Thought I'd post this, hopefully it'll help out.
I have experience using the Nady 401X's...I have 2 sets of them, and a couple of Nady
UHF mics too. I'm a volunteer (parent actually) at a small private school that wanted to get into the "big time" theater
arena. For the past 5 years we've done 2 main
stage shows per year, one being a drama, the other a musical. When I originally got involved, I knew nothing about sound, and today, I'm (alledgedly) the resident expert. I purchased my first 401X when we desperately needed to have more students mic'd and our partially functioning set of 4 AKG's and the two Nady
UHF's weren't enough. I was dealing with a budget of $0, so the money came out my pocket. They served the job, in fact well enough that when we did our next show I purchased my second set. Marion and Harold Hill wore them in the Music Man that Spring and we're still using them today after 9 additional shows and 4+ years. Some pros: they're cheap. They're fairly reliable. We've had to move the two reciever racks to the very front of the theater to limit the broadcast distance. The packs themselves have been pretty durable, we are in a jr/sr. High environment and the kids constantly jam the packs in their back pockets. The included lavs have been pretty reliable, the biggest pain has been where the
wire meets the
connector. I just ordered 20 more of them from Markertek and I'm going to put
heat shrink tubing on the connection to strengthen them up. As for the quality of the sound, I think they're good. Not great, but good. Depending on the actor and the placement, I typically have to push up the mid more than anything. One of their biggest pro is that since they're
VHF, you're not dealing with the
DTV spectrum
shift that has obsoleted our other mics. But yes, they are lower quality than the "good stuff". I've used
Shure and
Sennheiser units and they certainly aren't up to their quality in both
build and sound. But at less than $100 per mic, they're a tough value to
beat IMHO for wireless in a non-professional space. Having said that, might I recommend something else?
The biggest pain in our environment (school with large cast) is that the mic'd kids sound great but everyone else is ambient. We tried a number of tricks for choir miking, but nothing worked well. I then discovered a thread here on CB talking about
stage mic's, specifically the Bartlett mic's
Bartlett Microphones in Elkhart, Indiana - home page . We are doing the Sound of Music in a couple of months and that show has 16 individual singers and there was no way I could spend a lot of money to buy more wireless mics, besides, our
UHF mics have become so troublesome... So I did some research and went ahead and bought 3 of these mics. They are amazing. We are running all of our singers with no wireless mics and they sound great. We have a 30 piece live
orchestra (not in a pit) and the mics do not
pick up any thing. My
stage is 24 feet deep and 36 feet wide and I could actually do the show with 2, but I've got a third for balance in a couple of scenes. Depending on your situation and needs, take a look at these. No more worries about batteries and wireless hassles. And the mix of the chorus singers is great. I truly believe that I could run the whole show on these 3, but I'm still miking the 7 main characters (my daughter is Maria so I'm playing with fire here...) and they'll all have Nady
VHF mics on, with the
stage mics picking up everyone else. And if the wireless's cause us any trouble, we'll turn them down and only use our trusty Bartlett's. They are seriously awesome...and only $200 a piece. Hope this helps in some small way.
Mike Shaffer
