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Steve Stevens Goes Wireless With Lectrosonics IS400

Lectrosonics introduced the IS400 Digital Hybrid Wireless Instrument System only a few months ago and it’s already a hit with Steve Stevens. The renowned guitarist, who has been performing and writing with Billy Idol for all but a few of the past 23 years, is currently mid-tour promoting the singer’s new album, Devil’s Playground, the first album of new material from Idol and Stevens together in more than 12 years.

Designed for use with electric and acoustic instruments, the Lectrosonics IS400—comprising the IM transmitter and R400A receiver—uses a proprietary digital algorithm to encode the audio signal into an analog format for transmission over an FM wireless carrier, which is then converted back into digital audio via DSP at the receiver. According to Stevens’ guitar tech, Tim Kennedy, it was about time. “We’ve been waiting for years for something like this to appear,” he says.

Having researched the options online, Stevens had Kennedy contact Karl Winkler, director of business development at Lectrosonics. “Karl came to our show in Albuquerque with a brand-new unit for us to try out. Steve plugged into it, played a couple of chords through it and then I plugged him into a cable to hear the difference. It was really, really close to the sound of the cable. Steve said, ‘That’s it, it’s the best one I’ve ever heard.’

“It’s as close to a straight wire that we’ve been able to find,” Kennedy continued. “My ears aren’t the greatest from years of abuse, but even I could tell the difference! And Steve’s still over the moon about it.”

Performance and reliability have also been rock-solid, he observes. “We haven’t had any issues with the RF side. From a small club stage to a festival stage with 50,000 people, we haven’t had any signal loss, no dropout and no compromise to the sound. Lectrosonics did their homework and built a great product.”

To learn more about Lectrosonics, visit www.lectrosonics.com.

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