Wireless Shure ULX2 Issues

Blake Alley

Member
At our church, we have a series of Shure ULX2-J1s with various SM58 and BETA87A capsules but have lately been having problems with two specific transmitters. I think they are only a few years old and there were no obvious accidents (dropping, moisture, etc.) that triggered these failures.

The first transmitter is a ULX2/SM58-J1 that eats batteries like crazy! I have not had a chance to measure its current draw, but its battery life seems to be around 30 mins on a fresh Procell 9V, which obviously seems a bit off.

The second is also a ULX2/SM58-J1, but it doesn't seem to output an RF signal at all. I've got plenty of receivers that I've tried it on, but it is the only mic that doesn't register on any frequency and any receiver. Everything else on it seems to be fine, just the fact that it doesn't output a signal.

Does anybody have any obvious fixes or troubleshooting steps for me to try out on these problematic mics? Pictures probably wouldn't help at this stage because visually, they look almost perfect except for a few scratches here and there, but I can get pics if/when they're necessary.

P.S. I'm not afraid of taking stuff apart haha. I managed to disassemble and reassemble Sennheiser EW 300 G2 handhelds, so if any possible solutions are internal, by all means, recommend it!
 
Consult the Shure website and contact their application engineering department to see if there is something you can try, and to arrange for a service return if necessary.
 
So the last response on this thread (before editing, I guess) stated it might be the 600MHz band screwing with it, but I am well aware that T-Mobile is lighting up the band with their new services and that none of our mics are in the licensed band anymore.

I double checked and the mics are the Shure "J1" band which is 554 MHz to 590 MHz, but there are some Sennheiser systems around here that may be overpowering us, so I will check on that to make sure it isn't just a frequency overlap issue, although I recall it working at some point, so maybe some new transmitters sprung up and are screwing with our specific system.

I will contact someone hopefully soon about the battery-eating one, which sounds like a hardware problem that I can't do anything about it.

Thanks for the quick responses as well! I hope to post an update soon...
 
So the last response on this thread (before editing, I guess) stated it might be the 600MHz band screwing with it, but I am well aware that T-Mobile is lighting up the band with their new services and that none of our mics are in the licensed band anymore.

I double checked and the mics are the Shure "J1" band which is 554 MHz to 590 MHz, but there are some Sennheiser systems around here that may be overpowering us, so I will check on that to make sure it isn't just a frequency overlap issue, although I recall it working at some point, so maybe some new transmitters sprung up and are screwing with our specific system.

I will contact someone hopefully soon about the battery-eating one, which sounds like a hardware problem that I can't do anything about it.

Thanks for the quick responses as well! I hope to post an update soon...

Yes, I was relying on memory regarding J1 and after hitting "post reply" I looked it up.... and found out you were probalby good with J1. While you're not safe from IM, the most likely culprit for interference is the "repacked" TV stations. It can literally happen over night and what worked yesterday may not work today. That said, I think you have hardware problems that will need Shure to sort out.
 
I agree with @themuzicman, I think these need to come home for service. Shure charges a flat rate for repairs, and the process is documented at shure.com/service.
 
Ok, so I may have finally figured one of the "no signal" problems.

I previously mentioned that the transmitter was on the J1 frequency range and that I was fairly certain that the receivers were as well (because it had worked in the past), but it turns out that our receivers had been shifted around after a large event, a children's musical to be precise, and now there are some J1s and some G3s that no one bothered to check; of course, the handheld designated receivers are of the G3 type!

Sort of makes sense because one of our other rooms is G3, so some of those must've made their way into our system (we didn't have enough receivers to go around, so we had to collect various receivers from various places to fulfill the mic number requirement).

So, I'm going to chalk that issue up to me being clueless about the different receiver types and to Shure for not displaying the actual frequency transmitted on the display (tbh not really Shure's fault, it's totally user error). Lesson learned! :doh:
 
Ok, so I may have finally figured one of the "no signal" problems.

I previously mentioned that the transmitter was on the J1 frequency range and that I was fairly certain that the receivers were as well (because it had worked in the past), but it turns out that our receivers had been shifted around after a large event, a children's musical to be precise, and now there are some J1s and some G3s that no one bothered to check; of course, the handheld designated receivers are of the G3 type!

Sort of makes sense because one of our other rooms is G3, so some of those must've made their way into our system (we didn't have enough receivers to go around, so we had to collect various receivers from various places to fulfill the mic number requirement).

So, I'm going to chalk that issue up to me being clueless about the different receiver types and to Shure for not displaying the actual frequency transmitted on the display (tbh not really Shure's fault, it's totally user error). Lesson learned! :doh:
@Blake Alley Not bad! Sixteen and you're already learning; good on you!! Learn from your errors; remember them and move on. Congratulations!!! @TimMc Care to comment?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
Thanks, Ron! My only hope for this thread now is that some other individual in the future unaware of their frequency ranges will come across this and discover that their hardware isn't necessarily malfunctioning, just that the receiver and transmitters aren't the same!

I'm fairly good at lighting (specifically Hog 4 and Vista by Chroma-Q) but audio isn't exactly my strong suit, especially wireless stuff. ;)
 

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