EEVblog #571 - Sennheiser EW100 G3 Wireless Microphone Teardown

What is inside one of the best quality wireless microphones on the market?
Dave takes a look inside the Sennheiser EW100 G3 SK100 Bodypack Transmitter and the EK100 Diversity Receiver.
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[ceecrb]

Lost count of how many of those belt packs I have worked with in my lifetime!
Of all my entire adult life working in events, concerts and live TV.. Sennheiser EW's have only ever failed TWICE, first when a sheild came loose on a handheld mic and 2nd when the presenter wearing one had 40 litres of water thrown on him on stage by suprise. Dried it out and it worked a treat!
Those 100's are a great option for the serious "youtuber"!

[lexxuzz]

disassembled in Australia  :) hahahahaha good one Dave !

[jouebien]

the Sennheiser G3 are about $990 at retail (the full kit). You won't be able to use the 700hz Frequency band that this supports; next year, because Digital TV will be using that frequency band (you will have to stick to the 600hz band). To Future proof you should have gone with one of their newer products. My favorite memory of using the G3's was installing 20 of the receivers into a rack for a production of Lay Miz. It looked so ausom. The only problem the G3's have is the 30m distance limit and the further you are a way from the receiver the faster the batteries drain in the belt pack.
 The best part about the G3 is that you can in software lock the settings so actors don't fuck with it while your not looking. If you ever see "RF mute" showing up when you try to turn off the belt pack, your belt back is locked and you have to unlock before you can turn it of.

[aserta]

Took me a second to notice the "Disassembled in Australia" but when i saw it i laughed myself off the chair. It's the little things that make these vids so cool.

[electronalchemy]

Notice any similarity in construction between this and the 1980s semi-pro camcorder that Dave tore down a few months back? Metal chassis, panels that fold out on hinges, and accessible test points. Nice to see engineered equipment still being made, rather than Chinese stuff designed by university interns. A lot of good maintainable design doesn't actually cost anything extra! Very nice.

[DmitriyNE]

BTW, the ringy thing without solder mask in the rf path is an rf test point, not a filter.

[the-d-r]

Sennheiser designed their products, so they can be maintained easily. Here in good old germany you can send your units to Sennheiser to get your frequency changed. In Germany some frequencys that were used by wireless microphones were taken away by the authorities to give them to the mobile phone companys for 4G. So the owner of the wireless microphones have to "update" their units. In other cases they can be charged for illegal transmission with high fees.

[richardcrowley]

My strong suspicion is that Sennheiser located its assembly facility in Rio Rancho, New Mexico specifically because it is in the same neighborhood as one of the pro industry leaders, Lectrosonics. For  the same reason that other industries tend to cluster together (think Silicon Valley).  Lectrosonics and Zaxcom are the "high-price spread" and are the go-to brands of the prime-time industry.  The Sennheiser G3 is considered to be the CHEAPEST decent quality wireless kit currently available.  If you think $600-900 is "expensive" then you don't want to know what the high-end gear costs!

[hefonthefjords]

the company i work for has an actual drawer full of these in hire stock.
the reason they have infrared sync is not just a nice design feature, its because we hire out 20 of them at a time so you need to be able to sync 20 transmitters with 20 rackmount recievers fast as hell (unless you want to pay guys like me a lot more money).
they also sort of are designed for service as even though they are well built, folk break them very regularly. theatre companies hire them out by the truckload and they, along with the actors, get thrown all over the stage and so on so quite often the screens get smashed and the ariels/jacks get snapped off. usual stuff. great units though.
the AGC and EXP/COMP can be turned on and off in settings.

another interesting characteristic of these is that they really dont like to be used in close proximity to their recievers. if you get closer than five feet you will often get dropouts and noises.

each country/region has different parts of the radio spectrum that is "legal" to use gear like this on so they come with preset ranges dependent on region. much of the time when we hire them out we have to issue licenses for a specific range of spectrum for a specific event to allow them to be used legally on channels that aren't avaialable for public use to prevent interference from consumer gear. the last thing you want during a public event or TV/radio broadcast is someone else's guitar or bass or wireless mic coming through on your channels.

[redtails]

3:50 wow, I've never seen a threaded 3.5mm before.. that's some real quality right there

[BenChilds]

There is software available for the higher end G3 rack mount / desktop receivers with Ethernet connectivity. The software has a frequency analysis feature that will scan & plot through all of the the supported frequencies to help you to select clear channels to use. I had to use 24 of these (22 active and 2 in reserve as spares) at the same time and was glad for the scan mode.

[BlueSkyScholar]

We run these mics 8-10 hours a day and for the most part are fairly well behaved also the G3 IEM's. The wireless manager is nice for finding good channels and the express programming is a cool feature if you need to change out a mic transmitter or IEM receiver. The only thing design wise I'd change is to use a standard mini XLR that Shure, Sabine, AT and others use and can be repaired. There is a well known problem with these any little bit of static around the charging terminals will cause it to think its in the charger and turn off. It's supposedly been fixed but we went through a number of warranty exchanges before getting a fleet that doesnt seem to have the problem.

[DanTheAppleMan]

I've used the G2s in live PA, they are fantastic bits of kit. Great build quality and battery life, and pretty much unbeatable RF, very rarely lost signal with them. They did have a problem with noise when the batteries got low though.

[onwul]

Not only microphones, headphones too! I switched to Sennheiser HD series headphones,  and I got addicted to them. Sound is so amazing, I cannot live without them now.

[musiteufel]

I work almost every day with these realy reliable wireless microphones. You see these on almost every stage in germany. It doesn't matter if theatre or rock n' roll. It provides almost everytime best wireless connections. :) Very interesting to see one these torn apart.

[kibi]

The easy servicing design is well founded. Presenters may look al pretty sitting behind the news desk, but as soon as the cameras are off, things go flying and kit gets abused. The studio managers are not much better as they slam these sort of things into their charging docks.
The easier it is to open up, the quicker the engineers can mend them.

[MikeBMW]

Love the "Disassembled in Australia" sticker. :D
Is that new? Either way, love it and love the vid, Dave. :)

[aatheus]

Definitely a beautiful bit of kit. Sounds good on your camera, as well.

[aladaris]

"Disassembled in Australia"

Those are cool stickers =)

[JanicekTrnecka]

I really like the IR syncing function . Very handy when you are going to have more mics on stage and a mic rack full of recievers...