manuallyfocused
Active Member
I teach technical theatre at a small private high school, and we normally use wireless lavaliers only once a year for three weeks when we do our musical production (Urinetown last year, Grease this year). We have a cast of between 18 and 30, and we generally rent wireless (Shure ULX) for each cast member in the show. Our director wants to make sure she has complete control over whose voices are heard well and whose voices are heard....less well. The system we rent usually comes fully racked with paddle antennas, antenna distro, connected computer with wireless workbench, the whole package.
However, I have a dilemma. At the beginning of the year, the IT department "discovered" a box full of microphone gear that they were planning to recycle, and luckily checked with me before they chucked everything. Turns out it was 10 sets of Sennheiser EW100 wireless lavaliers with receivers (6 G2 and 4 G3), all in the 500-650 mHz range, and one Bogen receiver and lavalier in the 470-490 mHz range. No idea when they were purchased or when they were buried in the server room, I've been here for five years now and had never seen them before. The ones I've tested so far seem to work fine, and when I found them I assumed we'd use them to offset our wireless rental needs for the musical and find ways to use them occasionally for other events throughout the year.
However, as I've been looking into it I'm realizing we're missing a lot of components to really make the system work properly. We have no paddle antennas or antenna distro, no rack-mount hardware (all the receivers were gaff-taped together in 2 stacks) and no real place to put a dedicated rack to store them properly. We also don't own the correct microphone elements- all the lavaliers have lapel mics, but we get Countryman hair mics with our rentals and would need to purchase or rent the equivalent for the Sennheisers (I've looked at budget versions from bodymics.com and Amazon or ebay, but i'm concerned about longevity and quality). The question is- would it be better for us to keep them and slowly put together all the pieces of the system we don't already own in order to use them in conjunction with whatever we rent in for the show, or should we sell them while they are still relatively new enough to be worth something? I don't normally get funding for equipment beyond what I'm able to scrounge from the show budget or use-it-or-lose-it leftovers at the end of the year. For our limited needs during the year, is it really worth it to invest in the Sennheiser system? How much longer will it be legal to use the 600 mHz band? Before I knew we owned these, I thought it would be ridiculous to invest a large amount of money into owning wireless mics for our limited actual needs, especially given the uncertainty with potential frequency auctions. Now that they were dropped in my lap, I'm not sure.
Thanks for your thoughts!
However, I have a dilemma. At the beginning of the year, the IT department "discovered" a box full of microphone gear that they were planning to recycle, and luckily checked with me before they chucked everything. Turns out it was 10 sets of Sennheiser EW100 wireless lavaliers with receivers (6 G2 and 4 G3), all in the 500-650 mHz range, and one Bogen receiver and lavalier in the 470-490 mHz range. No idea when they were purchased or when they were buried in the server room, I've been here for five years now and had never seen them before. The ones I've tested so far seem to work fine, and when I found them I assumed we'd use them to offset our wireless rental needs for the musical and find ways to use them occasionally for other events throughout the year.
However, as I've been looking into it I'm realizing we're missing a lot of components to really make the system work properly. We have no paddle antennas or antenna distro, no rack-mount hardware (all the receivers were gaff-taped together in 2 stacks) and no real place to put a dedicated rack to store them properly. We also don't own the correct microphone elements- all the lavaliers have lapel mics, but we get Countryman hair mics with our rentals and would need to purchase or rent the equivalent for the Sennheisers (I've looked at budget versions from bodymics.com and Amazon or ebay, but i'm concerned about longevity and quality). The question is- would it be better for us to keep them and slowly put together all the pieces of the system we don't already own in order to use them in conjunction with whatever we rent in for the show, or should we sell them while they are still relatively new enough to be worth something? I don't normally get funding for equipment beyond what I'm able to scrounge from the show budget or use-it-or-lose-it leftovers at the end of the year. For our limited needs during the year, is it really worth it to invest in the Sennheiser system? How much longer will it be legal to use the 600 mHz band? Before I knew we owned these, I thought it would be ridiculous to invest a large amount of money into owning wireless mics for our limited actual needs, especially given the uncertainty with potential frequency auctions. Now that they were dropped in my lap, I'm not sure.
Thanks for your thoughts!
