Of all the things a kid could get hurt on in a sound reinforcement system, the speaker cable plugs would not be my first concern. $90 tool to take it apart? Baloney.

At Buried audio we've quickly made a 3D printable wrench that we are currently mass printing to supply with each order, that tool is while very well made, insanely over engineered and over priced to pay for that overkill.

me: you can't have too many tools.. neutrik: i'm glad you agree, because... me: nevermind, i have enough tools

“The vintage feel” 😂 Thanks for covering this, Dave!

We had a bunch of cables made for us recently and they came with these connectors. Went to open them up to double check the workmanship on the connections was good and came across the issue of opening them up. Crazy how much they charge for these 2 tools. Won’t be long before 3rd party options appear on the market.

You know the old saying, if it's not broke, fix it till it is.........

Great, now the new version of the old style (blue before, now all black) powercon AND Speakon look like a true1 connector from a distance 😅 Thanks for the video!

Theres have been lots of changes to the way events are being handled in australia lately that require in some states that all Temporary stages (ie festivals etc) are required to treated like permenant installations that conform to current AS3000:2018 standards. Meaning any speaker level connection above 50v technically has to conform to current standards, requiring a tool to access the internals, appropriate IP ratings etc etc. All power distro required to have RCBO's for each circuit too, no longer will a single RCD protecting 4 circuits be sufficient. All in the name of safety as you say, i like the new plug design.

The vintage feel!

It occurs to me that the greatest possibility of getting a shock to the fingers is from the front (connecting) end of the Speakon-connector, anyways: The connecting surfaces are quite close to where your fingers reach and if there is humidity or moisture at play... These special safety tools seem like a joke considering anyone can open large three-phase connectors with ordinary hand tools.

Love the new connector as an addition to the current line .. but absolutely a HUGE pain in the butt as a total replacement!!! but .. regulations r regulations ... not sure how many babies are playing with touring line arrays but good I guess

Thank you Dave! Totally agree!! So nice you take the time to give us some very smart solutions! 🙏🏻

The industry found a solution to a problem that didn't exist. I would venture to say no one ever got electrocuted by the old style connector, I`ve never heard on any.. Anywho, did they improve the connectors identifications of 1+ 1- 2+ 2-? Still made in Lichtenstein? What about the price? Not having the proper tools when needed will be pissing off many, many people in the future me thinks.

0:59 just FYI, these are Pozidrive screws, specifically PZ1 size drivers should be used. If you've ever noticed these being prone to camming out and/or don't tighten all the way down, this is why! Also, same goes for most European flat-pack furniture like Ikea

Very informative, Dave. Always appreciate your thoughts on things like this!

That was an excellent Vid! Both infomative and hilarious. Gotta love that vintage feel!

Never watched your videos before, and I'm glad I continued watching after a certain point, because when I heard how you were talking about it being fine that they'd done it because they sold tools, I almost turned it off because that's crap. Glad I stayed to hear you talking about other ways to do it and various bypasses to avoid the overpriced tools. Might have to check in more often to see some cool sound gear and such! :)

Neutrik connectors have great quality and last forever (unless you leave them in the rain), so I understand the high price, but what they charge for tools it ridiculous. Look at the price of the BNC crimping tool. It's 650€ including the inserts here. 650€ for a crimping tool! I ordered one from Aliexpress for 20€ and it works just fine...

First time on your channel. Great stuff! Very practical approaches to the changes. You just got a new sub! The new tools are pretty good answers to how to work with the new connector, but they look insanely over engineered. That’s part of the price issue, but I’m sure there’s a nice markup on their costs, too. 😉 The company will no doubt respond to others making alternative tools at some point and make cheaper versions, I’ll bet.

Dave, love the new vid. Staring out by saying you are a large importer and user of Neutrik. Showing off the new connector, how it works etc, etc. like any of the other product review vid. Now let's life hack the crap out of it, absolutely rat style. Now that is what I can only call excellent dealer support. Yup 90 bucks a pop for those tools is way over priced for what they are and would love to see normal priced versions out there. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for making this video on the new connector and how to DIY your own tool. It is disgusting that companies design things with the need for proprietary tools to service for no good reason.

Thanks for explaining the differences. Just a quick tip. When you're doing close up shots with your hands, it would be better to use a plain background. All those little spots totally threw off the mpeg encoding and it just dissolved into blocky pixels when I needed detail.

Thank you for your service ♥️

At least Neutrik didn't completely balls it up like they did when the absolutely shocking NL4FX was launched. Quickly backtracked and re-released the NL4FC which is far easier to assemble by hand! Will be interesting to see how my next batch of speaker cables work out once I'm out of stock of NL4FC.

