Old illegal wireless mics: trash or treasure?

[bbrunskill]

hang on a minute, pdc! You're not reading my posts.
I'm in New Zealand. 700 Mhz is legal here, although it is being phased out with a tentative end date of 2014.

Hence why if someone was basically throwing out some decent 700 MHZ, I might be interested. I could get two years of use out of them.

When 700 mhz gets reallocated here, I'lll be replacing all our wireless for sure. Churches should be the first to uphold the law of the land.

[pdc]

Sorry, I thought you were in the USA. My apologies.

[tedanderson]

I'm thinking about doing some Frankenstein setups with the 700Mhz stuff where I will harvest the elements out of the mic and the pre-amps out of the base. I have some cheaper wireless sets that operate outside of the band so sticking a Beta 87 element inside of Radio Shack unit might give it some improvement.

Also I thought about removing the radio equipment from other legal devices like baby monitors and cordless phones. Does anyone here know if it is illegal to modify/re-purpose something such as cordless phone to use it for something like a wireless mic?

[waynehoskins]

I suppose that depends on where we define what constitutes the "radio". In the US at least, radio-transmitters for virtually all services involved have to be type-accepted or certificated or whatever they're calling it now, and if modified they no longer are type-accepted and thus not legal to operate. If I modify the speech amplifier in the radio, have I modified the radio-transmitter from a type-acceptance standpoint? I don't know, but I'm inclined to think so.

[pdc]

You want to modify baby monitors and telephones for vocal range audio? Why waste your time?

[buggyboy]

why? more time than money.
It happens (students, retired, etc).

Also, some folks think that sort of thing is fun.
If you can do the mods, more power to you.

[wogster]

Originally Posted by pdc

Nope. Completely different than the crystal based VHF units of yesteryear.

All you can do is pitch 'em, or sell them to a user in another country that can make use of them. The list of those is getting smaller. The 700 band is shrinking world wide.

The FCC is giving people a year to stop using them completely and then heavy fines will be issued. The Sennheiser guys were in the shop this week. We had a talk about the future of 608-614MHz. There is no proposal before the FCC at the moment, but there is some talk of it going away completely for some markets. We already have the 433MHz band off limits. Some people are saying that VHF would be the best choice. It sounds better, has better reception, and is now more open than ever. After the inventory has been completed by the FCC, they will announce another scheduled move and reallocation, in about five years. So, do your research and go lower if you can.

I think most churches do not actually need wireless, and should just not use it. It is a waste to have a stationary praise team on wireless mics. It is a waste to have stationary musicians on it. Wireless does not sound as good as a wire most of the time, and is just a convenience, not a necessity that warrants wasting the Lords money in some cases.

We have sold wireless systems to churches that have purchased them twice. They were warned and did not listen. 14k dollars later, they are starting to get the idea. What a waste.

I can see where wireless makes sense, even with a stationary team. That is, where running wires becomes a major construction project. This is often the case with churches built before 1930 or so, they don't leave you a lot of room to run wires. Yes you could build a fake pillar to run your cables, but it might look kinda ugly.

I would love to move our sound system to the balcony the problem is that there is nowhere to run a snake from the balcony to the platform.

[kevin.pilsbury]

Originally Posted by wogster

I can see where wireless makes sense, even with a stationary team. That is, where running wires becomes a major construction project. This is often the case with churches built before 1930 or so, they don't leave you a lot of room to run wires. Yes you could build a fake pillar to run your cables, but it might look kinda ugly.

I would love to move our sound system to the balcony the problem is that there is nowhere to run a snake from the balcony to the platform.

I am not as knowledgeable as some, but I just finsihed rewiring our sound sytema and moving the FROM the balcony. It is a very difficult location for my sound person to get a feel of the mix from up there. The center cluster is overpowering and they have a tendancy to keep the music and pastor turned way down because they are hearing something completely different than what the people on the floor hear. I can't wait to get our "floor" booth fully operational so I don't have to keep running on and off the stage and sending hand signlas to the booth just so people can properly hear the mesage. Just my 2 cents.

[Brad Weber]

Originally Posted by wogster

I can see where wireless makes sense, even with a stationary team. That is, where running wires becomes a major construction project. This is often the case with churches built before 1930 or so, they don't leave you a lot of room to run wires. Yes you could build a fake pillar to run your cables, but it might look kinda ugly.

I would love to move our sound system to the balcony the problem is that there is nowhere to run a snake from the balcony to the platform.

If you tried to make all the stage inputs, microphones and returns to the speaker system, etc. wireless, how many total wireless channels would be involved? How practical is that? That is why such applications are where digital snakes and/or networked audio often make sense. If you can put boxes at the stage or at the current mixer location and convert all the audio to a new mix position to run on one or two coax, CAT or fiber cables then that greatly reduces and simplifies the cabling involved and may also benefit in terms of ground loops, noise and other potential issues.

As far as modifying existing RF equipment, my understanding seems to be the same as Wayne's in that I sort of doubt that changing the mic element would be an issue but any modifications that could affect the radiated power or represent a different use probably negate all FCC and similar approvals or certifications.

[wogster]

Originally Posted by Brad Weber

If you tried to make all the stage inputs, microphones and returns to the speaker system, etc. wireless, how many total wireless channels would be involved? How practical is that? That is why such applications are where digital snakes and/or networked audio often make sense. If you can put boxes at the stage or at the current mixer location and convert all the audio to a new mix position to run on one or two coax, CAT or fiber cables then that greatly reduces and simplifies the cabling involved and may also benefit in terms of ground loops, noise and other potential issues.

As far as modifying existing RF equipment, my understanding seems to be the same as Wayne's in that I sort of doubt that changing the mic element would be an issue but any modifications that could affect the radiated power or represent a different use probably negate all FCC and similar approvals or certifications.

I think the balcony project is going by the wayside, since I wrote that, the building folks got back to me, there are structural issues and the balcony does not meet safety code, so nobody is allowed up there. To bring it up to code, involves adding another construction project to the already growing queue (the joys of worshiping in a church that was built in 1900).

If I did relocate I would consider a digital snake, only in that with the amount of copper involved an analog one is likely almost as expensive especially if it needs to be plenum rated, and hauling that big a cable around is a pain in the mule. However, if your looking at say 5 microphones, wireless is still going to be cheaper then a new snake and it's fewer wires to trip over.....

[DTV-Engineer]

To get back to the original topic, some manufacturers (ElectroVoice, for one) will re-band and refurbish older 700MHz equipment for a nominal charge that is radically less than the cost of a new unit. By the time they get through, you wind up with a legal unit that will coordinate with other gear and be essentially good as new (they will even replace the capsule if necessary, without additional labor expense).

As to modifying baby monitors... even if that didn't raise FCC issues, you will probably be very disappointed with the results. Baby monitor transmitters don't begin to approach the signal-to-noise, distortion, or dynamic range performance that one would expect from even a low-end wireless mic.

-- Jeff

[pdc]

As an EV dealer, I can honestly say that wireless mics are not their strong suit. I would look elsewhere. We seldom sell any more of them. Too many issues (LCD displays going out, right out of the box) and variances among units, even from the same production run. They have some ingenious ideas, like their table top mic that uses a body pack transmitter. EV does offer excellent support to dealers and end users over all.