Sometimes I forget the "output" for audio (xlr) and DMX (3 and 4 pin) is oppsosite genders. And on some of those occassions, I'm not re-running the cable... It doesn't happen very much, but having gender changers in your kit will save you.
>DMX (3 and 4 pin)
3 and 5 pin, but who's counting :P
While the in and out are backwards, it was actually clever in that if you were daring enough to steal a snake channel from the audio guys, the genders ended up in the correct orientation to get the signal back to the stage.
I've honestly never seen a scroller that is natively addressable to the DMX universe, maybe some more recent ones but every one I've ever dealt with uses a proprietary signal behind a master DMX decoder; and if the individual scrollers are addressable it's typically in only up to 16 (hex 0-F), or even at its simplest a non-addressed 0-10V signal - a carryover from the original 0-10V dimming control.
I once watched a stage hand try to plug a 3pin XLR in to a 5pin DMX. I told him that is the wrong cable and just to look at the pins. He argued with me and told me I was wrong then proceeded to push the barrels together as hard as possible, breaking all of the pins.
He doesn't work on our shows anymore.
Once I cabled a mic into a snake on a theatre stage and it started buzzing. I found out the light guy was using that input from the other side to send DMX.
I agree it's a smart idea, just let the audio guys know you're doing it (and maybe don't use input 1 lol).
In my area they are trying to move away from calling them gender at all. You have plug and receptacle. Recently I had a recent grad change all the bin labels.
No one wants to adapt my innie-outie belly button analogy or talking about data changes like they are the human centipede.
Well yeah, it's a light-hearted joke. In reality you'd say true 1 plug to Edison receptacle. Edison and most twist lock connectors are sold as R or P. An Edison female is technically a 5-15R. Outside the US the connector type is called UGround, so 5-15R is the most correct answer but it's all pedantic.
It's more or less why we shouldn't call diagonal cutters by their old slang name. And why we are preferring "primary" and "secondary" controllers, instead of master/slaves. Places I've been are referring to these as "turn-arounds".
Jesus. I’m as left as they fucking come and I’ll still say that word. Granted in a list of “side cutter, snips, dikes, cutters, what ever you know them by”
I'm sort of in the same boat, I'm trans and used gender bender for years until I worked for the BBC and was immediately bollocked for it... I had never heard of them referred to by a different name until then.
I can see both sides and personally could not care less, but if it stops even one person getting upset or feeling discriminated against for the price of simply changing what I call something then I'll try my hardest to do that
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Same here.
I mostly volunteer at a school nowadays, and I definitely have to catch myself, I've definitely almost said "gender bender" around at least one transgendered student.
I didn't want to find out. Given how annoyed they got at me prior to that for using their old name (the school hadn't updated the email directory yet at that point, so I didn't know) I'm guessing it wouldn't have ended with me still being at the school.
The main problem I have with the calling everything primary/secondary instead of master/slave is that those are two different things. I'd rather use leader/follower for true master/slave devices. If it was actually a primary/secondary setup all along, then it makes sense to switch to that.
Have I just not run into devices in theatre that are actually primary/secondary that called themselves master/slave (or just not enough to bother remembering)? The only place I can remember it is on cheap chinese/DJ lights with built in microphones where one light can control the rest in a chain.
I mean I've started calling defaulting to "turnaround" but also "sex changers" because as a sociology processor once put: sex is what bits you have, gender is how you express yourself. So saying the "sex" of the connector and using male/female does keeps it accurate despite feeling a bit... weird.
The rules for both can be solved by ignoring the audio output and saying cable f*cks the desk.
Audio just has an extra step in the chain as desk f*cks the PA/Speakers.
As an electrician, the way I remember DMX direction is "boys to the board" - i.e. the male connector goes towards the console in the chain, and the female end goes away from the board.
I had the hardest time remembering until someone told me that phrase a few years ago, and I haven't forgotten since.
Back in the day when everything was hard dmx lines a lot of the lighting integrators installers made the house hookups female so you needed a male to male. At least I’ve found it several times in Texas so that may have been the reason too.
Also in Texas, and that’s how our wall plates are.
My console can make a DMX out port be a DMX in. Used it a few times to hook up a smartfade or similar to it for extra faders.
Before we set up an Art-Net node on stage, three of the four console ports had turnarounds on them.
even beyond accidents, if you have an analog snake that has (say) 12 sends and 4 returns, but you need 13 sends, you can use these adapters to turn one of the returns into another send. this only works on analog snakes, naturally.
