Wireless

[BassAdder60]

Used my new Boss WL-20 last night and I’m very impressed 

 

Strange thing I kept thinking / sensing I need to watch my lead under my feet only to see there was no lead !!! 
Years of playing with leads I guess !

 

Very liberating being able to move about more

 

Sound was spot on 

[King Tut]

I’ve used the Line 6 G30 for years now and it’s been pretty much faultless but not very convenient what with the pouch and extra lead. I’ve got an ‘Amoon’ set and these sound great but the latency builds up when using effects so only use these for home use now. Our two guitarists use an Xvive set without any problems so I’ve just picked one of those up. A bit disheartened to read on here about the poor battery life but it’s not like I’m out every weekend so we’ll just have to see how we go!

[jay bass]

The metal clip on my line 6 G30 transmitter broke off years ago

i use a square of  smooth velcro (the same as used on footpedals) on the transmitter and the opposite rough velcro  permanantly attached to my strap.

never had a problem and no awkward pouch to worry about.

[King Tut]

9 hours ago, jay bass said:

The metal clip on my line 6 G30 transmitter broke off years ago

i use a square of  smooth velcro (the same as used on footpedals) on the transmitter and the opposite rough velcro  permanantly attached to my strap.

never had a problem and no awkward pouch to worry about.

Yeah my clip broke off too - I glued it back on, but then  i started using pouches. What i like about the ones you plug directly into your board and guitar though are one less cable ( and a spare) to mess about with and it makes guitar changes much easier. We do a lot of quick changeover multi band shows and the less you have to faff about with/lose/repack etc the better!

[Wombat]

On 01/08/2022 at 18:15, BassAdder27 said:

How does the Boss WL20L perform with the Ray34 active bass ? 

Not the same I know but I've been using a WL20 with an 18v Status for 2 years without any problems. It's sounds great (to me). Amazing at sound check as I can go up the back and have a listen. The only 'issue' is where others in the band have them and your try and pair them at the same time. The guitar player does NOT like me rocking out through his rig for some reason!

You need a strict 'I'm pairing now' policy...

[JPJ]

Well my venerable old Line 6 Relay G50 gave up the ghost last night - no signal, just a flashing red audio light on the receiver. I've done a quick search this morning on the old t'interweb and cannot find anything about that but it looks like the receiver thinks the transmitter is clipping putting the receiver into a protection mode. I'm not surprised given the age of this unit (easily 10 years maybe 12) and I've been looking at alternatives but they seem in really short or non-existent supply at the moment so my gig this coming Saturday may be my first using a cable in the whole of that time period.

[JPJ]

On 20/09/2022 at 10:13, JPJ said:

Well my venerable old Line 6 Relay G50 gave up the ghost last night - no signal, just a flashing red audio light on the receiver. I've done a quick search this morning on the old t'interweb and cannot find anything about that but it looks like the receiver thinks the transmitter is clipping putting the receiver into a protection mode. I'm not surprised given the age of this unit (easily 10 years maybe 12) and I've been looking at alternatives but they seem in really short or non-existent supply at the moment so my gig this coming Saturday may be my first using a cable in the whole of that time period.

So in a bit of a panic purchase, I’ve bought a Line 6 G30 which arrived today from PMT (“Play Music Today” never knew/realised that was what PMT stood for). First impressions are this will not last as long as my old G50, which incidentally whilst registering the new unit I found out I purchased back in May 2010 and that means its done literally hundreds of gigs. Both the transmitter and receiver of the G30 are housed in plastic unlike the old G50’s metal enclosures. As a result, both are lighter and quite a bit smaller too. No external antennas to get in the way either although this has never proven to be an issue for me on the G50. Plugged in, no noticeable difference to my old G50, and I did ‘switch off’ the RF2 mode as a couple of muso’s I work with still use the older models (there’s a big warning label about this immediately you open the box, but strangely to find the instructions on how to disable RF2 you have to go to the Line 6 website). So I have a rehearsal on Friday night followed by a gig on Saturday night to put her through her paces and see how she stands up against the legacy unit. Fingers crossed I didn’t just blow £179 for nothing.

[Richard R]

Just looking at the Line6 unit on Anderton's and it says in big friendly letters:

"Please Note: Line 6 Relay transmitters are NOT compatible with active pickups."

 

Presumably because of input level overload? £160 ought to buy some headroom I would have thought.

 

Edited September 22, 2022 by Richard R

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, Richard R said:

Presumably because of input level overload? £160 ought to buy some headroom I would have thought.

 

No - since when were active pickups louder than passive pickups - I never understood where those sort of comments came from. A good active pickup should have exactly the same voltage output as a passive pickup into a reasonable load such as the input of a bass amplifier, or it wouldn't be any good.

 

I suspect they a) don't mean specifically mean active pickup, but active bass and b) are referring to the stereo output jack on an active bass

[Richard R]

A stereo output would cause the thing confusion I agree. My active bass is significantly higher output than the passive one, but it's just mono.

I shall try to find out more from the Line6 site.

[JPJ]

Doh I missed that, although 99% of the gigs I played with my old G50 were with John East powered active basses and I didn’t encounter any issues 🤷‍♂️

[Chienmortbb]

I might have missed the pint of this debate but apart from a rare optical pickup, there is no such thing as an active pickup. There are low impedance pickups with amplifiers built into the pick-up housing, by the pickups are not active. 
 

