Home Forums Ask Ted VC7 – Manual Reply To: VC7 – Manual

#15596
Ted Fletcher
Keymaster

Phantom shouldn’t make you nervous! It’s perfectly safe as long as you know the rules….. With the VC7 (and with any other mic amp) it’s a good rule to turn down the output gain before plugging or unplugging a microphone, for the comfort of your monitor speakers! And it’s sensible on the VC7 to select the mic impedance setting before plugging in, although I must admit, I am very cavalier about such things, and I happily switch through the impedance range without unplugging. All professional microphones are perfectly happy with phantom power being applied to them; the only warning is DONT use phantom power via a conventional jackfield…… plugging in a jack with phantom power applied can put 50volts across the mic which could cause damage…. particularly with ribbons! The BBC used to do this and it caused mayhem for several years. With XLR connections the problem is eliminated.
The most serious problem that can happen with phantom power is to accidentally plug an equipment output into a phantom powered mic input…… this can and does wreck some expensive output stages…. I had one here for repair 2 weeks ago. 😯