Wiring inserts into patchbay-does this make sense?

[Brian Scheffer]

I'm wiring TT patchbays and I'm lifting all my shields at the connector inputs to avoid ground loop issues. I'm using punch blocks and treating everything as if it were balanced at the punch block. Unbalanced gear is getting its ring (pin 3) tied to the sleeve at the inputs and its its ring and shield are tied to sleeve at its outputs.

For the inserts, which are unbalanced from the console, I have one three conductor wire going to the punch block. These points are half-normalled. The tip and sleeve go to the send (output) and the ring goes to the tip return input. Here the shield is lifted in order to conform to my anti-ground-loop scheme. In order to treat the connections as if they were two unbalanced outputs from the console, I have tied the return ring to the send ring and the send ring to the send shield. Does this make sense? Adopting this method seemed to clear up some insert to unbalanced interconect issues.

My only problem at this point is a piece of gear, a Distressor, that requires that pin 3 is floated at the output. This piece will not behave on the inserts. I originally had it wired as straight balanced, but found the requirement in the manual to float pin 3 when feeding an unbalanced input. I made a TT cable that has its pin 3 lifted for special use when taking the Distressor to unbalanced inputs. It works fine on any interconnect except my inserts. There, it's making crazy space noises and pops when the output knob reaches a certain level. The unit seems excessively noisy now, so I'm hoping I didn't damage the thing. I'm having a hell of a time figuring out what's going on here. If anyone is able to follow all of this craziness and has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.