Most Cost effective hard wired mic setup. Suggestions?

[Jon Furtado]

I have my own Sennheiser G2 dual wireless package with Voice Technologies VT500 lavaliers. I bought this kit thru B&H a few years back and it has served me well. I've never had a situation arise where I couldn't scan and find a clean channel to broadcast my audio on....until...this past Thursday.

I was shooting in San Diego on the 10th floor of a building. Pulled my wireless kit out and scanned the frequencies and found no channels available! I was forced to dangle my Rode NTG-2 Boom mic down over the tallent and barely got through the shoot. But this has brought up one of the weakest links in my gear arsenal: The wired lav.

I know a lot of ole timers always say you should use your wired lav's instead of a wireless system. And since i've been shooting a lot of sit down interviews, I think they're right.

Should I buy a dedicated set of wired lavs'? Or should I buy the The VT1126-S3.5 Phantom adapter that will convert my VT500's to XLR that I can run to my mixer/camera?

Which would be a more cost effective solution? I have a lot of gear that I've had to buy. So, seeing as this has only happened to me once so far, I want to find something that will work well but not cost a ton. The phantom adaptors cost $169/each on B&H! That's a bit pricy. But its almost the full price of buying 2 new wired lavs.

Suggestions?

 

[davefisk]

Just get the hardwired lavs for sit down interviews. When I do sit down interviews, I use a hardwired lav and a boom on a stand, and have to separate tracks.

 

[scottfs]

Wired lavs

Wired lavs

I'm a big fan of wired lavs, since I do numerous sit-down interviews as well. They work well, and less inclined towards interference. I'd be interested in some brand names of decent quality lavs. So far, I've been using low-to-mid quality lavs. I'm not disappointed in the sound, since I'm just doing oral history-type of stuff. But perhaps it would be good to move up a bit. I'd like a wired lav with an XLR terminal.

 

[Steve House]

A less expensive alternative for an XLR converter is Ambient's Eumel model 3,5

http://www.ambient.de/produkte/mikrofonspeis/emp/emp_e.html

You may run into the no available channel situation more and more often, depending on the frequency band your G2 is operating in. Many sold in North America were in the 700mHz band which became completely closed and illegal for wireless mic use early in 2010. 700 mHz wireless units need to be retired and replaced by new systems operating in other bands. As license holders who bought into the 700mHz band when it was auctioned off go active, it's going to become harder and harder to find places for legacy wireless units to sneak in.

 

[gpforet]

The Voice Technologies are very good mics. I'm a Tram TR-50 guy, but have recently been very impressed and purchasing the Oscar Soundtech 801 lavs.

I'm a big fan of wired lavs, since I do numerous sit-down interviews as well. They work well, and less inclined towards interference. I'd be interested in some brand names of decent quality lavs. So far, I've been using low-to-mid quality lavs. I'm not disappointed in the sound, since I'm just doing oral history-type of stuff. But perhaps it would be good to move up a bit. I'd like a wired lav with an XLR terminal.