A Guitar And Gear Support Forum

I just about never gig, and I always thought a wireless system was only for gigging musicians. Certainly it helps your mobility, but that wasn't my issue. I have amps in a number of spaces, and I tend to leave cables with the amps. Most of my decent cables are only 10 or 15 feet long, which is great for signal quality but limiting otherwise. I went into this fully expecting cables to sound better (and spoiler, they do).

I have noticed you can't swing a Stray Cat without hitting an ad for a wireless guitar system anymore and that has had me wondering. So I popped on a cheap one. Off Amazon, I ordered the Swiff WS-50, and have been playing it instead of cables for a few days. I thought I'd share how that's going.

These: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KR ... =UTF8&th=1


First, I have to say I love not being constrained by a cable. I did not realize until this week how big a difference that would make, whether it's moving around or even just swinging a chair around, it's freeing.

It was under $60, so let's not have any delusions comparing it to any pro system. If I gigged, I'd happily pay many times what this thing cost because the differences matter. But most of my guitar time is writing and practicing.

I chose this one over the 2.4gHz and 5.8gHz systems because it advertised more channels, which to me means more flexibility for different environments. I don't gig, but I do meet up with others at their places sometimes, and radio noise varies by location. I wanted to be able to find a reasonably clear channel wherever. This one operates between 500 - 940 mHz UHF, and so far so good. I figured 2.4gHz is getting crowded, 5.8gHz probably will also get crowded, but UHF use is declining, so why not? So let's get to observations.

First, there is a very noticeable drop in signal strength compared to a cable. This bothers me. It's enough to make a huge change in tone depending on my gain stage needs. It makes pedals sound very different, so that's not good. I may decide it needs a boost. If going straight into an amp with a really good gain stage, the amp can compensate, but that raises the noise floor beyond what you might expect. This issue alone makes this system only useful for practice to me, never recording. Still, that's ok for my needs.

The noise floor is strong enough I have to wonder whether it's even digital. The listing says it has 24 bit 48 kHz sampling which certainly is a claim the signal is digital. It sounds like radio hiss to my ears though, making me think perhaps it is actually an analog transmission. I could be wrong about this, maybe they're just cheap converters, but I think maybe transmitting analog is why they can claim the low 2ms latency they advertise. They really do have very low latency. Dropouts also don't sound digital to me, but again, just my suspicion.

That brings me to this - If you get your body between the transmitter and receiver, you can cause signal drops. Of course that happens with other wireless gear, so it's not a surprise. But inside, at close proximity, I did not expect this to be an issue. It can be, but so far it is not too bad. I have a preference for P90 equipped guitars though, and they tend to care more how they are oriented (usually relative to the amp) to reduce RFI and just sound better. Adding the wireless gives me a 2nd reason to have to orient the guitar in a certain direction for best sound. So far, these two things have not conflicted, but I suppose they could in the future, time will tell.

My bottom line is that I'll never record with these, but will use them for practice and writing a lot. If I'm more comfortably positioned, I'll spend more time and that makes them worth it to me. If I have to play out, I'll still take a cable and expect to use it instead. My favorite amp will probably stick with its favorite cable just because tone matters there more than convenience. If I change my mind later, I see a 30 foot cable likely replacing it, and that would cost about the same.

Interesting review and experience.

I have a cheaper Lekato wireless system, and I´m happy so far, although I haven´t played in a good while.

I don´t have that much experience to tell the difference between them and cable; for me it´s good enough.

Now, is there a chance for us to listen to the music you write? You seem to write and record a lot. Musician´s curiosity

sabasgr68 wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 1:17 pm Interesting review and experience.

I have a cheaper Lekato wireless system, and I´m happy so far, although I haven´t played in a good while.

