No, you won’t get a traffic ticket from the FCC, but you will find more and more of your wireless mic transmissions stepped on by content from new owners of the bandwidth, or even white noise that is strategically put there to prevent your usage: Signal squashing.
If you’re like us and many independent videographers who own one or more older wirelesses, you’re reluctant to give up your units, which were an admittedly costly purchase for small users. Some companies have talked about “upgrading” existing units, but manufacturers have brought new products to market which don’t cost much more, and have a number of electronic advantages. Technology marches on…
This is one place where the “no sweat” comes in. If you’re working with theatrical performances, Sennheiser has a really sweet unit the MKE1 that is amazingly tiny, comes in 4 colors to hide in makeup, a wig or clothing. It’s made of Kevlar and is resistant to sweat. Either the nervous kind of sweat or the result of hot theatre lights!
There are other models too, with very wide bandwith and 1680 discrete frequencies per band. The 100 series is a favorite of ours.
At Vidxpo I talked with Aaron Berg about Sennheiser‘s wireless mic models that will make it easy to be compliant.
