Mic Channel Watch
Phase 0 Scan first
Community theatre · Alpharetta, GA · standing procurement

Nothing is bought yet, and the next $40 decides everything after it.

This board tracks a patient search for used wireless body mics. It holds one rule and one plan: never buy a mic that can tune into the cellular bands, and buy the rest in an order where no stage strands the money spent on the last one.

Channels owned
0
of 16 needed at once
Spent
$0
no budget approved
Candidates found
by the automated monitor
Next action
Scan the venue
Stage 0 · about $40
The gate every listing passes first

Where a mic is allowed to tune

Drawn to scale from 470 to 806 MHz, straight from the band whitelist the search runs on. A unit is rejected if its tuning range touches a hatched block — not just if it is parked there. The FCC cancelled equipment certification for gear that can reach those frequencies, so a wide-tuning receiver is non-compliant even while sitting at 500 MHz.

Legal, unlicensed — the whole fleet lives here Narrow 20 mW slivers — not a foundation Illegal to operate or resell
If the band code is unknown, the answer is pass

A model number never settles it. Shure QLXD1, ULXD1 and Sennheiser SK 500 G4 all ship in legal and illegal bands that look identical in photos. Ask the seller for the band code and a photo of the label on the unit itself. No label, no purchase — and cheap is not a clue: in the September survey, illegal-band units sold for roughly the same money as legal ones.

What to buy, in what order

The purchase plan

Each stage is usable on its own and none of them strands the stage before it. A transmitter and receiver must share a band, and the two candidate bands do not overlap — so the venue scan comes first and everything else waits on it.

If the budget isIt reachesChannels
Still open for the group to choose

Three budget levels

All three stay live until the group picks one. Every figure is all-in: transmitters, receivers, lav elements, headsets for leads, antenna distribution, batteries and cases.

What things actually sell for

Market benchmarks

Completed sales of used, legal-band units. The ceiling is the price worth acting on the same day — where a ceiling sits above what the market actually charges, it is flagged.

ItemBandSalesPatientTypicalCeiling

Live pipeline

Under evaluation

Listings the monitor found that clear the band gate and sit under their ceiling. Anything without a confirmed band code never reaches this list.

Checking the monitor…

Answers the group has given

Where the decisions stand