Though I’ve already sung the praises of this system and how great it performs and love the fact that it operates in the UHF frequency range. But I wanted to give a gig report on using the unit with my old farts classic rock band.
Last night we played at our regular first Friday gig at a local hotel. This would be the first time that I used this system other than at church. So I really going to put it through its paces.
As far as its signal is concerned, I am SO glad I went with this system rather than one that operates in the 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz range. My bandmate, and the lead guitarist in our band, uses an XVive system that operates in the 2.4 GHz range. During sound check, he was having all sorts of interference problems with that unit and ultimately had to plug it directly into his pedal board. But with the WS-50 in a completely different frequency range, I had no interference problems whatsoever!
The WS-50 battery life is excellent! I was actually using two sets in this gig because I was also playing acoustic guitar. As I write this article, both sets are charging and no unit lost more than half of its charge! In fact, the set I used for acoustic still had 3 out of 4 bars of power as I was shutting the system off when I wasn’t using it to conserve power.
The only irritating thing I experienced with the WS-50 was that it would come loose when I rested my Telecaster on its stand. My Tele has a recessed jack, so the transmitter would come loose if I wasn’t careful about how I placed the guitar on the stand. That’s really more on me, but it did slow things down a bit when I was changing guitars. Though it’s a minor thing and really a factor due to my recessed jack, it is a bit concerning as I don’t want to damage the transmitter. It hasn’t been a problem with my Les Paul or my Taylor T5z as those don’t have recessed jacks.
All in all, though, all I can say is “Wow!” The signal quality is great. My guitars sound great with them!
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