paulears Posted October 18, 2009 Share Posted October 18, 2009 What follows is just a few comments from my experiences today, as the subject has come up a few times recently. ScenarioA local dance school arrive at the venue with a hired in radio system. A cardboard box, that when opened has a few Trantec S4.4 packs inside. Closer inspection reveals 8 transmitters, 8 loose receivers and 8 power supplies. A few plastic bags have the CPC style headsets - most had locking jacks. A couple had already mated headset/receiver with insulation tape - presumably because of the lack of a locking jack. Condition, considering the lack of flightcase, was pretty good suggesting they're fairly new. Four labelled as Ch69, the other four without any clues. There are a pile of Sennheiser G2s in a rack at the venue, and another of Trantec 4000s - and the sound of these we know fairly well, and also the little dead spots that exist in the venue. Things were a little stressed in the sound area, so one of the lighting people unpacked, and wired them in. After we'd sourced some 9V batteries, which the dance school hadn't thought of, I put them in. The flap hinge was a little weak - 3 hinged open properly, the other 5 had rounded off edges on the little snap in hinges, so came off easily. Once batteried up, they snapped closed and remained secure. The power switch is a recessed button with a red led nearby . No separate mute control, but not a probem. Power up and down was silent with mixer channel live. The CPC headsets we know of old, and are happy with them. As they were all adult sizes, not the kiddie ones, some were a bit loose, but they all fitted fine in the end. All were quite high output, compared to the G2s - with the desk pad out, the gain control could hardly be moved, adding the pad gave a gain pot setting of around 50% ish - so just right for adjustment between people. Audio quality was equally as good as the same kind of headset on the G2. A pile of receivers on a table in the wings, with just the short permanently attached antennas worried me a bit, but during the all day rehearsal, the only problem was one of the non-locking plugs (I guess the supplier simply ordered the non-locking one by mistake) pulling out when the cable dressing was a little tight under the costume. A repeat of the pvc tape as on the other one solved this. No problems whatsoever RF wise. Over the past few weeks a few people have asked about these and having had a chance today to actually use them on a real job, I thought I'd comment here. At the price they're currently being sold for, these could make a pretty useful stopgap system until the frequency change mess gets resolved.Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smalljoshua Posted October 18, 2009 Share Posted October 18, 2009 I didn't know that you could get S4.4s in Ch69. I know of the S4.16s that can but they are slightly different. I've got a couple of these, both Sennheiser and Trantec. They perform well and will get about 6 hours from a single 9v Cell. The receivers are well built and are rack mountable. The transmitters are slightly flimsy, the battery covers also have a habit of coming off entirely. The power buttons also can get a bit loose and the body pack clip is very easy to break. Josh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted October 18, 2009 Author Share Posted October 18, 2009 I'm pretty sure they are 4.4s because under the flap they only had 4 positions, but I've just looked on the Trantec site and the 4.1 should have 16, the 4.4 just the 4 de-reg channels. I'm not certain enough to trust my memory, so I'll confirm this wednesday - when I have another chance to fiddle. For the moment, perhaps I should assume they are like Josh says - 4.1s? P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unfathomable Posted October 19, 2009 Share Posted October 19, 2009 really helpful and answers my questions, cheers. Lucky enough to have got someone to lend me an EW100 + hand-held for a couple of weeks so I am using that for a couple of events. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sound In Gloucestershire Posted October 19, 2009 Share Posted October 19, 2009 I have one that I use for wedding speeches and corporate work, very happy with it. Mine is handheld, so it hasnt quite had the same hard work as a headset would, but im happy none the less Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted October 21, 2009 Author Share Posted October 21, 2009 I talked this one up. Number 7 pegged out. Audio just died. Battery fine, no audio indication on the receiver, or from the output. Slapped their headset into one of my Sennheisers, brought up the fader and all was well - so not the headset. Either the TX pack or the receiver. By the way - these 8 systems are all 4.4 as in should be de-reg channels and they do have 4 channel selectors. The problem tonight was that none of them have frequencies pronted on a label - and the range is the de-reg range, so whoever they came from must have reprogrammed them, but onto what? I have no idea. When I powered up our rack, the eight receivers in there on my licensed channels didn't perk up! So I'll take a frequency counter in with me next show to see exactly what is in there. Very odd! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boatman Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 The manual for these can be found here and shows two frequency ranges available in the EU. The fp 12 - C has four frequencies in channel 52 (719.15, 719.75, 720.15 & 720.85) and the fp 12 - E has four frequecies in channel 70 (863.1, 863.7, 864.1 & 864.9). I guess you may have a mixture of both types. I have a channel 70 vocal set and it has worked faultlessly for nearly two years now. Edit: for SPaG. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.