Can you guys recommend a good mid-priced wireless mic set that includes a Lav as well as hand held mic?

I need one for our church and I'm not sure about all the specs I'm reading. So far it looks like Shure, Audio Technica, and Sennheiser have the front runners. But I don't know if I'm comparing apples to apples. Any advice available?

Any of those are the best choices and I've owned all of them at one time or another.

Avoid the EV wireless stuff. As recent as last year it just wasn't cutting it. Telex can make a good wireless product but you'll pay. If you want something within a reasonable budget you won't find quality wireless in EV.

The best transmitter/receivers are made by Sennheiser hands down for lav work. Throw away the Sennheiser lav though and replace it with a Countryman element - by far the best lav wireless combo I've used and I've set up hundreds of them for major plays, etc.

Shure wireless is good but you'll spend in the $2,000 + area for a good handheld with receiver/trans and lav. Avoid the cheap stuff.

I have some Audio Technica ATW-7373 handhelds that I picked up a couple years ago. The 7000 series is very nice. They use the same element as the AT3033 studio condenser. The AT4054 and 4055(wired) also use that element and they make for wonderful condenser handhelds that blow almost anything dynamic out of the water. They are slightly more sensitive to feedback so using them on a congested stage might prove to be problematic.

The 7000 series was fairly popular and you might find some second-hand units floating around. They were a regular on SNL and I saw a Fuel show where they were used.

Of course you know to use UHF and not VHF. The best tip for lavs no matter what setup you finally choose are the Countryman elements. Nothing else comes close.

Key,
Is this for speaking, or performance vocals (singing)?
D

Speaking vs. singing shouldn't matter. As in a play, you have to be able to handle both.

Sensitivity is the issue. In certain cases the engineer may have to ride the fader on the spoken word vs. that which is sung due to the power of the singing voice. This should not be affected by the gain setting, which should remain constant but rather by the fader.

Also, a limiter inserted either into the individual channel, a sub-group of vocals or the main outputs of the mix itself easily remedies transients or uneven levels of output.

Typically, when mixing a singer live, the effects (delay, reverb) are patched through one or two channels in the board (or stereo channels in some cases) so they can be easily muted when the speaker is not singing. Of course, these effects can also be routed through the aux sends and returns but there is no muting option on these. In this case you could use the bypass button on the effects unit if one exists. Fader control gives you more flexibility and range than a rotary pot and you have the ability to easily bring levels up and down with the effects.

One troublesome method of mixing I have witnessed on more than one occasion is the "all fader, minimum gain" technique. I do not know where this originated but it is a disturbing practice. Some "engineers" will use a full throttled fader on a vocal channel with hardly any gain level. Not only do you limit the headroom of your amplifiers using this technique but if you are mixing monitors through the FOH you are limiting the output through the aux(monitor) send. I have had a good laugh many times watching guys using this method struggle trying to get any appreciable level to the monitor mixes.

Of course, always use pre-fader aux sends for FOH monitor mixes as well as effects to keep levels even or unaffected while increasing fader level. A post-fader send will increase volume of monitor level and effects while bringing up the channel's level. This will almost always result in feedback in more ways than one.

Keyplayer: The lav is for the pastor, which means preaching, which COULD (but not neccesarily) lead to some shouting. So we WILL BE PATCHING IN A COMP/LIMITER of some kind on his channel.

Can you guys give me some exact model numbers and pricing or links to research this? Thanks for the help so far.