Secret Jargon

As I listen to our sales manager John instruct our newest Nashville salesperson, Stephen Reter (welcome Stephen), I am reminded of my first days at Trew. Nearly five years ago, I was a studio/ live sound minded audio nerd, with some dabbles in the world of broadcast audio. When I began taking sales calls I like to think I knew EVERYTHING about location audio, especially the correct technical terms.

I think I hear my coworkers laughing and they haven’t even read this.

Little did I understand, very few people use technical names, but if I want to serve the customer better, I’d better learn their language. Imagine my thoughts when I first heard, butt plug, clown nose, juice can, furry, cat, coily, viper, vampire, etc. So this is my homage to jargon. I hope you enjoy.

First remember our goal is to make sure we are on the same page. We in the sales and rental departments ask a lot of questions, in order to make sure communications are clear. In the the world of wireless here are some of the most confusing terms…

Wires. How does wires mean wireless? That one baffles me, yet when people say wires, I generally know what they are alluding to. Radios can mean Radio mics or walkie-talkies. I’ve even heard cordless mics. Then when talking about the wireless systems some may consider the lavalier (also called lapel for many in the MI business) and the wireless as the microphone unit. So “I’ve got a problem with one of my wires,” could mean frequency coordination, malfunction, or a short in the lav cable or an actual solid mic cable. A plug-on transmitter has perhaps the most adult title, the butt plug. It has also been called an end plug, end cap, and handheld adapter amongst others.

Windscreens are a fun category. I rarely sell colored windscreens, but a red foam for a handheld interview mic is also called a clown nose. Which is also the name for the foam rubber on the base of a VDB Boompole. In high wind situations, you might pull on a Softie, furry, fuzzy, fur, dead cat (which Rode Microphones actually uses). My personal favorite euphemism came from a production company that shoots hunting and fishing programming, “Hey man, we need some of those windscreens that look like stripper tassels.” After the initial shock of the statement, and little prying for his application, I realized he wanted a Remote Audio MicroCat lavalier windscreen.

Pigtail. What is a pigtail? For some, myself and Trew staff included, a pigtail is a wire with no connections. Sometimes the leads are tinned for easy on location soldering. However, for many of you, for very understandable reasons a pigtail is many different things. The most obvious is a coiled cable. Just like a pig’s tail. Still others use the term for any short jumper or adapter cable. Finally, many more use it to describe the camera end of a breakaway cable, if not the entire cable. Breakaways have numerous names. True to their origin, we call them Betacam Breakaways, but I’m the first to admit, the Betacam is not the most popular camera today. They’re also called umbilicals, confidence, links, breakaways, quick release cables, etc, etc, etc.

The juice can is just a physical description of the PSC Universal Shock mount. I’ve also heard it called the McDonald mount in reference to a previous similar product. I’d love to hear your favorite industry jargon, so please drop a comment and see if we can increase each others’ knowledge, and maybe give your peers a chuckle. Till next time.