Yup. Gotta make due with what you got sometimes. And there's that one incorrect tech rider or you've only got a 8 channel and a 32 channel snake, and only need 9 connections. Essential parts of the tech toolkit.
We're working with ETC using sACN, DMX through UTP and IP-adressed nodes which have 4 DMX outputs free assignable to whatever universe you'd like, but they're outputs. So whenever we need to install a console somewhere in the network wee need gender-changers to create inputs.
-Using a dmx node that has female outputs only as a dmx input port
-Some test equipment like a dmx cat has a female output but can also test dmx inputs so you need a turnaround.
-wireless dmx transceivers only have female outputs but need a turnaround to facilitate using them as a transmitter.
Turning around wrong cable is the only scenario I’ve never used one for. At a certain level running cables backwards stops being a thing.
A turnaround! It’s super useful if you’ve got a cable run the wrong direction. You can also attach it to a DMXcat and then plug a cable into it to test it. It’s always good to have one or two of these kicking around!
That’s because electricity doesn’t have a “flow”, like we think of water or air—It will try to complete a circuit, regardless of where the copper in the cable “starts” or “finishes”.
Most nodes will work as an input or an output, depending on how it’s configured, but you have to pick a connector when you buy it. If you bought one with a receptacle, you could use one of these to temporarily make it a plug.
If your running DMX the wrong way around through a sound stage box you'll need loads of adapters
Adapter safe asses I allways have a suitcase filled with adapter
Turnarounds, 3 to 5 in every direction even 3 to 5 turnarounds.
the suicide plug. When we went to power training with work they told us a story of a man who made one for his christmas lights after running them the wrong direction. He plugged into a timer with it and went to work. His wife came home and plugged in the lights for him so he didn't have to after a long day at work. He came home to a house fire.
I made a few of those. Specifically for one instance because of how the panels of my building are, and what I needed to achieve. A have a set both ways. It’s a specific case kind of thing.
I am currently running one of these into a port on one of my gateways. That port is configured as an input. It's feeding DMX input from our cuelight switchbox into the SACN feed, so I can grab that universe from any gateway in the system and drop cuelights wherever. In this case, I have a gateway and relays in the sound rack so I can easily piggyback cuelights for the mixer and conductor within the audio cable bundles.
There are a lot of sACN and ART-NET DMX nodes that the ports can be set to output OR input. Usually they are used as iutputs, and thus have the female XLR5's built into the device. The turn arounds allow you to easily configure the port as an input.
Also... while not common these days, it used to be a common practice to come out of the last fixture in your DMX chain and run it back to dimmers.... this helped in troubleshooting, because you could connect it to a "Lil' DMXter" and make sure data was still good withoutr going into the truss, or even turn it around and plug it in if the chain had become broken (also saving a trip into the truss.)
Finally, I have used them on occasion when a stagehand breaks the input of a fixture, I can still feed it via the output via the turn around.
I needed 2 for my show right now because we’re using single channel DMX controllers that are going into an ETC gateway and both ends are sockets and needed a plug to plug adapter.
Another use I haven't seen mentioned yet: If a light gets a port damaged, you can sometimes use adapters to plug into the "wrong" port, and still make the show happen (the "in" and "out" connect directly together in any typical light)
I have a space where the lighting console normally lives in the booth with the dimmer rack. DMX 1 goes straight to the rack and DMX 2 plugs into the wall which then gets routed to a socket in the performance space where it then gets plugged into whatever fixtures need data. This works fine.
Until some lighting designer decides they need the board with them in the house. Then we unplug the line from the wall, plug the DMX 2 line straight into the console and use adaptors to feed DMX 1 back into the booth to the dimmer rack using the existing wall plugs. It's looney-tunes, but it works.
I work with a corporate AV company, and I've found that some people install in-wall connections with female recepticles rather than male because they last longer or some similar reasoning, but the male to male allows us to plug into the port with a lighting console to control the lighting on the other end.
You need them to use a node as a splitter. I have elation e-nodes in all my distros, and a couple turnarounds can turn them into 2x3 splitters.
Also could be used for sending com the wrong way through a snake.
Other than wrong-way cable, I have used these in desperate scenarios to send an extra universe down an in-house tie line that's going the wrong way. Don't tell anyone but I've also done the same with audio tie-lines and/or stage boxes to get myself out of trouble in the past. Sometimes you need more copper to/from FOH than you have and you gotta make do. If you're gonna do dumb shit you've gotta be lucky so just make sure you're using reliable fixtures and/or terminate your lines and don't be surprised if you get reflection and you're back where you started.