I was considering a Lekato too. It was pretty much a coin flip.

sabasgr68 wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 1:17 pm Now, is there a chance for us to listen to the music you write? You seem to write and record a lot. Musician´s curiosity

So far, I'm at a disadvantage there. Over a decade ago, I quit making money from music to concentrate on my better paying work, and I moved since then too. But I retired, and started spending more time with music again a couple years ago. My recording gear is all boxed up still, and I am not familiar with any of the self-publishing tools in use these days yet. I have no process flow anymore. I'll try to work on that as I get more written. Right now, my music is lucky to even get tracked quick and dirty via Focusrite straight into a macbook. I think this is why my other career won: Writing is what I always loved, recording is a necessary evil, and gigging is to be avoided at all cost. But yes, I'll work on that.

Latency is a spec that applies to digital audio equipment being essentially meaningless when applied to analog equipment.

mickey wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 1:50 pm Latency is a spec that applies to digital audio equipment being essentially meaningless when applied to analog equipment.

It absolutely is. I just think their specs may be a bunch of hooey, to use the technical term. My ears tell me some of their other specs like signal to noise ratio are off, and it's all translated from Chinese, which frequently results in marketing friendly but meaningless word salad.

You should be able to tell if it's digital or analog by just walking away and hearing how it sounds when it cuts out.

@sabasgr68 made a good point because I talk about recording a lot more than I do it these days, so I'll back-fill some pre-AGF history.

When I was making money with music, my processes orbited a 24 x 8 x 2 project studio with several racks of processing, recording on a 1/2" 8 track and mixing down to 1/4" and DAT. It was a mix of digital and analog that not many people do today. The sound room only fit about 4-5 vocalists or 2 instruments. We wrote and produced for local theatre and advertising and personal projects. Others liked using our studio and my mastering, but the goal wasn't a commercial studio, it was new music. The work paid for the gear and often made house payments, but was never full time.

I shut it down because it didn't make what my tech day jobs made, and we kept getting hired to produce stuff I didn't actually enjoy writing, and I barely slept. I think that's the devil in the details of a project studio outside of one of the big 4 music cities. But I didn't sell off the gear, it just got stored when I bought a different house. We intended to rebuild bigger, but of course all kinds of life intervened and that didn't happen.

My wife and I both lost our jobs to big business politics as we neared retirement (13 and 15 years into those jobs respectively), so we just decided to go ahead and retire. I thought I would build the new studio then, but I had an accident I still haven't completely recovered from, then she got a cancer diagnosis and that took over our lives and still the cancer won. That took away my interest in doing much of anything, but a few years (and COVID) later, I'm thinking about unboxing, building out, and seeing where music goes because I started writing again, this time on guitar instead of keyboards. My energy still largely goes to physical recovery from the accident as I'm 95%, not 100%, but I want life to have a point again. So I'm retired, not needing to make money anymore, but returning to making music, this time writing what I want to write, not writing for a client.

BatUtilityBelt wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 3:59 pm @sabasgr68 made a good point because I talk about recording a lot more than I do it these days, so I'll back-fill some pre-AGF history.

When I was making money with music, my processes orbited a 24 x 8 x 2 project studio with several racks of processing, recording on a 1/2" 8 track and mixing down to 1/4" and DAT. It was a mix of digital and analog that not many people do today. The sound room only fit about 4-5 vocalists or 2 instruments. We wrote and produced for local theatre and advertising and personal projects. Others liked using our studio and my mastering, but the goal wasn't a commercial studio, it was new music. The work paid for the gear and often made house payments, but was never full time.

I shut it down because it didn't make what my tech day jobs made, and we kept getting hired to produce stuff I didn't actually enjoy writing, and I barely slept. I think that's the devil in the details of a project studio outside of one of the big 4 music cities. But I didn't sell off the gear, it just got stored when I bought a different house. We intended to rebuild bigger, but of course all kinds of life intervened and that didn't happen.

