Most guitar wireless systems aspire to deliver "hard-wired sound." In other words, they are promoted to sound as good as cable. Of course, that's a very subjective standard. But with so many professional artists (vocalists, guitarists and bassists) performing live using wireless systems, many professional-grade wireless systems do, in fact, deliver on on that "promise"-or at least they deliver good-enough quality for live sound. "Close enough for rock ‘n roll," so they say. However, many of those high-end wireless systems can cost $3,000, and are built, for the most part, by companies that have been in the "wireless" business for many years.
Enter Line 6, founded in 1996, who has built itself a serious reputation for making great sounding, reasonably priced guitar amps and effects. But in the wireless business Line 6 is a newcomer.
When we were asked by the folks at Line 6 to review their new digital guitar wireless system we jumped at the opportunity, since their new Relay digital wireless instrument systems and similar XD Series wireless microphone systems (see full review coming this Fall) offer digital wireless solutions at a price point that is affordable to most churches.
Digital wireless systems have been around for nearly 10 years, but to date the technology has not been incorporated into wireless guitar or microphone products targeted at the core of the house-of-worship market: small- and medium-sized churches. The Line 6 range of digital wireless systems reside primarily in the sub-$500 price category. Bull's eye: church market.
Digital wireless systems are becoming more visible because they are not subject to the DTV/White Space issues that hamper the UHF bands. The Line 6 digital systems operate in the 2.4 GHz range. They can be run license-free and are legal all over the world. They do operate in the same range as a host of Wi-Fi devices, but the wireless guitar or microphone content is encoded so it is able to differentiate from other "traffic" without the use of companders than can tarnish the tone in other wireless systems.
Our reviewer/guitarist's experience with the Line 6 Relay G50 digital wireless guitar system was just as he expected: the product inspires confidence, and delivers near-professional-grade results at an affordable price of $399.
Our Relay G50 digital wireless unit was evaluated in a studio environment where it was compared to a European-made UHF wireless system in the same price range. Our guitarist tested different guitars, tones, pick-up settings and effect combinations against the UHF unit and a high-end Mogami guitar cable. In most cases the sound differences between the two wireless units were nearly indistinguishable, and both were perfectly acceptable. Only when one of the guitars was switched to a single-coil configuration, with lots of highs and lows, but not a lot of mids, did the wireless sound fail to match that of a cable. Our reviewer says the wireless guitar sound was missing some of the harmonics and overtones on this bright, crisp-sounding setting. However, in a live sound environment it's likely this shortcoming would never be noticed.
The G50 does have something called a Cable Tone Simulator on-board. Our reviewer found this feature to be interesting but unremarkable. While it did change the tone of the wireless sound, it did not result in the sound of the wired guitar.
We found the ease-of-set-up and ease-of-use to be first rate. Our reviewer was up and running in less than five minutes-just what he expected based on his previous experiences with Line 6 guitar gear. And it has coolness for days. It's designed to sit on the floor stomp-box-style. Sweet.
Signal stability/strength were judged to be as good or better than our comparatively priced European-designed wireless unit, as was the build quality of the receiver and belt-pack transmitter.
If you are looking for an affordable wireless guitar system that performs well, and completely avoids the UHF/DTV/White Space problems, the Line 6 Relay G50 digital wireless guitar system appears to be a strong new competitor in this price range.
