Are reel snakes all they are cracked up to be?

Re: Are reel snakes all they are cracked up to be?

For me it depends on the size of the snake. For my 100' 16 channel,no, but I like the reel for my 150' 24 channel.

Of course neither one gets much use nowadays - love my iPad Pro!
 
Re: Are reel snakes all they are cracked up to be?

150 feet of 28 channels on a Hannay reel. Old school but it works well. Mine is on a little dolly I built for it.
 
Re: Are reel snakes all they are cracked up to be?

hey everybody, After listening to you guys and your comments about a reel snake , i must say thank you all, we have had some fun with this one. Some of them i could picture me doing if i ever got one and how much aggravation i would have with one. So i have strongly considered staying with the snake that isn't on a reel and just getting one in that style of snake. The kind that i am looking into getting is a OSP Elite Core 16 channel 8 returns snake. Have any of you got one or had any experience with that snake?
 
Re: Are reel snakes all they are cracked up to be?

Jimmy Hardin said:
hey everybody, After listening to you guys and your comments about a reel snake , i must say thank you all, we have had some fun with this one. Some of them i could picture me doing if i ever got one and how much aggravation i would have with one. So i have strongly considered staying with the snake that isn't on a reel and just getting one in that style of snake. The kind that i am looking into getting is a OSP Elite Core 16 channel 8 returns snake. Have any of you got one or had any experience with that snake?
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I'm not a fan of OSP snakes. Somehow we ended up with a 50' x 8 sub snake and 75' x 12 snake. Intermittent crap. Buy a Rapco, Proco, CBI, Whirlwind... anything else will be better IMHO.
 
Re: Are reel snakes all they are cracked up to be?

Tim McCulloch said:
I'm not a fan of OSP snakes. Somehow we ended up with a 50' x 8 sub snake and 75' x 12 snake. Intermittent crap. Buy a Rapco, Proco, CBI, Whirlwind... anything else will be better IMHO.
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-1 to OSP, +1 to Tim's list. I have had good experience with my EWI stuff, so for the price conscious, that would be my recommendation.

RE going digital - The upsides of analog are the nearly zero cost of acquisition of gear if you're buying - since almost no one else is - and familiarity. The downsides of analog are weight, size, inflexibility, limited processing, almost total loss of investment when you sell, and did I mention size and weight?

There are so many good cheap digital mixer options these days I would find it very hard to invest $$$ in an analog snake.
 
Re: Are reel snakes all they are cracked up to be?

"There are so many good cheap digital mixer options these days I would find it very hard to invest $$$ in an analog snake."

True, but there are many of us that use analog snakes with digital boards. Though I mix mostly on an iPad, there are situations where I prefer mixing on the console and digital stage boxes with enough sends and returns are still pretty expensive. That, and connection problems that I hear (and read) about have made me hesitant to make the move from the old snake - so far.
 
Re: Are reel snakes all they are cracked up to be?

Chuck Simon said:
"There are so many good cheap digital mixer options these days I would find it very hard to invest $$$ in an analog snake."

True, but there are many of us that use analog snakes with digital boards. Though I mix mostly on an iPad, there are situations where I prefer mixing on the console and digital stage boxes with enough sends and returns are still pretty expensive. That, and connection problems that I hear (and read) about have made me hesitant to make the move from the old snake - so far.
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I'll grant you that, but analog snakes fail, too. You get to choose how you like your failures - partial and intermittent, or total but easier to test for and more definitive. Most of the problems I've read about relate to X32 folks trying to get by with unshielded cable. I've had no problems on my A&H boards with the manufacturer-recommended cable I use.

As to stage box cost - we're still in a crossover point where in some systems you're paying for the A/D twice - both on the back of the board and remote stage boxes. That will continue to evolve. The A&H GLD, ILive, and DLive systems and most of the Avid desks presume the use of remote stage boxes, and have only a small amount of I/O on the control surface for things at FOH.
 
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