My wife and I both lost our jobs to big business politics as we neared retirement (13 and 15 years into those jobs respectively), so we just decided to go ahead and retire. I thought I would build the new studio then, but I had an accident I still haven't completely recovered from, then she got a cancer diagnosis and that took over our lives and still the cancer won. That took away my interest in doing much of anything, but a few years (and COVID) later, I'm thinking about unboxing, building out, and seeing where music goes because I started writing again, this time on guitar instead of keyboards. My energy still largely goes to physical recovery from the accident as I'm 95%, not 100%, but I want life to have a point again. So I'm retired, not needing to make money anymore, but returning to making music, this time writing what I want to write, not writing for a client.

Well, thanks for the pre-AGF story of yours. I´m sorry about the bad.

Like you say, if you don´t need to make money anymore, I think it´ll be a very good idea unboxing those boxes and make music again, once you´re closer to 100%.

Back in the days when I worked at the Compact Disc Plant I remember receiving the masters in DAT cassettes. And I guess that when you say mixing digital and analog refers to those letters printed on the CDs, sometimes it was AAD, ADD or DDD. Final mastering would be digital.

sabasgr68 wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 7:32 pm Back in the days when I worked at the Compact Disc Plant I remember receiving the masters in DAT cassettes. And I guess that when you say mixing digital and analog refers to those letters printed on the CDs, sometimes it was AAD, ADD or DDD. Final mastering would be digital.

Exactly. Most of the time we worked AAD or ADD. There were some smaller projects that only required MIDI straight to mastering, which were all digital, but only by skipping a step. We also worked at times with a couple other studios that were all digital, but that's another story. A DAW is still a great alternative to an analog 8 (or more) track, and I have taken on some Pro Tools projects since those days. If I put up a new studio, I think it will be more digital, but still use the 24x8 console.

Side note: I just realized another reason to put the studio back up. I still have a Baldwin electric harpsichord I bought in the 1980s and a little research this week informed me it's worth far more than any of my guitars. It's the same model used by the Beatles (for example in their song "Because"). If I refinish its legs and buy it a new set of strings, it would be a nice throwback to old days, and it shouldn't be up against a wall like it is now. It took guitar pedals really well!

BatUtilityBelt wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 9:26 pm

sabasgr68 wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 7:32 pm Back in the days when I worked at the Compact Disc Plant I remember receiving the masters in DAT cassettes. And I guess that when you say mixing digital and analog refers to those letters printed on the CDs, sometimes it was AAD, ADD or DDD. Final mastering would be digital.

Exactly. Most of the time we worked AAD or ADD. There were some smaller projects that only required MIDI straight to mastering, which were all digital, but only by skipping a step. We also worked at times with a couple other studios that were all digital, but that's another story. A DAW is still a great alternative to an analog 8 (or more) track, and I have taken on some Pro Tools projects since those days. If I put up a new studio, I think it will be more digital, but still use the 24x8 console.

Side note: I just realized another reason to put the studio back up. I still have a Baldwin electric harpsichord I bought in the 1980s and a little research this week informed me it's worth far more than any of my guitars. It's the same model used by the Beatles (for example in their song "Because"). If I refinish its legs and buy it a new set of strings, it would be a nice throwback to old days, and it shouldn't be up against a wall like it is now. It took guitar pedals really well!

Well there you have it: put that Baldwin harpsichord back in shape and the studio back up, no more reasons needed, don´t you think? Looking forward to it.

DAWs are a good alternative for us, hobbyist musicians. I do enjoy arranging and adjusting all channels and experimenting, even on a simple DAW like Audacity.

I think some of the issues you describe may be due to the inexpensive nature of that unit. I've got a Line6 G10 system, and I have never noticed a drop in signal strength, noise, or signal drops. (Fortunately, I haven't noticed it bursting into flames either, which is sometimes an issue...).

I will admit that I use the wireless almost exclusively at gigs, where I am playing in different rooms, at different volume levels, and half the time through different amps, than I do at practice or at home too, so subtleties of tone difference may be lost on me. I prefer the wireless for gigs because I don't have to worry about where I'm standing relative to the amp, or whether a lead singer is going to step on my cable, and I can do stupid rockstar stuff like run out into the audience to play a solo.