How to Setup Your First Wireless Guitar Rig!
Do you feel stuck in life? Is there any part of your life you can control? Is there anything we can do to purchase some FREEDOM in this world?
Well boy am I glad you asked because one thing we don’t have to be tethered to anymore is a fucking guitar cable.
Yep that’s right I’m gonna walk you through buying a wireless system for your guitar in order of ascending price (and therefore/sort of quality).
I have owned so many of these fucking things because they get lost, broken, stolen, broken again, you lose one part, order another, lose the first part.
It’s a fucking mess honestly but it’s important when you want to go out into the middle of a crowd of 400 people and just lay down while you’re playing a guitar solo over Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It.” And that my friends is true freedom! Let’s dive in:
Before we start I want to say that I have owned and professionally gigged with ALL of these that I’m about to talk about unless explicitly noted. I’m not just speculating and talking shit.
Here are my top 5 recommendations -
Ok so I bought this just to use for teaching zoom lessons from my house so I didn’t have to be strapped into cables, and then when I lost one of my nicer units I tried this out at a gig and it actually worked GREAT. One of those dongle kinds so won’t take up any pedalboard space. This thing is rad, has been super reliable, no dropouts and it is sooooooo damn cheap. If you are not sure if you want, need, or would use a wireless I honestly would prob start with this. Plus it’s on Amazon Prime so if it sucks or you don’t like it just send it back. Fuck take it to a Kohl’s they’ll send it back for you. It comes with a dual usb charge cable so you can charge both the transmitter and receiver at the same time, and it has 4 channels to cycle through to find the best reception. Like I said I haven’t had any issues using this at gigs. It says the effective range is “100 meters” or about 300 feet, which it definitely is not. I would say maybe 75 feet but wouldn’t push it. If you’re not playing on a huge stage though honestly these are awesome.
This is a really nice unit, super well built and it addressed all the problems that I had with their last relay unit. This consists of a floor unit receiver and then a transmitter dongle that plugs into your guitar. The floor receiver is pedal sized/shaped and would go on your pedalboard, and it functions as a charging hub for the transmitter. This iteration of the Relay is awesome because it runs on standard 9v barrel power like any other pedal would. The last one used a micro USB which is like what the fuck? Oh yeah the way everyone powers all their pedals, by micro usb. And of course it would break all the time, the most secure connection for shit to get tossed around and stepped on, a micro usb cable. Fucking idiots. Anyway, they fixed that so that’s great, and then also this hub has a slot where you can dock the transmitter so that it won’t run down the battery if it isn’t plugged in. Which is also awesome. Great range on this thing, 130 foot range (which I believe) and I’ve never had it drop out. 6 hours of run time and like 150 of standby. It chooses the channel for you automatically so it’s really easy to use and it’s got some other shit on it you don’t need. This one is a really great wireless system honestly if you don’t want to mess with having to charge things outside of your pedalboard or like you really like the idea of a “set it and forget it” system - THIS IS THE ONE.
3 —
Sennheiser XSW-D Instrument Base Set
What I like most about this one is that it costs $319.00 even. Sennheiser isn’t trying to insult me by charging $318.99, they know that I can tell that’s really just 319 dollars. And they know that I’m going to pay it, and pay it often because I keep losing and breaking these fucking things but they’re great and these are the ones I use most so LOOKOUT WORLD!
PROS:
They are dongle style so they take up no pedalboard real estate
They are USB-C rechargeable and it was easy to find a dual USB-C charger
250 foot range
Super easy to sync
Has a mute function on both transmitter and receiver
5 hour battery life
Tells you remaining battery life via flashing LED
Whole thing is one tough
CONS:
It’s pretty fucking expensive
I have broken two of these. They were both entirely user error (shoving a guitar into a case with the wireless still attached) but the thing being so lightweight. I don’t know. I guess I’m reaching here. I replaced it immediately like I said I use these in my real life.
If you’re ok with remembering that your wireless has to be charged via USB cable and you don’t need longer than 250 foot range or face massive interference, THIS IS THE ONE.
NAMM Tec Award Winner!
NAMM Tec Award Winner!
Need I say more?
Oh for real? Ok yeah I guess.. Yeah ok sure yeah I’ll uh. Yeah no worries. Ok well hey this is like a real professional system here we’re getting up close to a fat geezy. It’s got 88 mhz of bandwith and 3,520 selectable frequencies “for interference-free reception” and it’s got an ethernet port in case you want to play COD: World at War online. This one’s got a 330 foot line of sight range, 8 hours of battery life on two double AA’s or their proprietary battery pack (I’ll get into that in a sec). This is a very very legit wireless system. We had this in our rack for a long time. I own two of these systems since we had one in the rack and I wanted to have another for fly dates without the rack. In fact I bought the second one after trying to use the Sennheiser XSW-D in an arena, and well that was really fucking stupid because even though I was only trying to walk about 40 feet it didnt work at all.
I know a few highly respected and intelligent audio professionals who regularly say things like “Sennheiser is shit” or when I showed them that I bought this system they asked if I had checked out the new $150 xVive wireless and that it was better than this. I don’t know what Sennheiser did to them. Hell I’m Jewish, if anyone should have something against the Germans it’s me, but I really like my Sennheiser stuff and I think you’ll probably like it too.
Dude this thing is $500 and it just fucking sucks. I have owned a few of these throughout my life and I feel like everyone has one and it’s just this giant heavy brick of a shitty tuner and it always drops out and just never works. And then they somehow get un synced and you gotta like sell your fucking kidney to get the transmitter and receiver to talk to each other again and you’re giving up a bunch of your pedalboard for this big ass rubber tuner. This probably was cool when it came out 15 years ago when I first bought it and then when it dropped out during my guitar solos I started rethinking it. I can’t believe they haven’t updated this thing. OK now that I’m looking at it, maybe they’re not rubber anymore. And maybe they’re smaller now. Maybe they actually work now. Fuck ok maybe I should delete this whole part. But $500???? That’s still crazy!
