Busted go wireless with Shure

Night Driver Tour Features Shure PSM1000 In-ear Monitoring & ULX-D Wireless Mics

Busted are making extensive use of Shure wireless microphones and  in-ear monitoring (IEM) on their current tour, supporting their 2016  surprise third album Night Driver. Every member of the Busted touring  band is linked into an eight-channel wireless system comprising two  Shure quad-band ULXD4Q receivers. For monitoring, the band is using  eight channels of Shure's PSM1000 IEM system.

Instrumental in the band's choice of equipment on this tour have been  guitar tech Pjay Johnson, who also works with John Newman and McFly  live, and tour manager Robert Highcroft, who also looks after Bring Me  The Horizon's live shows. His live charges have also always been Shure  wireless users, partly because they tend to be very active on stage and  don't want to be tied down by cables. "If you look at a Bring Me The  Horizon show, there's around 30 channels of wireless on their tours,  including the in-ears, and that's because they run about — a lot!" 
explains Highcroft. "Most of the bands I'm involved with have been using  Shure UR4D+, but that's just because they bought their kit a few years  ago, before ULX-D was out. It takes up a lot of rack space, and I  realised I could save a lot of space with the quad ULX-D receivers. 
Busted are very active on stage too, and have benefited from the upgrade to ULX-D."

In situations where the available RF spectrum is limited —  increasingly the case in the developed world, where many of the  frequencies formerly used to operate wireless microphones for  professional purposes have now been auctioned for Wifi and mobile data  use — digital wireless systems can operate more spectrum-efficiently  than analogue technology, guaranteeing reliable wireless operation even  in urban environments where RF usage is high. This is important for live  performance, as most decently-sized live music venues in the developed  world are in exactly this kind of 'crowded' RF environment. What's more,  to guitar players who like the freedom on stage that wireless can  offer, but who also value the tone of their instrument, digital wireless  systems, with their wider and more accurate frequency response, are  often more popular than older analogue wireless systems based on  Frequency Modulation.

For Pjay Johnson, certainly, audio quality has always been the main  issue. "As far as I'm concerned, Shure offers the best wireless systems —  the audio quality is, for me, just way better than anything the  competition have to offer. The speed at which the body packs sync with  the receivers is faster than anything else I've used, and the design and  build quality of the body packs also lends itself perfectly to the live  environment. That all comes at a price — but if the artists I'm working  with can afford it, I would always go to Shure."

Busted's Night Driver tour continues during March and April throughout Europe and Japan. For more information, see www.busted.com/live.