AudioBanter.com - View Single Post - What Does "XLR" Mean? -- Official Answer

Mike Rivers wrote:

In article
writes:

Is it? I thought Pin 3 Hot was un-American. I thought I was
brit-bashing. Oh well.

Pin 3 hot was the American standard.
The famous MX-10 mixer had Pin 2 of the XLR output connectors
grounded so you'd get voltage between pins 3 and 2.
It was the Europeans who were building things with Pin 2 hot.
The convention for microphones has always been Pin 2 positive
with respect to Pin 3 for pressure toward the diaphragm, but not
everyone followed that convention, particularly companies like Beyer
and AKG.

That's pretty ****ed up right there. So, both Americans and Europeans
were inconsistent between microphones and everything else? This means
that if any European or US company built stand-alone mic preamps back
then, "correct" wiring would dictate an inversion between input and
output?

ulysses