An Inexpensive Wireless System for your Guitar and Bass that doesn’t suck
Hey friends. Over the years, I have worked with a large variety of instrument wireless systems. The best in my experience have been the very high end Shure systems, but a grand is a lot of money unless you are being paid well for performing.
I wanted the convenience of wireless without spending part of a mortgage payment, but I also did not want the horrible tonal loss and high end cut that I got with a number of ones that I bought with my own money and now hold down the bottom of one of those plastic storage boxes.
I tried and still own units from BOSS and Line6. Most of the stuff from Amazon was such utter shit, that it got packed up and returned the day of arrival. My recommendation on all of those (lots of different brand names, but the same guts in all of them) is DON’T.
I say nay to the Boss and Line6 offerings, although they were better than any of the Amazon stuff. Some offered a switch to give you the “sound”, more correctly the loss of sound that comes from cable capacitance, that is exacerbated by cheap-ass cables. To that point, if you are going to use a cable, only spend the money on cables designed for live stage use. They will have thick, non-kinking outer coverings, military grade connectors, strain reliefs and will not pick up electrical noise from whatever. I have a preference and have written about them in greater detail in another article. After too many noisy, kink-consistent and high murdering junk, I only use Pig Hog cables at this point. A bit more expensive, super reliable, lower capacitance and no directional electron travel bullshit.
Back to the no cable solution. On a day when I felt like smacking the credit card, I ordered the Spark Link system. For the lowest price of any brand name, my expectations were quite low. And I was pleasantly surprised.
They are rated for 70 feet of range and I have not gone that far, but I found that they handle walls and obstructions like furniture far better than other ones that use the oversaturated 2.4 GHz radio band. Why not the less crowded 5 GHz band? It has less range and is more susceptible to interference. Science!
They run for 6 hours taking 2 hours to bring the Lithium ion batteries from dead to full charge. The design has worked on every instrument that I own, including those having an output jack positioned by someone with no concept of decent placement. There are only four channels, which could be problematic if you have a stage full of musicians using them, but if you are at that level, you are going to be using a multi device consolidating wireless controller anyways.
They recharge over USB-C and the included cable charges both at the same time. They take up very little space and it would take a lot of work to turn them off or change channels inadvertently.
Most importantly I notice less tonal loss with these over any other systems that I have tried other than the Shure professional controller system.
Rest assured that while they are from Spark, you do not need to have other Spark equipment to use them. They of course do work with Spark amps, but also work with other amps as well. Also note that they ship as a pair, so if you buy more than one pair, don’t mix them up.
At a price of $179 CAD MAP, I don’t believe that there is a better system out there under $500. You may have found one and if so, please let me know. I’m really happy with my set.
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