Where this will be the biggest pain in the butt is in the shop. Servicing 40 or more NL4 at a time and hoping the shop tech leaves the tool in the same place he got it from for the next shop tech that comes in

Great video, Dave! I love how you kept it simple, describing and demonstrating the older designs, but I was a little sad you left out the oldest models. I am, of course, speaking of the original NL4 with the locking ring rather than a push button. It was revolutionary in its time, but thankfully, they realized the ring design was difficult to grab in many situations and worked out the push button. Additionally, the original design used tiny, Allen (hex) set screws for the conductors. The set screws were so bad that you absolutely would have stripped the hex opening before adequately tightening. On the random luck you could secure them properly, removing them to repair a damaged cable was pretty much impossible without drilling them out. Again, thankfully, Neutrik redesigned the set screws to larger, Phillips head screws. But if you needed a child lock on an NL connector, one need look no further than the NL2 connectors with the pull cylinder locking mechanism. I once had to repair one end figured out a way to get in without destroying it, but it was a huge PITA! 😁

Kudos, Dave.

Got one of those tools comin up on the 3d printer now. Thanks, Dave!

Dave, I love your DIY punk rock intuition!

Good stuff Dave.

Excellent video

Important: the wire retaining screws are not Phillips! They are Pozidrive. Grab a pozidrive and you will feel that it engages much better with the screws! I expect that a 3D printed version of the tool would be functional enough. I’d be willing to try! I think the safety is a great idea. I’ve definitely had brain-dead stagehands disassemble old NL4’s before. Still better than EP4!!!

Thanks for the heads up.

Dude! I thought you were making some kind of lame "unboxing style" endorsement video, but since it was you I stuck it out. Love the hacks!

back when i used to be in that line of work most of the speakons i've encountered were, within a few months of abuse, a bit too loose at that collar. handled at least two stage monitors on two completely different occasions where that collar might as well not have been there at all, it would come loose and off if you grabbed the speakon the wrong way. still better than other connectors for sure, but it's not as durable as people make it to be. the ratcheting mechanism makes sense and as long as there's no copyright on making a key for it, this is one safety mechanism that doesn't seem like it's doing more harm than good.

Your tool includes wiring schema. Wow. Yes I know You know that by heart, but in 40 cm space between a band of angry artists and back of the main PA this is a godsend. This happens when a designer actually uses the damn thing.

1. Knipex parallel pliers (i.e. 86 03 125 or 86 03 180) exist for a reason, those plugs would be one of them 2. Calipers are no wrenches, they are measuring tools. possible use in this video? measuring the hole for the cable, or the dimensions of the flats 3. High voltage creates arcs, and 140V can be lethal under the wrong circumstances. so waterproofing is important. would have had been nice to dwell on this in the video 4. 5000W at 140V has 35A of current. the connector inside is the critical element here, since a flimsy connection will get hot, and melt the housing, or create a fire. would have had been nice to mention those in the video... 5. does a dual AWG 6 cable fit in the plug? (AWG 6 is rated to 35 amps)

Back in my day!!!

TL; DW: You now need to buy a proprietary wrench to open a green "safety" lock version of a Neutrik Speakon connector. The alternative, of course, is to simply cut off a bad Speakon connector rather than waste time attempting to reuse it. Apparently, this is Neutrik's solution to the chronic unreliability of the flimsy aluminum shims they use on the screw-terminal connectors inside the NL-4 Speakon connectors, which rely on bent-metal friction to make contact with your speaker wire. That's why a "safety" lock is so necessary in the first place, because the electrical connections in the NL-4 are so fragile they often can't even support the weight of the speaker cable. If you want to see how independent cable vendors cope with this Neutrik design flaw, unscrew a prewired Speakon connector, and don't be surprised if you find a thick wad of glue cementing the cable to the terminals.

What a beautiful connector! Shalom

Thanks for making this video :) As a regular guy building my small PA and DIYing as much as possible I thought this was just a poor mans problem. I like quality products and enjoy neutrik as much as the next guy, but no way in hell would I spend that money as an individual.

Great video. This is required viewing.

Dave for the win!!

I made some F-nl4 to dual Male M-nl2 on second pole adapters with these late n' greats. I'm required to solder these instead of using the microscrews are in neutriks. The metal tabs are more difficult to remove than the old ones so I've just been saturating them harder and that seems to hold. Do you have any techniques that would make it easier or better?

Neutrik also make a new version of the PowerCon connector these days. Perhaps for the same safety reasons? Recently during a gig the bass player had experienced issues with his amp. It was on old Glockenklang stack. Turned out, one of the wires in the Speakon plug of his cable had managed to escape… this was easy to fix for me being the sound guy in charge… luckily he had the old connector. But then again, 100V and more is nothing you'd want to touch.

