"Serge Auckland"

I volunteer at our local Hospital Radio station, and we've just been given
a license as a Community Station. We've had an old very cheap VHF radio mic
which has worked sort of Ok for us in the past, but that's now become
unreliable and the audio quality was never great so I'd like to replace it.

I've seen radio mics at £50, even Sennheisers at about £100 and others at
around £400 for a single handheld transmitter. I can't tell from the specs
what the differences are, and I have little experience of speccing radio
mics, as it was something that I very rarely got involved with
professionally.

Can anyone here advise me what the differences are between cheap mics and
expensive mics, and recommend any favourites. Is it sound quality, range,
reliability or what? I don't have a budget in mind, but even as a
Community Station, we have limited funds, so a £100 would be better than a
£400 one if the cheaper one will do the job. Sadly being based in rural
Suffolk, there aren't any dealers round here I could go and talk to, but
anyway, what dealer would actually give me impartial advice?


** OK - the very cheapest radio mic systems operate in the VHF band, have
only one fixed frequency and are flimsy in construction with a mediocre to
poor sound quality.

The ones to go for these days operate in the UHF band, have several
switchable frequencies, are of much sturdier in construction and have an
essential feature called " true diversity " built into the receiver. Without
this feature, a radio mic systems suffers from severe signal "drop outs" as
you move the mic around a room.

It is also a good idea to go for one of the major brand names, like Shure or
Sennheiser.

Have a look at the Sennheiser " Freeport " system - has all the features
I mentioned and is still inexpensive at around 130 UK pounds.



....... Phil