Drum Loom or dedicated Snake ...

[Jeff Scott]

Here's a question for those with more experience than me....When working with the same group on a continual basis.....is it handier to bundle the drum Mic cords into a dedicated Loom or Spiral Wrap or to set up an 8 or 12 channel Drum Snake box and feed it back to the main stage box?

[airickess]

I've seen it done either way. I've even seen it done both ways at the same time, with the drum kit XLR cords loomed together and plugged into a subsnake - the XLR loom travels in a cable trunk while still connected to the subsnake.
It really depends on your preference and what would be better for your situation. Are you traveling with a full system? Are you traveling with a main snake? How tight are your load-in times? Do you have local crew people helping with the load-ins, and if you do, are you generally comfortable with their competency or do you need to idiot-proof certain things?
I can tell you that you can't go wrong with a subsnake for your drums.

[Trackzilla]

I tend towards drum loom historically. I buy lots of the same XLR cable when buying, & just dedicate some of them to becoming looms. Rather than a traditional loom I make a flat braid of either 6 or 8 lines (3 or 4 courses of 2 lines each), leave about the last 6' as a fan & tape off the end of the braid. It lays flat on the stage reducing the amount of gaffing needed and draws a surprising number of positive comments from the talent. Apparently braiding and ropemaking are close enough to lost arts that it generates a degree of interest in the masses. I also braid the fans of conventional snakes into subgroups to control the spaghetti bowl at the fan end.

Recently another tech gave me some 70' of raw (Alcon?) 10CH power snake cable that was laying in his storage. So I built a 40' and a 25' subsnake from it that each give 10CH of audio and a biamped monitor feed in one cable...fairly slick...so I guess that now leaves me in the 'both' category as to which way I do it