I have bought a set of LD Systems MEI 1000 for my band and they work.
The sound is "OK" I guess, but I don't care too much because I'm busy ROCKING THE FUCK OUT when I'm stage!!!

They have a bit of hiss, but funny enough, they are way noisier if you plug your headphones STRAIGHT with cable... That's fucking weird.

But yeah, I can recommend them for a cheapo setup.



Are you gonna have your own mixer or rely on soundtechs in the venues?

 

This is my bands setup:

We have two LD Systems MEI 1000

One dedicated for the singer, and one for both guitarists and bass player in a shared mix. That works well!
The drummer gets a lined IEM.

I have a couple of more LD System units, but I decided that this is enough for now.

If you're playing a festival you might have to swap around a lot between frequencies to not get issues with the festival staffs walkie talkie frequinces...
I got that shit into my IEMs when I played in Germany last year, so I had to look around for free frequencies.

Thats also why I dont wanna have tons of different mixes for each memeber.

BUT SINCE YOUR BAND IS A THREE PIECE BAND: You can go with this setup PERFECTLY fine!!! :flex:

 

If I was a millionaire I wouldn't hesitate to get the standard industry units like the Sennheisers or something like that.
Expensive for a regular person, but probably worth it if you got the money, and play often enough to justify the investment, of course.

 

I would honestly say spend the money and get decent units. The Sennheiser stuff is all modular so you can watch Ebay and grab stuff as it comes up (obviously make sure the frequencies all match and are legal in your area). If you're going to rely on IEM, can you really afford for it to cut out in the middle of your set?

 

Would sennheiser be the way to go then out of the bigger name brands?

 

I would say yes!!!!

 

Off to do some window shopping then. Any key features to look for or options that are must have?

 

Yep, Sennheiser and Shure are the two big players. The main things to check are the available frequency bands in your country (or anywhere else you may be travelling), you may find that some require you to purchase a licence whereas others will be licence free. Feature wise, if you're running multiple units then check to see if they have a scan function to find the strongest signal (I think G2-G4 units can all do this), you may also want to look at an Antenna Combiner unit to help manage cancellation and drop-outs. I would also recommend getting more modern units that run on AA's, the old G1's rip through 9V's like nothing.

 

So this doesn't seem clear from the spec reviews, but if we get one transmitter unit and it says 16 channels, does that mean we can send to 16 individual body packs?

We only need the 3-4 but really hoping it doesn't mean we need separate transmitter per person. I might just be reading it weird, but we want to run board to one transmitter rack unit and then ideally be able to tweak each monitor mix to each pack from there.

 

You can only send one mix per transmitter, but you can have as many receivers one that channel as you want. If you wanted a second mix, you would need a second transmitter on a different channel to the first and then you can tune the receivers into whichever channel contains the mix that is wanted.

As an example, on my previous rig I was running four transmitters with four seperate stereo mixes, one for each member (the drummer was on a direct line).

 

Ahhh ok.. I can see how this could get pretty spicy in terms of expense if you want to get fancy with it, especially with the sennheiser stuff.

 

I'm not surprised you're confused with that "channels" thing.

To make it clear what that REALLY does is:

Changing GROUP = big change in frequency (you can select between 8 options) *
Changing CHANNEL = fine tuning the above selected freqency (you can select between 12 options) *

* = my LD Systems have 8 groups and 12 channels... Other brands / models can have other numbers of options

At least with my LD Systems cheapo shit you'll get interference if the frequencies are too close so we have to put us on different groups, and not just channels :lol: