Senny G2 xlr plug & Shure SM58
 

Quick question about the the G2 XLR plugin.

I shot a wedding this past week and during the toast I tried using my G2 xlr wireless plugin with a Shure SM58. However, even with the manual gain turned all the way up I was only getting about half signal on the lcd meter. In fact my Rode NTG-2 did a better job of picking up the vocals.

What mics are you guys using with the wireless xrl plug. Do I need to use some sort of battery powered condenser to get the strong signal I'm looking for? I didn't see a signal gain on either the transceiver or the receiver. Thanks for the help.

Chris

The gain settings on the Sennheiser are in the menus. Both the transmitter and receiver have these settings. On the transmitter side you may have to increase SENSIT, or Sensitivity.

Hope this helps. Have fun!

Rob

The plugon also has an ATT setting which attenuates the signal by ithink 20db

The sensitivity setting on the G2 plug-in ranges from 0dB to -50dB. I normally use -10dB for most dynamics and occasionally up the level to 0 when I'm dealing with low-talkers.
That said, if you're seeing the transmitter meters half-way up, that should give you a sufficient signal with a nice headroom margin. Maybe the AF level on the receiver was down, or something else.

How far away from the person speaking was the SM58? this is a music cardioid vocal mic and the pick-up is not very good if the person speaking is more than 6-8 inches away from the mic.

The wiring of the mini-jack determines whether the transmitter input is mic or line level, and the Sennheiser female XLR to mini-jack cable is wired for line level. The mic level input also carries about 5 volts DC to power the lav mic so if you are making up a cable for an unpowered or self-powered mic, you need a capacitor to get rid of the DC. Have a look at this thread

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/all-thin...confusion.html

Cheers

Well for starters the SM58 is a dynamic mic, and needs to be close to your source.
If not then you will need a decent pre amp to pump up the gain acceptably.

But like others have said, make sure that the input pre amp gain is set to 0 in the plug in transmitters menu before using a mic like the SM58.

If the SM57 and the Rode mic were about the same distance from the source, then I'm not surprised that the Rode picked up the source louder, as it's more sensitive and directional than the Shure mic.

It's been said.....

The SKP 100 G2 plug-on transmitter uses the mic. body as the antenna.

Firstly, make sure it is properly plugged in and tight.

Then check the SENSITivity - as has been said, you will probably need 0 or -10 for the SM 58.

Also check the output level of the receiver.

This should sort it for you.

I hope this helps.

The 58 is a rather low output mic, but I often use these perched on the edge of the action, and the plug-in tx has enough gain to not cause any problems. 58s are average mics, just popular because they do practically everything reasonably ok. Nothing wrong with them, and you can drive in the odd nail with them if you're stuck.

When I get set up for a shoot and I am using new equipment I always run some test footage to verify my levels.

The Sennheiser G2 Gain has to be properly adjusted for the microphone you plsn on using.

If you still can't get enough gain from the SM58 after you've gone through the settings the other posters have listed, you could use a battery-powered condenser with the plug-on transmitter as you asked in your original post.
I use some older mics with moderate sensitivity for this purpose that I already had on hand, the Audio-Technica ATM10 omni and ATM31a cardioid. The new versions of these mics are the AT8010 and AT8031.
Rode, Sennheiser and a few other brands have battery-powered condenser mics with a wide range of sensitivities. I often use the K6/ME64 and ME66 with a plug-on but they have much higher sensitivity and the transmitter needs to be adjusted accordingly.
I've never tried a plug-on with my Rode NT3 hypercardioid mics but that would work too for a fixed position mic due to their size and weight.

Thanks everyone for the helpful comments. I looked through the menu options the day of the event to see if there was an output gain control and didn't see it. But it was a stressful environment and was probably abbreviated and I just didn't pick up on it. I don't actually have the plug in right now, a friend is borrowing it but I'll look at it in the next few days and let you know if I can get some better results.

I understand that the SM58 is average in it quality and are mostly used for music vocal or as instrument mics but as was mentioned earlier they are extremely durable and do the job good enough. The mic was placed with in 6 inches of the talent (talent was handholding the mic in front of their mouth.) Thanks again for the help.

It's on page 27 of the Owners Manual. If you have lost it the pdf is HERE.

John, Thanks! Thats exactly what I needed, I bought mine used, so I don't have the owners manual. I have used the G2 series before and thought I was proficient enough to get by with out reading the manual. Lesson learned.

I still may get a higher quality battery powered condenser that would comfortably fit in the hand or position easily on a lectern as a toast/speech/interview mic. Any suggestions?

The K6 series works well with it - you could use the ME66 short gun head and swap for the ME64 cardioid head for speeches, etc.