Budget Wireless Mic system for am dram group

[willjam39]

Just adding/agreeing to a lot of the above as someone who specialises in Amdram sound.

1) I'd go no lower than trantec as the cheap systems don't tend to be strong enough to survive more than 2 showruns. 

2) second hand Senn stuff is certainly worth going with as you can get the spares and they tend to survive shows better. Also the mic connection locks! (so useful for amdram)

Im slowly buiilding up my Senn kit with G3s on CH38 and g2s on CH70 and these have survived multiple kids shows with pack swapping. 

My current top out is 14-16 mics as the desk I use is 20 across so have DCA room aswell.  

[Martin Lepley]

14 hours ago, sleah said:

Trantec!

I' likely to be buying THIS system shortly to replace a mix'n'match system for an independant school. Mostly used by juniors (7-10 years) and some use by seniors (11-18 Years) and occasional use by a local youth am-dram.

£3500 for 10 ways in Ch38 😊

Trantec is ideal for am-dram, it's not bargin-basement China-Export junk from Amazon, it's well built kit from a reputable company who also do far more expensive systems.

Trantec also make the radio components for the likes of Sennheiser / Beyer /TOA for some of their offerings - they are actually owned by TOA now.

Spare parts are readily available, even for discontinued kit.

The system I'm looking at (S4.10) is aimed squarely right at the education and am-dram markets.

I notice that that system does not use "true-diversity" and instead uses "antenna diversity".  I guess this is a reasonable compromise.

[TomHoward]

Does anyone rate the Sennheiser XSW range? The XSW-1 (internal antennas admittedly) is £359 per channel with a headset mic. The XSW-2 is £415 per channel (headset) with a external antennas so you could get 75%-ish of the amount of channels in Sennheiser. It's not massively more expensive than the budget ranges really...

[Stuart91]

I bought some of the original XSW range, put a dozen on a school show that I was mixing. RF-wise they were fine but the achilles heel was the easily accessible sensitivity switch on the beltpacks. That was enough for me to sell them on to other customers who didn't have wandering fingers. 

That flaw has been rectified with the new XSW-1 and XSW-2 series. I expect the RF performance will be similar. I didn't fancy the XSW-1 for hire stock, looked a bit "karaoke" for our purposes, but we have ended up with a fair handful of XSW-2, mainly handhelds. They tend to be used singly or in pairs rather than by the dozen, but have been fine on the RF front. 

[Ynot]

My first question when any am dram groups want to look at stuff like radio mics (or any potentially expensive gear, tbh) is "Do you ACTUALLY need to buy??"

If your group does half a dozen shows a year or more, then it's possibly getting towards the more economic end of the equation, though you would have to factor in additional costs on a regular basis for replacing mic heads and occasional transmitter spares. But if there's only a couple of outings per 12 months then it makes FAR more sense to rent what you need when you need it. You'll be able to get (usually) far more modern gear and you'd hope a set of mics that are already preset for the best performance. And the consumables responsibility it down to the guy you hire from.

 

[DavePallant]

On 8/22/2023 at 1:47 PM, TomHoward said:

Does anyone rate the Sennheiser XSW range? The XSW-1 (internal antennas admittedly) is £359 per channel with a headset mic. The XSW-2 is £415 per channel (headset) with a external antennas so you could get 75%-ish of the amount of channels in Sennheiser. It's not massively more expensive than the budget ranges really...

I would go for the Sennheiser XSW 2-CI1-GB which has an instrument cable for bass or guitar and then source headsets from ebay or CPC depending on just how expendable you expect them to be. The XSW 2-Ci1-GB is around £330 at the moment.

Also the XSW2 allows 12 channels in the GB channel while XSW1 allows just 10. I've used 12 regularly with no issues. I dont know why this is the way it is apart from quality of external antennas versus internal pcb antennas on the XSW1.

Edited August 23, 2023 by DavePallant