Blog for Gear Related posts.

Line 6 X2 Digital Wireless Guitar Systems

Ok, I went to Radio Shack today to pick up a replacement 9v power adapter for my X2 wireless system, and it got me thinkin, I never reviewed this thing!

The version I have is the sub-$200 XDS95. I’ve been using it for probably 6 months now. I know what you’re thinking… “A $200 wireless guitar system, this guy cant be serious about his music”. If so, you obviously have had the same bad experiences I had in the past.

I was skeptical, and rightly so… I had tried two other “cheap” wireless systems. Frankly, they sounded like junk… They made my guitar sound completely different (thin and toneless) and I had tons of problems with dropouts. I gave up on the idea of ridding myself of cables forever a long time ago, convinced that even the most expensive wireless system would fall short of the sound quality and reliability of a cable.

Several years of satisfaction with Line 6 products kept drawing me to the X2 wireless system. I read nothing but rave reviews, and this was a different technology than any other wireless unit out there. I figured it was time to give wireless one last shot. If line 6 gets it wrong then I’m done with wireless FOREVER.

BOY WAS I WRONG!
I already had it set in my mind that this would be another failed attempt. I carefully reviewed the return policy prior to purchasing, and had absolutely 0 expectations.
When, I opened the box the first thing I noticed is that it came with energizer batteries… Pretty Cool!
Loaded the batteries, connected the cables, and turned it on (really… that’s all there was to it). I heard NOTHING BUT SILENCE…. no humming, no static, no fuzz… just silence! I strum my guitar and it comes through, and I laugh out loud… WOW, this thing actually sounds good!
(For a minute, with the silence before I strummed, I wasn’t sure it was going to work at all). The sound of the guitar naturally faded away into dead silence. But what good is it if I have to be within 3 feet of the receiver? I walked around the house, I played in every room, I walked outside… not a single dropout. I only went so far down my road before I realized I looked like an idiot and came inside. I found my A/B switch and I ran the cable from my guitar into the switch. I ran one leg of the switch through the wireless system to the POD X3, and one straight to the X3.
Switching back and forth, I truly could not hear ANY difference between the two!

I carried it with me to practice. I walked all over the church. I made several trips to the sound board… I have been using it ever since, and have yet to hear my guitar drop out even once! This thing is simply amazing! I can’t believe it was less than $200. I rely on it 3 times a week, and if it broke or was stolen I’d immediately replace it. They have some higher end models, but I can’t see why anyone would need them, other than possibly needing a rack mount unit.

If I had any criticisms, it would be that it uses 9v batteries. They aren’t cheap, but you get about 5 hours from one battery, so that’s not too bad for a 9v, but AA batteries would have been a more economical choice. Also, I happened to have a 9v AC adapter laying around for the receiver, but it would have been nice if it came with one. I can’t see anyone who uses this on a regular bases taking out a screwdriver to replace a 9v battery every 5 hours of use. The battery power makes a nice backup (used this when my old power supply failed last week) but I can’t believe they would expect this to be the primary source of power for the transmitter. Finally, the transmitter jack requires a threaded 1/8″ plug. It would have been nice if the engineers would have used a standard 1/4″ jack, but so far I have had no problems with it.

Here’s the rundown:

Pros: This wireless unit is inexpensive, it has excellent range, and it’s completely transparent to your tone. No dropouts, and dead simple to setup.

Cons: 9v batteries are more expensive than the AA’s that some other units use. Did not come with a power adapter for the receiver and the battery compartment is screwed shut. Also, it doesn’t use a standard 1/4″ cable.

Overall: I would recommend this product to ANYONE and EVERYONE who is considering going wireless. I have been blown away by the value of this little $200 wonder!

Hookin’ it all up! A Laptop and IEMs on stage…

Click for a larger picture

Ok, so you decided to jump head first into using a laptop with Ableton Live, or similar software, on stage… Or you just got these really snazzy in ear wireless monitors and you’re not sure how to include them in your setup? Maybe you’re just curious about this sort of stuff…

Whatever the case may be, its always helpful to visualize whats going on. So I included a little drawing I made of our on-stage setup. Its nothing fancy, and probably not the “best” way to do these things, but you work within the resources you have available.

Anyhow, if you stare at this long enough it should make some sort of sense to you. Its sort of messy on paper, but it works out pretty well on the stage. The splitter, the wireless transmitters, the direct box for the laptop, and the monitor mixer are all in one single enclosure.

So here is the rundown. Everything runs into the splitter (Microphones, guitar setup, keyboard and computer) The splitter… um… splits… the signal of each of these to both the stage snake (which feeds the main console not shown) and the monitor mixer. From there, the two aux sends on the monitor mixer output two seperate mixes for the two in ear monitor transmitters.

As for the laptop; the software is setup to output the main output to the left channel and the click track to the right channel. The main audio from the laptop gets sent to the splitter to go to the FOH (Front of House) mixer and also the monitor mixes. The audio from the right channel (just the click) goes into the monitor mixer so that the metronome sound doesnt go into the mains (what everyone else hears).

