Favorite Wireless

[shanejw]

I'm thinking about purchasing a wireless system and I was wanting input on what too look for or stay away from.  Our singer has a Sennheiser and it seems to work well for him.

 

[TBurst Std]

my X2 has worked GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Cagey]

I'm thinking about purchasing a wireless system and I was wanting input on what too look for or stay away from.  Our singer has a Sennheiser and it seems to work well for him.

The vast majority of them still on the market, regardless of their quality, are actually illegal as of June 12, 2010 (cite). Anything in the lower/upper 700Mhz band, which is from 698 to 806 MHz, is now set aside for public safety and other uses. Anything operating in that range is essentially useless in the US and needs to be sold outside the country or scrapped.

I'm sure there are others, but the only ones I'm aware of for guitar right now that won't get you in trouble are Line 6's "Relay" G series. They operate in the 2.4Ghz band, and have some pretty impressive specs.

 

[ByteFrenzy]

I have the Line6 G30 and I'm very happy with it. On top of the fact that it operates in the 2.4Ghz band which is the only one certain to remain available for years to come, it's also one of the few units that work down at bass frequencies without resorting to evil compression/decompression techniques. Of course, you should read up on the specs - it works with AD/DA conversion that you may consider even more evil and not be happy with.

 

[TBurst Std]

The X2, now discontinued, is also safe from thre FCC. Did my research on this a few years ago when I was making the choice. Its not like this whole freq ban just came up, it was put in place a while ago. JUst not in effect until recently.

 

[CrackedPepper]

Will the 2.4GHz units interfere with cordless phones in the same band?

 

[Cagey]

No. The higher the frequency, the narrower the bandwidth needs to be, so there are numerous "channels" available. Then, most devices that will use those frequencies are fairly modern, so they automatically "hunt" for open or unused freqs. On top of that, transmission is necessarily digital, and there are packet IDs that tell the device what to pay attention to and what to ignore, much like your modem/router does. Finally, I think the devices that operate in that range are limited to power levels that keep their sphere of influence (operating range) pretty small.

 

[CrackedPepper]

Good explanation - thanks Cagey

 

[ByteFrenzy]

And it's not only so in theory, it also works in practice. We usually perform in residential areas with lots of private wifi networks, and I've not had to switch channels due to interference a single time.