EDIT: didn't even watch the video all the way to the end, just wrote this comment... It's a good idea to have that safety because the power they push out through those cables means hundreds of volts ans tens of amps -> lethal. So safety is important :) Also the slip ring prevents the cable boot coming undone over years and years of handling and gigging. Especially since to lock the connector in place, you twist it, and then you twist it opposite to unlock and over the years of road use, they can (or mostly they WILL) come loosened or undone and then they fail or cause a short circuit or even kill someone. I like the design! The amount of powercons i've had to tighten over the years is in their hundreds. I ALWAYS check both boots of any powercon cable, make sure they're tight and that the strain relief has not given in. If it has slipped, I open the connector, check the wires and if it can be safely just put back together or does it need to be redone from scratch. Any unsafe ones are thrown into "unsafe, do NOT USE!" case and they go back to the renter to be checked and fixed, they will not be used unless fixed in situ by a technician. Same with speakons. Power levels are just very high so they need to be in good shape :)

Many are talking about the locking down as a child safety, but I think there is another side you are missing - security. While it is not completely tamper-proof, it does make it harder for people that should not be messing with the ends to mess them up. In a rental fleet, it is common to have people try messing with everything, and this is one more tool to help keep those fleets a little more locked down. The tool is expensive, but there is NOTHING to stop any of us from building our own tools for it. Some measurement, a little fabrication (additive or subtractive), and boom, you've got your own tool. So, if you don't want the Cadillac tool, build your own, and maybe, just maybe, you will build an even better one. Take it as a challenge, rather than just a setback.

such a sound rebel sir haha.. good stuff..

I realize that you know that, but just to make that clear to your viewers: IEC rules are not "EU rules". IEC literally stands for International Electrotechnical Commission and they are part of the World Standards Cooperation. Concerning the item in question: Biggest plus here would be the fact that you don't accidently loosen the endcap during use, and I would assume that this was the driving force behind that design first and foremost. At least over here, NL-4 being in service while half unscrewed over weeks and month is by far the most common failure mode I see when I come into venues. Not sure how they do it, but heck it seems to be "a thing". So the new connector makes sense in that regard. I also like, that there is a very clear color difference between the NL2 (brown) and NL4 (green) this time around. That tool...well, it won't be long until there are a ton of after market alternatives, the original has come down to 77 bucks already. Plus your adjustable wrench will fit on it just fine if in a pinch. I don't really see a problem here. Also, that tool seems to become a somewhat universal unit within the Neutrik universe, since it will also work with the current powerCON iterations. With that extra length, we will need a 90° version though, and sooner than later!

The new connector is 1000 times better than the old one. We always had problems with corrosion on the old ones. We do lots of outdoor stuff and over the years these were always an issue.

Could you run some liquid glue or gel crazy glue or something like that down under the outer spinning slip ring to lock it into place so you can undo it by hand? Or is the issue the ratchet lock is just too strong to undo by hand, rather than the ring spinning?

Of course they'd change the design so that you need a buy a bunch of expensive single-purpose tools from them, when a plain old wrench used to work just fine.

Is the plastic material of the end of the connector more durable? This part breaks most often, requiring service in the field. I’d hope they also made structural design improvements beyond complying with new safety regulations.

I can remember a performance where a loudspeaker remained quiet. With the old blue plugs it was easy to open them and fix the problem. Now it costs 90 bugs! A cheap Forster drill costs maybe 10 bugs.

Rule #1 in the work manual: Whatever works. Oh yeah, and thanks 👍🏼

Helpful ❤❤

This is gonna backfire on Neutrik so badly. There are other NL4 manufacturers like seetronic that works just fine. We will just start to buy that instead. Is the quality worse? Maybe, but field serviceability is valued much higher with most rental companies..

I've heard some earthquake this week. I hope that was just Neutrik headquaters. Good job!❤

The $64,000 question: are the new connectors backward compatible? I'm not doing professional PA work at the moment, but I would sure as hell not want to have to rewire all my cabinets if I was...?

I'll give it credit, it is a better design and at least they're backwards compatible. However at $180 for both tools, you might as well get a cheap or used 3d printer. I'm just glad were at the point where 3d printers and desktop mills are now affordable to your average joe.

The new design also clears the mounting screws on rear mounted sockets.

legend.

You could probably print this tool on a 3D printer. I still have a pretty good stock of old connectors I can continue to use, but if it comes down to it (like you said, for safety), I can get my son to print one up that I can use. He has a couple of good printers to use for a side gig.

Hey Dave General Question/Request here I was wondering if you could do a video about the difference between mid level and high level consoles like Sq series VS DLIVE/Avantis. I have a small company and I love my SQ6 and it just has me wondering what high level system features the higher end consoles have that justify the massive price difference. You explain everything so well in laymens terms and I'd love to see a video like that. Thanks!