One of the early issues with “active” preamps was that the designers thought, “I have fain and I am going to use it”. So tho output of these basses was overly hot for bass amps. So bass amps were fitted with a pad, an attenuator to stop active bass overloading the amp. 
 

Nowadays, active basses usually have a similar output to a passive bass. The Sire Marcus Miller pre-amp has an active/passive switch and with the active controls flat, the two modes are almost indistinguishable. 

[Richard R]

The question is more why Anderton's say the G30 isn't suitable for active pickups. I have just read the Line6 documentation, and it doesn't mention anything like that at all.

 

Bizarre!!

[Woodinblack]

48 minutes ago, Richard R said:

A stereo output would cause the thing confusion I agree. My active bass is significantly higher output than the passive one, but it's just mono.

that is the setup of your basses, not a feature of active basses. However almost every active bass on the market has a stereo socket (not 'is stereo') for switching on off the battery. If your active bass doesn't have a power switch it certainly will have a stereo socket. The line 6 wireless use a stereo plug for powering, so there is a risk of incompatibility there

[Woodinblack]

19 minutes ago, Chienmortbb said:

I might have missed the pint of this debate but apart from a rare optical pickup, there is no such thing as an active pickup. There are low impedance pickups with amplifiers built into the pick-up housing, by the pickups are not active. 

 

I would say that is more splitting hairs, although it is strictly true,  I would say an active pickup such as an EMG or the like is an active pickup in that it is a sealed unit that wont work without power. It doesn't really matter what the internal function of that sealed unit is as you can't use it passively (and even if you could the output would be too small to use).

 

And would distinguish that from an active bass which 9 times out of 10 is a passive bass with a preamp.

 

19 minutes ago, Chienmortbb said:

Nowadays, active basses usually have a similar output to a passive bass. The Sire Marcus Miller pre-amp has an active/passive switch and with the active controls flat, the two modes are almost indistinguishable. 

 

I would consider any active bass where you could tell the difference between the output level when it was active to when it was passive to be faulty.

 

Either way, not the reason for the line6 issue here, that is down to the stereo plugs.

[Richard R]

I still can't find any warning from Line6 on anything relating to active electronics of any sort in the bass.

 

https://uk.line6.com/data/6/0a06434d12857507f3d1e7c1ab/application/pdf/Relay G30 Pilot's Guide - English ( Rev K ).pdf

 

If the transmitter is switched on by plugging a mono jack into a stereo socket then that's just the same as my bass. 

 

I think the conclusion from this is that we shouldn't trust Anderton's, but read the manufacturer's documents.

[Woodinblack]

1 minute ago, Richard R said:

If the transmitter is switched on by plugging a mono jack into a stereo socket then that's just the same as my bass. 

 

No, the bass is switched on by plugging in a mono jack to a stereo socket. The transmitter - I don't know if that is by putting a stereo plug into a mono socket or if it has one of those little bars like the roland transmitters have. But that could be got round by an extension lead.

 

However, now I have done some looking, there are quite a few reports of the G30 creating a high pitched whining noise on some active basses (and not others), so maybe they just say that so that people aren't sending them back.

 

[Richard R]

29 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

 

No, the bass is switched on by plugging in a mono jack to a stereo socket. The transmitter - I don't know if that is by putting a stereo plug into a mono socket or if it has one of those little bars like the roland transmitters have. But that could be got round by an extension lead.

 

However, now I have done some looking, there are quite a few reports of the G30 creating a high pitched whining noise on some active basses (and not others), so maybe they just say that so that people aren't sending them back.

 

 

The lead into the transmitter will be a standard but short mono lead surely? Anything else seems overly complicated. 

 

However an occasional problem with active basses and a whine would give Anderton's a reason to put a warning on.

Well done for finding that. 

[King Tut]

I’ve used a G30 for years and not had a problem with active basses.

[tauzero]

On 22/09/2022 at 21:57, Woodinblack said:

that is the setup of your basses, not a feature of active basses. However almost every active bass on the market has a stereo socket (not 'is stereo') for switching on off the battery. If your active bass doesn't have a power switch it certainly will have a stereo socket. The line 6 wireless use a stereo plug for powering, so there is a risk of incompatibility there

 

When did the Line 6 G30/G50 start using a stereo plug for powering? My G50 certainly doesn't. I've only ever used active basses with it. No problems with high-pitched whistling.

 

However, my dirt cheap Muslady branded bug type transmitter/receiver has given a high pitched whistle on occasion - it only seems to do so in one rehearsal studio, and I can get rid of it by rotating the transmitter in the bass's output socket.

[Woodinblack]

10 hours ago, tauzero said:

When did the Line 6 G30/G50 start using a stereo plug for powering? My G50 certainly doesn't. I've only ever used active basses with it. No problems with high-pitched whistling.

 

It was an assumption based on the roland one (which I actually have and avoided for a long time as someone said it didn't work with ibanezes, it does). The only whistling I ever got was with the cheap chinese ones (which I now gig with all the time), if I don't turn it away from the bass. Also only on the spectors. 

 

 

10 hours ago, tauzero said:

However, my dirt cheap Muslady branded bug type transmitter/receiver has given a high pitched whistle on occasion - it only seems to do so in one rehearsal studio, and I can get rid of it by rotating the transmitter in the bass's output socket.

 

Yep, same thing here. Just the 2.4ghz ones, not the 5GHz ones.