My nephew wants to record

**chazzo** · 12-27-2003

I bought my nephew a Casio MD-1700 keyboard and a Dr. 670 drum machine for his birthday back in august. He's been syncing his his keyboard to his drum machine for a while but now he wants to take it to the next level by recording his tracks to a digital recorder or mixer. But i have some questions:

1.) On the keyboard he has a phones/ output plug I know it's for headphones but what else, when I looked in the manual it said it's for connnecting the keyboard to a external amplifier. Can that that also be connected to a mixer if so using what wire or cables. Also on the drum machine there's Left and right mono outputs would I have to use a cable like a hosa dual cable to connect it to a mixer or some other cables if so what?

If you can answer these questions can you be specific.

**dansgold** · 12-27-2003

I could tell you, but you sorta asked me to ignore you, and I'm respecting that.

**chazzo** · 12-27-2003

I ain't trying to act like no ***** or nothing but my bad dawg I was just already stressed about everything and that one cat called my a dumb ass mutha****a so that got me really pissed off, but on da real my bad.

**avex** · 12-27-2003

on the keyboard's headphone jack (i'm assuming it's stereo 1/8inch), you could get the 'one 1/8inch to two RCA' or 'one 1/8inch to two mono 1/4inch' cable, depending on the mixer if it accepts rca plugs or 1/4inch jacks.

on the drum machine, since it's left and right, you just have to get 2 mono cables, for the mixer will have input plugs for left and right as well

**chazzo** · 12-27-2003

I can't find none of these at radioshack are there any websites that have these cables?

**avex** · 12-28-2003

i'm not in the us, so i wouldnt know excatly who stock them. but radioshack and all these audio places wouldnt have it, i'd imagine. try going to music stores that sells mixers etc

**Cruel Hoax** · 12-28-2003

First of all, you'll want to check to see if the keyboard has 1/8" or 1/4" output jack. Do you need to plug a "small headphone jack" (1/8") or a "big headphone jack" (1/4") into that output jack? I'm guessing that, if it's like most of the casios I've seen (full-size keys, decent size), it'll be a 1/4" jack. If it's a li'l battery-powered thing, it might want the 1/8" jack.

So... 1/4" jack: go to Guitar Center and get an "Insert Cable". This is a single cable, with a stereo 1/4" jack on one side (looks like the "big" plug of a set of headphones) and two mono 1/4" cables on the other side, for plugging Left and Right into two channels of a mixer.
If it's a 1/8" jack, ask for a "CMP-259" cable, which is the same thing, only with a 1/8" jack on the single side instead of the 1/4". You may need to describe it in detail, depending on your salesguy's degree of dumbness. (Hint: if he doesn't know this stuff immediately, find a smarter salesguy, and let it be known that you prefer the new guy, as they'll fight over the commission otherwise.)

I highly recommend getting a medium-small mixer for plugging these devices into. It'll come in handy if he ends up recording into the computer, and it'll always be a good swiss army knife to have around the studio. Get a Mackie or a Yamaha if you can afford it, an Allen & Heath if you've got tons of extra money, or a Behringer if you just absolutely need the cheapest mixer on the face of God's green earth.

-Hoax

**chazzo** · 12-29-2003

Thanx Cruel hoax you really know what what your talking about.

**Cruel Hoax** · 01-01-2004

No problem!

Also: You probably would want to use a dual cable for the drum machine. That way, you'd have both the Left and Right outputs connected to your mixer. So, for example, if your nephew is programming some drums and the hi-hat is on the left side of the mix, and a crash cymbal is on the right side of the mix, this method of hooking it up will keep that intact. If you only used one cable, the main instruments (kick drum,. snare drum) would probably sound about the same. But if, for example, you plugged in just the Right side cable, you wouldn't hear the hi-hat (if, like in the example above, the hi-hat is panned to the left side of the mix). So the mix would change.

If you get a small mixer, you can leave both the keyboard and drum machine plugged in all the time.

-Hoax