J-Con, An Oldie But Goodie
Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 02:55PM
With the semester over, I'm cleaning up my office today, and buried on my bulletin board, I found the classic J-Con poster, and I have posted it here, and a little snapshot should show up at left.
I didn't witness this personally, but the story is that this guy was exhibiting these at the NSCA AES show in the 1990's about 1992 (see comment from Matt Stoody). If you can't make it out, it's an "Edison" connector, connected directly to a 1/4" plug. The idea is that you can "save money" by using plain old extension cords instead of "expensive" speaker cables.
When asked what would happen if someone plugged a speaker (or a male 1/4" connector) into a power outlet, the guy selling them supposedly said that this wouldn't happen. Why? Because Jesus would protect them. J-Con supposedly stands for Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Note: If anyone can clarify/verify any of these details please post a comment.
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Reader Comments (11)
Not only do I thank you, my whole theatre thanks you.
Verily, I want you to reach behind the TV Set and lay your hands upon the tube. Can you feel the power coursing through you? That is the power of J-e-Zus! Ye be heA-led!
I was there, have this poster too. IIRC, it was AES, around '92. The 'J' was for Jesus as the inventor was born again or something similar. People would try to explain to this man the folly of his device. He thought it was revolutionary, which it was, although not in a good way. Rick Chinn said it best; he called it the "Meet-Your-Maker" connector.
AKA: Passive to Powered Speaker adapter.
I still want someone to make an XLR-CamLock adapter. I have made an L21-30P to A5F, just to confuse (err-educate) my students.
A friend of mine made a BNC to Camlok adaptor. When asked why, he simply replied "To see if I could."
Steve Payne - Awsome- you made me spit my milk!
RAmen
A student of mine wired the top jack on an edison panel to run audio to a "radio" on stage so that it would look accurate. However, the bottom jack was wired for electrics to make a lighting effect look good, too. Guess what happened one day. I've been told it was, hands down, the most hair-raising sound anyone present had ever heard. I do know we lost a speaker and amp out of our inventory.
I once made an male edison to dual banana cable as a gag gift for an employer.
I believe you were right the first time. I met the inventor of the J-CON at the NSCA convention in St Louis in 1996. I cannot imagine he made it to more than one show. It was also very much the talk of that show, so I'm pretty sure that was the world's first glimpse of the J-CON (and its last). There was kind of a funny line in the write-up about it in the convention daily, something like, "The product is called JCON, for Jesus Christ of Nazareth, someone you're likely to be meeting very soon if you actually tried to use it..."
Ummm... Or I guess it could have been the 1996 AES convention in LA. I'm sure it was '96 though because that was the year we released Smaart 1.0 and I remember it being the same year.
BTW, here's a shot of that flyer in color. Pretty low res though. If anyone has a better scan of it, I'd love to have a copy.