If there is a tool that can make your life easier, your stage cleaner and your setup more flexible, it’s a good drop snake. In bigger systems and on more complex shows, we often rely on many drop snakes with disconnects to allow pre-wiring of various elements that need to move on and off stage efficiently.
While those systems are fantastic to work with, they have limitations, primarily the complexity of the disconnects and the added cost associated with them. For smaller productions and even smaller elements within a larger production, the cost may just be out of reach.
There so many situations where having a simple four channel drop snake with disconnects would be a lifesaver. Quick changeovers on a small festival stage, a lectern that needs to disappear quickly from a corporate stage, pre-wiring lighting fixtures onto a truss, or a simple acoustic opening act that just needs a few channels downstage center.
The ability to send analog audio, AES, & DMX & Intercom signals down the same snake as needed, with disconnects & a purpose-built CAT5e cable that’s been designed from the ground up for production use, that’s the SoundTools Cat Box snake system & SuperCAT Custom CAT5e production cable.
These boxes are really well built, and a lot of fun to use. Check out the full line up of accessories over at SoundTools.com they’ve got the Cat Box, Cat Rack, Cat Tails and Wall Cat along with two different flavors of Cat5e cable depending on your application.
** Note: (Video at 8:25) I absolutely made a mistake in stating that the more expensive SuperCAT Sound cable was required to use the CatTails – while the individual shielding simply allows it to be terminated to individual tails if needed. Thanks to Chris Rettger for catching my mistake! **
