Isn’t it about time wirelss guitar systems make the digital leap Now they have been out a respectable amount of time can we start to evaluate them against conventional wireless systems But how do they work? For analogue devices the transmitter changes the guitar sound into VHF or UHF radio waves. But in the procedure of being transformed to VHF or UHF something called a compander is employed to squash the transmission so it fits into the range of VHF or UHF and then when it gets to the receiver, it is expanded out again into the original guitar sound. Utilizing a compander vastly lowers the sound quality however. With a digital process there’s no compander, so there isn’t any squashing of the transmission and as a consequence it sounds superior; the signal should arrive in exactly the same form as it left the guitar pickups. Another problem with VHF or UHF systems is to do with the bandwidth, and in particular dealing with the bass noise. Bottom E on a bass is 44Hz and several VHF or UHF systems simply do not get this high quality range, a similar thing can be stated for higher sounds too; some quality will be lost. With digital systems this isn’t a difficulty - they have the full spectrum of sound available and therefore no sound will be lost.

Another advantage of digital systems is that they really should not suffer from any inteference which can be sometimes an issue with non digital systems. Other digital devices aren’t going to be picked up by the wireless guitar system due to the fact it’s only looking for devices encoded with the transmission it’s looking for. Other forms of digital transmission are entirely ignored - the chance of inteference is very slim The vulnerable point of digital transmission used to be range, but thanks to improvements in technology this really is no longer the case. One example of this is the Line6 relay range, they’ve pretty much doubled the range of the system each time a new modal has come out.

In my experience it’s pretty clear that digital wireless guitar systems are much better than UHF or VHF systems, and they are not really that costly, the cheapest system is about £90. There are not many areas you could argue VHF & UHF systems are better at. Build quality is still the main point to look for though. A top of the range VHF system will still beat a cheap digital system in terms of performance. Even so the best overall wireless guitar systems is going to be digital.


wireless guitar system