Great Video. 😃👍♥️

Very good video! On some Powercons they have this ratcheting mechanism where you have to poke into it with a flat head screwdriver. I wonder why they didn't use this but rather came up with something entirely new. TBH the flat head ratchet thingy sucks, as well... 😅 Virtually all CEE or Schuko plugs can be serviced with a simple PH or PZ size 1 or 2 screwdriver...

They’ve certainly got the market cornered and a pretty good ploy to force all the industry to throw out the old and buy the new marginally improved plugs. 😂

Has someone made a knockoff NL4 connector yet? If they haven't, you can bet someone will start to work on one if it's legally possible. Good job Neutrik on providing some great motivation for someone to make an alternative product.

Hey dave like your first intro, and let the rat explode 😂😂

Pretty interesting new connector but damn, common, they know those types of things will get lost. I'm surprised they don't have like a hole in them for a carabiner or something...

Nice way to make them harder to field service on the job. Shame they still didn't even get a decent sealing cable gland.

I have some I have been even installed yet. Now they're absolute before use? At least they're not an electronic part or they would have some software built into them to prevent me from being able to still use them.

i have small ish hands and a good grip and i can open these boys quite easily now. while harder than on old speakons its as quick when you know how to put your fingers on the bad boi for it to grip correctly. i'd advise everyone here to try with their bare hands.

Yep, jump on the 'ol CNC and carve a tool out in the form of a spanner... but not in wood. 😊

Ouf.. it's going to be interesting to see how long they last.

They could have designed this to not require the wrench, but still be safe. The fact that they didn't just tells me they're looking to sell $90 dollar wrenches... Also.... when are children going to be around the PA/Backline exactly? and must we childproof the world? Seems more than a little excessive.

Are the Terminals still Philips? (Posi Drive, on Power Con) or did they go to Torx like they did on True1?

So, a pair of pliers probably would damage the plastic connector, but that U-shaped thing is basically just a reverse wrench, so why not use the proper wrench size? It's got the same flat sides and rounded end that a wrench does. Barring that, you could also use a plastic clamp that has rubber grips (woodworkers use these as they are far less likely to damage the wood they are working on).

I guessing they devised this more for the Powercon? Same form factor? Otherwise it seems silly.

I remember when pro audio used to use Hubble connectors. 😂

perfect for skateboard recycling

what wow

Man this sucks. At the theatre I work at, I've recently been the one making speakon cables and we are running out of connectors, so I figured I'd put some new ones on the next order list. I was not aware that these new ones need a special tool. This fact alone makes it much more complicated because we have to order stuff through the city management, so we have a set budget and I am firmly against spending 90€ of that fairly limited budget on a tool that shouldn't cost anything near that. Getting a similar tool is also a complicated matter. But on the other hand, I've been carefully using pipe wrenches and a vice to open the older connectors because I'm not THAT strong, so maybe that'll work for these too. And although I see where that regulation is coming from, it's bonkers for a plug that can technically be opened without tools, but even some able-bodied adults don't have the strength for it. I don't think that there are any children out there who are this strong but still stupid enough to try to open a connector belonging to an installation that belongs to others.

Hmmm.... madness... I think they will lose the market of not-so-professional-soundguys, I'm afraid... That toolprice is not for me... Glad there are other brands... 🙂 Thanks for this video, Dave! Nice to be informed by you! In Europe the silverish tool is € 77 and the black tool is € 65. FYI.

that their tool is conductive seems like a possibly lethal problem in waiting

Nice

Did they say why they made the changes? Is it really for child saftey?

We might enjoy the vintage feel... Honestly Dave you need to do a book of quotes mate, you're lol funny at times you really are

Is there a more then 4 channel sound tools cat tails in the making?

Are there any changes to the standard powercon line? The actual connector that carries 120 V without question? The true one connector is nice, but not yet adopted by most manufacturers.

What a racket!

Nice connectors 😊 but I see this tool soon at some 3D printers 😅 pages

Is it now rated for 100 volt dc?

And now you need a Torx 8 screwdriver to tighten up the contacts.

Make these dude . I will buy them

This is low-key hilarious.

Nice wooden tool you made there :) Did you also try to use an ordinairy adjustable wrench? I think that should work as well :)

I have found the nl4 barrel ( female to female ) works great for the second tool, a 6” crescent wrench for the $90 wrench. Solved!

With that tool You just won an argentine passport!! Congrats!

Hopefully there will continue to be Chinese connectors that work like the original, and Neutrik will be forced by the market to get their head out of their ass and make a usable product.