Johnny Karlsson

The Comtek BST-25 base station puts out 50mW, and will punch through a lot of stuff, especially if you get a Mini-Mite antenna up on a mast like 8ft in the air. If you need a portable setup, the Lectro IFB can put out up to 250mW, with either a T4, or SMV/SMQV.

An existing solution that keeps looking for a problem. If you are starting out and/or don’t own IFBs, just rent them from someone who owns them, or from a rental house. You can still mark up the rental you charge, which is completely justified due to you are the one who is doing the extra work of picking them up, setting them up, collecting them at the end of the project, and then driving back to return them.

Reply with something like: “no problem, I have the latest greatest ‘Mega-2000 350Hz-erator’ and the ‘Ultra Aviator Phatterator 50000X’ for making SFX sound luxuriously softer and much less thin. I expect to get the work done in roughly 100 hours, so please send me a Cashiers Check for $6000. As soon as the check has cleared, I will provide a link for you to upload the files, so I can start the work”.

FWIW - I have always kind of had this be hit or miss every time I go to IKEA. Some times they have them , some times they are sold out, and nobody that works there seems to know when they will get new stock…

I still use the storacell caddies - yes, the ones everyone else says strips the plastic off their batteries. I guess I’m just careful with the way I get the batteries in and out, but they have always seemed to work fine for me. Other than that, the XTAR combo with 8x AA and an 8-bay charger came with 2x plastic cases that hold 4xAA each. But yeah, they don’t hold each individual battery in place, it’s just a lid that pops open, so all four batteries might fall out if you fumble or drop it.

Last time I shot on a volume stage, that was the least of my problems… it was all drowned out by the crazy loud fan system that had to be kept on to prevent the wall from overheating(!)

Well, I would say they didn’t. And still haven’t. So I hope it’s going to work somewhat differently here, but yeah right now looks kinda bleak.

Yeah, it’s brutal.

FWIW, I'm on an M2 MacBook Air since when they were first released, and I can say that it's plenty more capable than the (bigger and heavier) Intel MacBook Pro that I previously had. Chip: Apple M2 Number of Cores: 8 (4 performance and 4 efficiency) Memory: 24 GB

I don’t understand why some of you seem to be wishing for Lectro to start releasing some kind of cheapo stuff. If you want low-cost plastic prosumer stuff, there is plenty to choose from already. I really hope Lectro will remain Lectro; reliable, solid, high quality gear that sound great, and stand up to the stress of professional use (and potato cannons!). I will gladly pay a premium for gear that gives me peace of mind, and helps make me reliable for the people that hire me. Flimsy gear is not gonna help anyone build a career.