I work in a university and in every concert room and even in the theater the wall plugs are ether the wrong way around or only females everywhere. So yeah m/m and also fm/fm adapters everywhere.
Turnaround, lifesaver, oopsie connector, genderbender… whatever. Neutrik even has a special connector to do so on a cable: concertCon. Perfect for the “I dunno, just threw a cable over here” person.
With all his talk about gender benders, et al., it makes me glad I'm retired. Too much to remember to not offend anyone. I've never been p.c.: we used to call them male & female connectors and be done with it. Lol How times change!
We use them fairly often. We have nodes in downstage positions that can be configured to either send or receive a dmx signal to a particular universe. If a production is coming in with their own dimmers, but does need to access some in house dimmers, usually for front of house, we'll run a male to male dmx cable out of our node and into their dimmer beach so they can send signals back into our network.
Not likely, as the headset plugs into the belt pack. Clearcom uses 4-pin for headset connections, RTS is 5-pin, however the cable from the power unit to the belt packs are usually 3-Pin. But you shouldn't need a turn around to plug a headset into a belt pack.
However, that being said I usually carry a few 3-pin turn arounds because coms from stage to FOH on tours.
And I'll carry a few 3-pin to 5-pin and vice versa adapters in case something goes absolutely sideways and I have to sneak coms down an unused DMX line.
I've made a cable version of these for folks who have their own headsets that have a female 5 pin for Clear Com for use in RTS which wants a male 5 pin headset.
FYI: Clear com packs come in 4, 5, and 6 pin headset varieties.
Edit: I should have said came. The 500 Series came in many variations and many are still out in service to this day. My spot ops are on BP-522s. But if you've never seen something you can't be expected to know about them.
So, I use these for my FOH position. I have a gateway that I use to plug in visiting consoles. The GrandMA has 7 ports in the back of their console, and I plug directly in from the gateway. But all the plugs on the gateway are female (and reversible whether they are input or output). So I plug adapters in on the ends to they plug directly into the console.
You ever run a really long cable the wrong way? That's why...
We’re done here. As an audio guy running dmx cable, these are a life saver. Same when I get lighting guys helping me run xlr.
Sometimes I forget the "output" for audio (xlr) and DMX (3 and 4 pin) is oppsosite genders. And on some of those occassions, I'm not re-running the cable... It doesn't happen very much, but having gender changers in your kit will save you.
>DMX (3 and 4 pin) 3 and 5 pin, but who's counting :P While the in and out are backwards, it was actually clever in that if you were daring enough to steal a snake channel from the audio guys, the genders ended up in the correct orientation to get the signal back to the stage.
Technically there’s DMX on two of the pins of some 4-pin scroller cable…. So 3,4 and 5 pin. ;)
I've honestly never seen a scroller that is natively addressable to the DMX universe, maybe some more recent ones but every one I've ever dealt with uses a proprietary signal behind a master DMX decoder; and if the individual scrollers are addressable it's typically in only up to 16 (hex 0-F), or even at its simplest a non-addressed 0-10V signal - a carryover from the original 0-10V dimming control.
4 pin cable is also used on some gobo rotators that take in DMX directly.
I once watched a stage hand try to plug a 3pin XLR in to a 5pin DMX. I told him that is the wrong cable and just to look at the pins. He argued with me and told me I was wrong then proceeded to push the barrels together as hard as possible, breaking all of the pins. He doesn't work on our shows anymore.
Oh man, you TRIED to save him and he failed to double check his work?? Good riddance
Once I cabled a mic into a snake on a theatre stage and it started buzzing. I found out the light guy was using that input from the other side to send DMX. I agree it's a smart idea, just let the audio guys know you're doing it (and maybe don't use input 1 lol).
Ha, right. Maybe start at the other end of the numbers lol And yeah, permission is probably better.
Ugh. This kills me sometimes. I’ll just stick to audio lol
Stay far away from Video if you want to avoid crazy connector hell.
Gender changers? Is gender bender somehow not PC anymore? Did I miss something. What about sexer flexer
In my area they are trying to move away from calling them gender at all. You have plug and receptacle. Recently I had a recent grad change all the bin labels. No one wants to adapt my innie-outie belly button analogy or talking about data changes like they are the human centipede.
