Volts RMS

[Chinagraf]

Looking at transformers for making these splits, and wondering for line levels acoustic guitars with pickups and keyboards, a tranny with a max input voltage of 5V rms should be enough, shouldn't it?
Thanks

[rob]

5V rms is around +16dBu. Typical electric guitar level is around -20dBu, with some pickups giving peaks around 0dBu. Keyboards are a bit more of a wild card, but you'll be DI-ing these yeah?
So, yes these should be fine. But do note that the figure on its own is pretty meaningless as saturation or distortion in a transformer is very frequency dependent. Other specs such as flatness of frequency response and how dependent the response is to various loading conditions is also fundamentally important. In this application the quality of the shielding is important, you don't want hum pickup on high gain mic lines.

[Chinagraf]

Thanks Rob. Yes, keys and acoustic gtrs are all di'ed. Is MU metal shielding the only sort to have, or can those ones with the copper tape on the winds work as well? Although this is just a little 8 way that is going to be permanent in a little venue, so I guess I could just suck it and see..
Cheers

[mylesgm]

Build it into a steel case with ground lift and shielding/hum pickup shouldn't be a problem.

[Alastair Reynolds]

Harbuch do some nice little DI transformers in mu-metal cans not too expensive,or jensens,sowters,lundahls etc if you have the budget.there are plenty of ccts on the inter web.I made some nice ones 20 years ago using sennheiser transformers in little die cast boxes.they sound better than any active DI and never need batteries