XTAR AA TEST Warning - This will be long and nerdy, but here we go; - Took the 8x batteries out of the package and charged them to full. - Numbered the batteries #1 through #8 with a sharpie. Test 01 - 4x DBSM (single AA battery) @ 25mw / 'display off' set to 5 sec / LEDs ON Ch 1+2 DPA6061 plugged in Ch 3+4 no mics plugged in Ch 1 = battery #1 Blinking red @ 4h:15min (45min blinking) Died @ 5h:00min Ch 2 = battery #2 Blinking red @ 4h:20min (49min blinking) Died @ 5h:09min Ch 3 = battery #3 Blinking red @ 4h:49min (48min blinking) Died @ 5h:37min Ch 4 = battery #4 Blinking red @ 4h:32min (48min blinking) Died @ 5h:20min Blinking red times varied between 45-49 minutes before shutdown. So pretty consistent between them. BUT the 34 minutes difference between when the first and the last STARTED blinking is quite significant. Also the difference between the longest vs shortest run time was 37 minutes (5h:00min vs 5h:37min) The good news is that once the red blinking starts, you have about 45 min to get that battery changed. ———— Test 02 - Batteries #1-4 charged back up over night from completely dead, then put each one back in their same respective DBSM ch 1-4 for consistency testing. 4x DBSM (single AA battery) @ 25mw / 'display off' set to 5 sec / LEDs ON Ch 1+2 DPA6061 plugged in Ch 3+4 no mic plugged in Ch 1 = battery #1 Run time: 4h:49min Ch 2 = battery #2 Run time: 4h:58min Ch 3 = battery #3 Run time: 5h:12min Ch 4 = battery #4 Run time: 4h:58min Didn’t check blinking red times, because I left the house while the test was running. ——Weird to see that run times decreased by 10-20 min across all four batteries after one single use. Now the difference between the longest vs shortest run time was 23 minutes (4h:49min vs 5h:12min). ———— Test 03- XTAR #5-8 (ran a test over night, but forgot to turn on the DSR4, so the timer was lost, because all DBSM had shut down by the time I got up in the morning. Ran again, so this is actually the results for the second charge of the second batch) - Same transmitters; 4x DBSM (single AA battery) @ 25mw / 'display off' set to 5 sec / LEDs ON Ch 1+2 DPA6061 plugged in Ch 3+4 no mic plugged in Ch 1 = battery #5 Died @ 5h:12min Ch 2 = battery #6 Died @ 4h:59min Ch 3 = battery #7 Died @ 5h:34min Ch 4 = battery #8 Died @ 5h:22min - Battery #6 had some trouble getting the DBSM to turn on. After fiddling a bit with the plastic wrapping around the flat (-) side, it worked. NOTE: This happened both last night and today. Here the difference between the longest vs shortest run time was 35 minutes(4h:59min vs 5h:34min). ———— ======= For comparison, I charged up 4x eneloop pro that I got last month and have used only a few times; Test with eneloop pro AA NiMH - Same transmitters; 4x DBSM (single AA battery) @ 25mw / 'display off' set to 5 sec / LEDs ON Ch 1+2 DPA6061 plugged in Ch 3+4 no mic plugged in Ch 1 = battery #A Died @ 4h:11min Ch 2 = battery #B Died @ 4h:16min Ch 3 = battery #C Died @ 4h:29min Ch 4 = battery #D Died @ 4h:10min It's clear to see that the XTAR AAs get better run times. ============= ============= Decided to do one more XTAR test. This time with the transmitters running @ 10mw. And whoa! NOTE, after running the NiMH test, I forgot to set the DBSM back to Batt Type Lithium, so I'm not sure, but it may have something to do with how the transmitter behaves when the voltage drops, because I also noticed that the light on the transmitter turned solid red rather than blinking + the battery icon on the DSR4 turned yellow, rather than red. And I must say was impressed to see these run times: 4x DBSM (single AA battery) @ 10mw / 'display off' set to 5 sec / LEDs ON Ch 1+2 DPA6061 plugged in Ch 3+4 no mic plugged in Ch 1 = battery #1 Run time: 5h:57min Ch 2 = battery #2 Run time: 5h:50min Ch 3 = battery #3 Run time: 6h:08min Ch 4 = battery #4 Run time: 5h:50min ======================= ---- In conclusion; in my tests, the XTARs do have better runtimes over eneloop pro. And it is nice that the XTAR battery is slightly lighter, and the charger is more compact and very light (as noted by others, the LC8 can only charge these Lithium batteries, not NiMH) but seeing the run times @ 25mw varied from 4h:49min to 5h:37min with a brand new batch of batteries, and in addition run times decrease from the first to the second use by up to 20min is perhaps a concern(?) - Regarding short warning before shutdown on NiMH (specifically LADDA 2450 and eneloop pro), I have gotten used to keeping an eye on the voltage reported on the receiver, so when the voltage drops below 1.10v I know I have about 15-20 minutes to get a battery change. This with "battery type" set to “alkaline“. - ps. As a side note, the reason I ran 2x packs with mics plugged in and 2x without in each test was to see how much of a difference, if any, it would make. And sure, generally the longest run times were happening without mics plugged in, but as you can see, not consistently between all tests. For example; in test 02; Channel #2 and #4 had identical run times - of course not scientific, and one could suspect that #2 would have had a longer run time if no mic had been plugged in during that particular test, but still if one looks at the differences between the tests, i.e. ch2 (mic plugged in) in test 01 ran 11 minutes longer than ch 4 (no mic plugged in) in test 02. Also with the eneloop Pro's, the shortest run time of the four was one with no mic plugged in. Anyway, if you're is still reading at this point, I hope this may be of some sort of help.

Hi Robert, no I am running at 25mw with the digital most of time, so this is what I am testing. BUT - I just re-read your earlier post, and you mentioned using DBu, which is if I'm not mistaken dual battery. I'm testing DBSM, which are single battery, so that should naturally make a difference. Results do look good though. I am running a 10mw test today, and will write a long nerdy post about what I have found in my tests here later.

I ordered an 8-pack with the LC-8 charger. Running some tests since yesterday with 4x DBSM. Unfortunately, what I am seeing is nowhere near 7h. I will post details later, or tomorrow after a couple more runs to see if repeat charges “conditions” the batteries to improve run times….(?)

Thank You, Larry! I just ordered some, and will give these a try as well.