you to connect, to actually hardwire your cables right into the screw terminals and pop it in. I'll answer another question. The Euro block connectors always are included in the sack, in a little sack in the box, of whatever mixer amp you might have. So, you have what you need in order to connect to your mixer-amplifier. Absolutely.
So, then the scenario comes up. Okay, I'm going to hook up a live audio microphone to my mixer amp. How do I do it? Yeah. So, you'll need a what's called a prep cable if you're getting it from us, which basically has bare wire connections on one side, thinned and stripped back and then your XLR on the other. We also do sometimes have these with quarter-inch connectors and sometimes a male XLR to bare wire, but very, very simple. Same concept. You just connect your female side, your microphone, take your male side, connect it to the Euro block on whatever input you want to use. That now brings us to, when you go to connect to those a Euro block connectors, you're going to have to know which wire goes where.
Okay. So, on an XLR, it looks something like this, you know, Mickey mouse face, a couple of different connectors. Depending on if you're looking at the male side or the female side, these connectors correspond to different wires internally. Nine times out of 10, you're going to find that these pins with their little numbers next to them correspond to the following connections. So we've got a pin one, pin two and a pin three right there. Okay. Pin one is almost always ground. Pin two is almost always positive in three, almost always negative. Gotcha. So that's how your XLR is wired. So, as you see here on my wire, I've got a, I've got a ground or shield, I've got a white, which is going to be my positive, my black, which is going to be my negative. So you have those three there for your average XLR to easily make that connection.
Sometimes we're not using a pro audio microphone like this. Sometimes we're using a wireless mic receiver, same concept. That same XLR female connector can go right into the back of your XLR wireless receiver, wire right into your mixer amplifier and away you go. Gotcha. This same concept also applies to push to talk commercial-grade microphones. One of our favorites that we use quite a bit in a lot of our designs is the TOA PM-660U, which instead of three cables, it's got five wires. So, I answer this question a lot too. So, I'm going to go ahead and just fill everybody in on the TOA, which is a nice orange push to talk microphone. There's also some other manufacturers like Shure and Bogen and Astatic - guys that also make push to talk mics. But in those cases many times you'll have as many as five wires.
So, there's not five wires on a three-pin XLR. So what are the other two? The other two, nine times out of 10 are going to be your mute, which corresponds to the button on the push to talk mic and allows us to do a lot of the more commercial type stuff, like priority ducking that we've talked about in some previous videos. Okay. Gotcha. In the case of the TOA PM-660U, I'll go ahead and give you the magic answers for which ones are what color. So, your first wire on this TOA, if you, you know, just pick one of them, you're gonna find your red is your negative, your white is your positive, your ground is just your shield. And then you've got black and blue, which are your mutes. If you're going from basically your PM-660U right into a 70-volt mixer amp and you don't have room for a mute, then you can just use these guys.
No need to use your mute if you don't actually need the muting function. It's built into the mixer-amplifier. Yeah. Yeah. I think that throws off a lot of people when they have too many options too. And then they get everything, you know, mixed around a lot. But yeah, exactly. So, the name of the game here, you know, is to keep in mind that just because you don't have an XLR input on the back of your mixer amplifier, all is not lost. You might have some of these cables that we included in your package. That's what they're for, is to be able to connect right to your mixer amp. Just go to the input that you need. Keep in mind this scheme here and make your connection.
Yeah. So I have one question. So, say you don't have like a prepped in cable laying around, right? And you have just a cable like this and you get your system, you're all ready to go plug up your mic and everything. Is all hope lost if you actually don't have this specific, you know, cable and everything? What do you do in that case?
Not at all. See, the only difference between this cable and this cable is that this one has the male end on it. So, you can actually remove the male connector from, you know, a cable that's already been built, you know, from a music store. Basically all you do is just snip this off. I know you might be reluctant to do that, but trust me, this is a $4 or $5 connector. Don't be too, too scared about it. Strip it back, pull back your wires, twist them up nice and neat. Tin them with solder, if you have it available. Or put a connector on there and then it's ready to go into your Euro block connections on your 70-volt mixer-amplifier. Nice and easy. We, like I said, we try to include these prep cables where we need in our packages.
So, we try to make life easier for you as far as that goes. To see more about these packages, check out our website, www.proacousticsusa.com. You can reach me via email at nathan@proacoustics.com, and I'm Coltin with an I – coltin@proacoustics.com. You can give us a call at (888) 256-4112. Let us know what you have going on, how we can help, enjoy the video, share the content if it's helpful, tell your friends. Let us know down below if we can help with anything else and like and follow us and be sure to check out our Amazon store, check out our website and don't be a stranger. Let us know how we can help. All right. Until next time, I'm Coltin. I'm Nathan. We'll see ya.