Pretty straight forward, however, if we had the resources there are a few things we would do differently.
1) There would be a seperate monitor mix for each band member, but this would mean a much nicer mixer with more than 2 aux feeds, and additional transmitters.
2) Use an audio interface such as the presonus firebox to get more than 2 outputs from the computer. We could output each recorded instrument on its own output to give the sound person more control. We would also need a larger splitter to do this.

Hope this helps someone out.
Feel free to leave comments.

Ableton Live in Worship

For those of you who dont know, Ableton Live is a music program with features designed around live performances. What makes “Live” different from the other offerings is its focus on the ability to dynamically move from one area of a song to the next seamlessly.

We have been using Ableton Live for quite some time now, and I thought it would be a good time to do a dedicated article in the new gear blog about how we use live.

We got turned on to this idea by a service called interactive worship live, however, the tracks didnt really sound like us and each song was rather expensive. This got me thinking… We could record our own backing tracks, it would feel more authentic, and be a WHOLE LOT cheaper.

So here is how it works:
We decide on a new song. We find a version we like, and usually model our arrangement on that. We run through it in a few different keys, usually just acoustic guitar or piano, just to make sure we choose the right key.

The next step is what takes the most time… I listen to the song…A LOT… and when I feel fairly comfortable with it I load up a session in ableton live, match the tempo of the session to the original song, or the tempo we decided on, and I start recording parts. I usually lay down the guitar part first, and then put drums and bass with it. If the song requires multiple guitar parts I’ll track them all out, then remove the most prominant one which I plan to play live. I do this all in what ableton calls “arranger view” which looks like a standard DAW recorder. Arranger view is completely linear. We tend to be very structured in the way we arrange songs, so we dont jump around much…. The ability is there we just dont use it yet.

After I have all the parts recorded I bring it to the next practice and we try it. I run ableton live from a laptop. The stereo line out from the laptop is split into left and right and run into two direct boxes. All the instruments are assigned to the left channel which is split into the the monitor mix, and the main console. The click track (metronome) is assigned to the right channel, which is only routed into the monitor mixes (in ear monitors) and not the mains.
We get a count off with the click track prior to the start of the song.
This also allows us to setup the tracks so that the drums can drop out completely in parts of the song if needed, and we dont loose our timing when they come back in.

After we practice it, we usually discuss the arrangement, I make any changes the following week if necessary and we try it again the next week. Sometimes this whole process takes less than a week, and sometimes it takes several weeks, depending on how complicated the song is, and how much free time I have to work on it.

So thats basically how we use Ableton Live in worship. It works great for what we need at the moment, and there is enough flexability that it could be a great tool even if we add a drummer and bass player in the future.
We thought it would be too rigid always playing with a click track, but we love it now. It makes the music extreemly tight and allows us to add additional instruments we need to make the song work. The beauty is, if someone else joins us in the future and fills one of these parts, we have a reference for them to learn their part, and can just mute it when they are there, and have it as a backup incase they miss a service.

I just picked up an M-Audio Trigger Finger, and have been playing around with mapping triggers in ableton live to the touch pads. Looks like it could be really interesting to let the keyboard player trigger events in songs. This could be extreemly usefull when playing with a drummer. The keyboardist could use session view to start the click track, trigger loops and instruments for different sections of the song and fire off  “one-shot” sounds. We could also continue to use arranger view, and use it to “jump back” to a predefined point in the song if we need to extend it.

Guitar Mod (Humbucker Coil Tap)

This weekend, while trying to clean the pots (short for potentiometers, or volume and tone knobs) I managed to short the master volume pot out completely…. Saturday night…. at midnight… with church the next morning.

Knowing that I needed my guitar for the morning service, I had a momentary state of panic before I decided to break out the soldering iron and make a short jumper to bypass the pot, which would get me through the service in the morning.

While I was in the guitar (a schecter C-1 plus) I noticed a set of wires, dangling free, taped off and connecting to nothing.
I pulled up a wiring diagram for the guitar online and found that these wires were for a feature called “coil tapping”. This feature has sense been implemented into the newer C-1 models, but was left out on the pre-2005 models. It allows you to “tap into” only one of the two coils in a humbucker pickup to give you somewhat of a single coil pickup sound via a “push-pull” tone knob.

Sunday afternoon I went to Any Owings in Myrtle Beach and picked up some volume pots, and decided to drop in a push-pull tone pot to utilize the coil tap feature. The whole project took me a good part of the evening (wanted to take my time and do it right), but I think it’s gonna be worth it. I was able to try it out for a few minutes last night, but something about the wiring in our house makes single coil pickups hum like crazy, and the coil tapped humbucker was no exception. I was only able to try it with headphones, but the vibe I got was something between a strat and a telecaster.

I’m excited to try this out live, maybe I’ll be able to dial in some sounds I never could get quite right before…
We have been doing a song lately called “Know Not What They Do”, and it really beggs for that classic tele sound, and this may be just the ticket.

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