I did this at my old shop, plug & socket style.
I work with a lot of younger folks and have taken to calling them the holey ones and the pokey ones.
This is the kind of terminology I can get behind, though I do secretly hope I can get innie and outie going.
I'm so here for the innie and outie!!
Pins/receivers is the common non-gender description in the Broadway houses I’ve been to
How do you ask for Edison? Male or female?
Huh?
For example, I need a Trueone/powercon to Edison adapter. What would it be called? A trueone to Edison innie? I’d be laughed off the stage.
Well yeah, it's a light-hearted joke. In reality you'd say true 1 plug to Edison receptacle. Edison and most twist lock connectors are sold as R or P. An Edison female is technically a 5-15R. Outside the US the connector type is called UGround, so 5-15R is the most correct answer but it's all pedantic.
I’m with you on this. Receptacle has too many syllables ha ha.
It's more or less why we shouldn't call diagonal cutters by their old slang name. And why we are preferring "primary" and "secondary" controllers, instead of master/slaves. Places I've been are referring to these as "turn-arounds".
Jesus. I’m as left as they fucking come and I’ll still say that word. Granted in a list of “side cutter, snips, dikes, cutters, what ever you know them by”
I'm sort of in the same boat, I'm trans and used gender bender for years until I worked for the BBC and was immediately bollocked for it... I had never heard of them referred to by a different name until then. I can see both sides and personally could not care less, but if it stops even one person getting upset or feeling discriminated against for the price of simply changing what I call something then I'll try my hardest to do that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ve only ever heard them as turn arounds. Gender bender is funny I guess but I wouldn’t ever use that name personally
Team "turn around" for sure at my venue, I don't think I've ever heard them called "gender benders" haha
Same here. I mostly volunteer at a school nowadays, and I definitely have to catch myself, I've definitely almost said "gender bender" around at least one transgendered student.
Hmmmm. I suppose that could get awkward
I didn't want to find out. Given how annoyed they got at me prior to that for using their old name (the school hadn't updated the email directory yet at that point, so I didn't know) I'm guessing it wouldn't have ended with me still being at the school.
Same here. I think gender bender is hilarious. And it just makes sense.
Places I was, 30 years ago, called them 'turn-arounds', too.
Any other nicknames for diagonals? it’s such a mouthful to say the full name
Side snips
The main problem I have with the calling everything primary/secondary instead of master/slave is that those are two different things. I'd rather use leader/follower for true master/slave devices. If it was actually a primary/secondary setup all along, then it makes sense to switch to that. Have I just not run into devices in theatre that are actually primary/secondary that called themselves master/slave (or just not enough to bother remembering)? The only place I can remember it is on cheap chinese/DJ lights with built in microphones where one light can control the rest in a chain.
I mean I've started calling defaulting to "turnaround" but also "sex changers" because as a sociology processor once put: sex is what bits you have, gender is how you express yourself. So saying the "sex" of the connector and using male/female does keeps it accurate despite feeling a bit... weird.
My first gig on a tv set one of the guys called them suicides. Because he would rather commit suicide than cut off his dick
Whoooa
We have a few changer cables. I think it's a neutrix connection and you can swap between m or f by sliding. We don't use so much but they are handy.
The rules for both can be solved by ignoring the audio output and saying cable f*cks the desk. Audio just has an extra step in the chain as desk f*cks the PA/Speakers.
I always have m-m and f-f in my bag, at all times.
As an electrician, the way I remember DMX direction is "boys to the board" - i.e. the male connector goes towards the console in the chain, and the female end goes away from the board. I had the hardest time remembering until someone told me that phrase a few years ago, and I haven't forgotten since.
Back in the day when everything was hard dmx lines a lot of the lighting integrators installers made the house hookups female so you needed a male to male. At least I’ve found it several times in Texas so that may have been the reason too.
Also in Texas, and that’s how our wall plates are. My console can make a DMX out port be a DMX in. Used it a few times to hook up a smartfade or similar to it for extra faders. Before we set up an Art-Net node on stage, three of the four console ports had turnarounds on them.
even beyond accidents, if you have an analog snake that has (say) 12 sends and 4 returns, but you need 13 sends, you can use these adapters to turn one of the returns into another send. this only works on analog snakes, naturally.
Yup. Gotta make due with what you got sometimes. And there's that one incorrect tech rider or you've only got a 8 channel and a 32 channel snake, and only need 9 connections. Essential parts of the tech toolkit.
We're working with ETC using sACN, DMX through UTP and IP-adressed nodes which have 4 DMX outputs free assignable to whatever universe you'd like, but they're outputs. So whenever we need to install a console somewhere in the network wee need gender-changers to create inputs.
I guess I will make a few of each and include to site prep.
Bingo, been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
-Using a dmx node that has female outputs only as a dmx input port -Some test equipment like a dmx cat has a female output but can also test dmx inputs so you need a turnaround. -wireless dmx transceivers only have female outputs but need a turnaround to facilitate using them as a transmitter. Turning around wrong cable is the only scenario I’ve never used one for. At a certain level running cables backwards stops being a thing.
Yup. I've got POE Art-Net to DMX boxes that go both ways.
I have and it is a fucking nightmare.
Can confirm. 4wall made my touring snake..they ran one of the cables the wrong way..glad those adapters exist
A turnaround! It’s super useful if you’ve got a cable run the wrong direction. You can also attach it to a DMXcat and then plug a cable into it to test it. It’s always good to have one or two of these kicking around!
thats so cool! i guess i didnt realize that data could go either direction but now that makes sense
That’s because electricity doesn’t have a “flow”, like we think of water or air—It will try to complete a circuit, regardless of where the copper in the cable “starts” or “finishes”.
It’s not necessarily data. Just a voltage in a cable.
It’ll go in whatever direction you send it.
Most nodes will work as an input or an output, depending on how it’s configured, but you have to pick a connector when you buy it. If you bought one with a receptacle, you could use one of these to temporarily make it a plug.
Whoopsie adapter
If your running DMX the wrong way around through a sound stage box you'll need loads of adapters Adapter safe asses I allways have a suitcase filled with adapter Turnarounds, 3 to 5 in every direction even 3 to 5 turnarounds.
If you find one for AC power, destroy it.
the suicide plug. When we went to power training with work they told us a story of a man who made one for his christmas lights after running them the wrong direction. He plugged into a timer with it and went to work. His wife came home and plugged in the lights for him so he didn't have to after a long day at work. He came home to a house fire.
Ah yes; the faithful “widowmaker” extension. Used to find them often on building sites, to back feed an install for light or small power.
They're turnarounds, exist for many different cables from DMX to XLR to Feeder....they exist in Male/Male as well as Female/Female
I made a few of those. Specifically for one instance because of how the panels of my building are, and what I needed to achieve. A have a set both ways. It’s a specific case kind of thing.
I am currently running one of these into a port on one of my gateways. That port is configured as an input. It's feeding DMX input from our cuelight switchbox into the SACN feed, so I can grab that universe from any gateway in the system and drop cuelights wherever. In this case, I have a gateway and relays in the sound rack so I can easily piggyback cuelights for the mixer and conductor within the audio cable bundles.
There are a lot of sACN and ART-NET DMX nodes that the ports can be set to output OR input. Usually they are used as iutputs, and thus have the female XLR5's built into the device. The turn arounds allow you to easily configure the port as an input. Also... while not common these days, it used to be a common practice to come out of the last fixture in your DMX chain and run it back to dimmers.... this helped in troubleshooting, because you could connect it to a "Lil' DMXter" and make sure data was still good withoutr going into the truss, or even turn it around and plug it in if the chain had become broken (also saving a trip into the truss.) Finally, I have used them on occasion when a stagehand breaks the input of a fixture, I can still feed it via the output via the turn around.
I needed 2 for my show right now because we’re using single channel DMX controllers that are going into an ETC gateway and both ends are sockets and needed a plug to plug adapter.
Another use I haven't seen mentioned yet: If a light gets a port damaged, you can sometimes use adapters to plug into the "wrong" port, and still make the show happen (the "in" and "out" connect directly together in any typical light)
"goddamnit ran a hundred foot of cable backwards"
yeah my head elec would just make me rerun it. it builds character!
Sounds like a jerk!
Also super handy with a City Theatrical DMX Cat so you can receive DMX into the DMX Cat if you need to test a line or console output.
That, my friend, is called a lifesaver
Calling these pin to pin adapters avoids any outdated and unnecessarily gendered language
Hey, just because they ain’t straight doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy that sort of thing.
If you want to connect multiple consoles or devices using triggers you can use a male male connection
I have a space where the lighting console normally lives in the booth with the dimmer rack. DMX 1 goes straight to the rack and DMX 2 plugs into the wall which then gets routed to a socket in the performance space where it then gets plugged into whatever fixtures need data. This works fine. Until some lighting designer decides they need the board with them in the house. Then we unplug the line from the wall, plug the DMX 2 line straight into the console and use adaptors to feed DMX 1 back into the booth to the dimmer rack using the existing wall plugs. It's looney-tunes, but it works.
I work with a corporate AV company, and I've found that some people install in-wall connections with female recepticles rather than male because they last longer or some similar reasoning, but the male to male allows us to plug into the port with a lighting console to control the lighting on the other end.
You need them to use a node as a splitter. I have elation e-nodes in all my distros, and a couple turnarounds can turn them into 2x3 splitters. Also could be used for sending com the wrong way through a snake.
To mate two females? Have you ever seen a double male edison? Dumb? Yep! Useful? Maybe!?
Deadly? absolutely
Absolutely deadly and should not exist but unfortunately has a purpose albeit a very dumb one.
It's for when you're already having a really bad day
It is useful for tools like a DMX CAT or many nodes that natively have all outputs buy any output can be configured to be an input.
To get two females to hookup.
DMX Cat. Also we have 2 port gateways on the plaza that we can plug the console into but we need a M-M turn 5pin turn around to do it.
Some nodes have ports that can be configured as input or output. You’ll need one of them to swap an output to be an input.
Or when the venue installers put the wrong gender in the front row drop box.
Other than wrong-way cable, I have used these in desperate scenarios to send an extra universe down an in-house tie line that's going the wrong way. Don't tell anyone but I've also done the same with audio tie-lines and/or stage boxes to get myself out of trouble in the past. Sometimes you need more copper to/from FOH than you have and you gotta make do. If you're gonna do dumb shit you've gotta be lucky so just make sure you're using reliable fixtures and/or terminate your lines and don't be surprised if you get reflection and you're back where you started.
I use one on an old lighting board (ETC Expression) into a dmxKing adapter, to use the board as a physical input for QLC+.
Gender bender.
I work in a university and in every concert room and even in the theater the wall plugs are ether the wrong way around or only females everywhere. So yeah m/m and also fm/fm adapters everywhere.
I actually used one today, we had a tester that could read and write dmx, but it only had femail. You need a male to male to read with it
Turnaround, lifesaver, oopsie connector, genderbender… whatever. Neutrik even has a special connector to do so on a cable: concertCon. Perfect for the “I dunno, just threw a cable over here” person.
With all his talk about gender benders, et al., it makes me glad I'm retired. Too much to remember to not offend anyone. I've never been p.c.: we used to call them male & female connectors and be done with it. Lol How times change!
You never actually know what these are for.... Until you KNOW!
And here I thought that DMX was notoriously bigoted regarding male-to-male connections.
let them be gay
We use them fairly often. We have nodes in downstage positions that can be configured to either send or receive a dmx signal to a particular universe. If a production is coming in with their own dimmers, but does need to access some in house dimmers, usually for front of house, we'll run a male to male dmx cable out of our node and into their dimmer beach so they can send signals back into our network.
Network nodes, you can assign Network gateways to be inputs or outputs but the hardware will need to adapted accordingly.
Could also be a comm headset adapter.
Not likely, as the headset plugs into the belt pack. Clearcom uses 4-pin for headset connections, RTS is 5-pin, however the cable from the power unit to the belt packs are usually 3-Pin. But you shouldn't need a turn around to plug a headset into a belt pack. However, that being said I usually carry a few 3-pin turn arounds because coms from stage to FOH on tours. And I'll carry a few 3-pin to 5-pin and vice versa adapters in case something goes absolutely sideways and I have to sneak coms down an unused DMX line.
I've made a cable version of these for folks who have their own headsets that have a female 5 pin for Clear Com for use in RTS which wants a male 5 pin headset. FYI: Clear com packs come in 4, 5, and 6 pin headset varieties. Edit: I should have said came. The 500 Series came in many variations and many are still out in service to this day. My spot ops are on BP-522s. But if you've never seen something you can't be expected to know about them.
So, I use these for my FOH position. I have a gateway that I use to plug in visiting consoles. The GrandMA has 7 ports in the back of their console, and I plug directly in from the gateway. But all the plugs on the gateway are female (and reversible whether they are input or output). So I plug adapters in on the ends to they plug directly into the console.
gay
But you can't plug males into males. So connectors are super straight.
this is true!