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We were playing with foam plugs for years, but we went to IEMs this year. The drummer, vocalist and I all bought $60 BASNs from Amazon, and our home club has several Shure base stations and belt packs. The sound quality in the ear isn’t great, but they isolate very well and we’re much better balanced in the house since we got them. I record our weekly Thursday night jazz shows, and the IEMs have reduced our overall volume and clearly improved our sound both (individually and collectively).
Originally Posted by Eck
It’s even more dramatic for the blues band - we recorded this Sunday’s show, and the balance is great. Interestingly, our vocalist kept asking to be higher in her monitor mix right up to the end of the show. And in the recording, she’s definitely singing with a bit more effort than she should with properly set IEMs. I realized after the last tune that the stage monitors on the floor in front of her (which had been in use the night before for a touring act that didn’t use IEMs) were not turned off and had mostly drums and guitar in their mix!
Once you realize and accept that we don’t sound to the audience like we do to ourselves, you open yourself up to improving what the audience hears. It’s still a bit less satisfying to hear myself through the IEMs than the amplifier - I take them out for quieter tunes, solo playing, etc so I can enjoy my tone more. But for louder playing where a stage monitor is essential, I think IEMs benefit the sound of the group. And I can hear what I’m playing much better, even if the tone’s not quite as good in my ears as it is in the room.
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03-08-2022 08:16 AM
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Actually I think I agree. I’ve been watching the 3 part Beatles documentary (3 hours each part!) with my Yamaha HPH 7 headphones and I’m hearing a fullness and beauty I’ve never heard before. I think I just need better IEMs. I don’t need my headphones loud at all, when they’re really good. Bad IEMs probably get turned up too much too… Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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My son Tuomas Pietinen has just compiled a brief comparison of four Toob/Metro cabs hooked to his friend Pepe's powered Kemper modeling amp. They did not have too much time and wanted to keep the clips short & simple, skipping most of the available tone universe. I can't make too much of the samples, but understand very well that IEM is the No. 1 enemy of FRFR speakers. On crunch settings, anything over 6 kHz brings in unwanted sizzle. I think Paul Reed Smith, Jack Zucker and many others have pointed this out. Such frequencies shouldn't exist in the modeled tones but somehow they sneak in. For the amp-in-the-room feeling/personal monitor use for electric guitar a fairly linear bass speaker (like Celestion's BN12-300S) or a midrange PA woofer (like the Eminences used on jazz amps) might be a better choice.
https://youtu.be/jdgzuhVvqfsLast edited by Gitterbug; 03-09-2022 at 08:09 AM.
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Like earplugs, if you go iem they really need to be molded and of good quality, or you'll be hearing wrong things, plus you'll need to turn up because they don't isolate properly, and you might end up damaging your ears instead of protecting them.
I really dislike them, except for complicated gigs, theatre, etc, which are more about getting through the gig rather than having fun.
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I agree that earplugs and IEMs both cut into the joy of hearing the music we make. But both protect hearing, and IEMs really have helped us play tighter and reduce our stage volume (especially the blues band). They also really help vocalists hear themselves without straining - when I have to sing, it’s easier to do and has really helped me to control pitch. Originally Posted by Alter
Custom ear molds are great. They have holes into which you can plug IEM drivers or simple filter caps that attenuate sound at different levels - I’ve had them for years. They have to be checked for fit every year or two because some of our external ears change a bit as we age, and you have to clean them regularly (the molds, not the ears!).
But there are now excellent memory foam tips that seal as well as or better than custom molds, are easier to clean, and are at least as comfortable. I use Comply on all my earbuds and my BASN IEMs and leave my molds in the case. And the change in SPL and sound character is obvious when a tip shifts and the seal is lost. I’d much rather play with nothing in my ears, and I take out my monitors or plugs for quieter tunes. But I still have decent hearing in my 70s and want to hang onto it.
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That Jensen -N12D seems a class above the rest only not so efficient.
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I wasn't present so I don't know how much they fiddled with volume. Given that the 6.5" SICAs are in the 91-92 dB ballpark and the Tornado 98 dB, they certainly did. On paper, the N12D with its 99.1 dB is the most sensitive of the lot. A real bazooka, it would be ideal for pedal steel but that tribe is arch-conservative and served by US-made speakers, vintage and new. Originally Posted by Eck
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Fair enough. It’s not the loudest I’ve played even of the little amps I own. Otoh, it is the best sounding of the three. Originally Posted by John A.
if you are up for lugging your PR to a gig and convincing some overworked and under resourced sound engineer to mike it, is better. No question. But…. the quilter is getting there.
Did I mention how much I like the DI? And it’s a proper balanced XLR unlike some pedals I could mention. I don’t think I’ll bother recording my Princeton ever again for clean tones tbh, although the PR does respond better with dirt pedals, maybe. If I’m doing a show with a good sound system, that really opens up a lot of options. Anyway, nice to have options. It will probably come to gigs even when I bring my PR.
Main thing - it doesn’t exactly respond like a tube amp. This to me is not a negative because I find a warm PR to be … mushy. But I know some people like that sort of thing.Last edited by Christian Miller; 03-09-2022 at 06:45 PM.
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I used CEPs (communications ear plugs) while flying helicopters for many years. They direct the radio and intercom audio directly into the ears, and block the very loud noise made by the helicopter. I tried both custom molded plugs and foam plugs of various composition. The fitted plugs were much worse than any foam plugs. They just didn't (couldn't) adjust as my ears moved, and let in noise. The Comply tips were the best, but even the disposable foam plugs, with a tube through to allow the audio through, worked better for me. My hearing is, I think, pretty good for my age, even after more than 40 years of spending hours every day inside helicopters, because I've always taken precautions to preserve it. I get occasional tinnitus, but it's bearable at its worst.
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I'm not sure what you mean by "mushy" (so hard to describe sounds), so I'm not sure how to factor that in. My PR is my favorite sound of all the amps I've ever owned. But I definitely don't like carrying around almost 40 lbs of amp, which is my entry point into this conversation. Based on what I'm able to glean, the Aviator Cub seems like the likeliest solution for me, but I think I need to try before I buy. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Perhaps tinnetus is worthy of a thread … Originally Posted by sgosnell
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During the '80's & '90's I led a pop-rock group that played stuff from the '50's on upwards. I had been using large Fender amps until '91, when I switched to a Mesa-Boogie Mark IV. Towards the end of the century I retired, moved, decided I wasn't going to do that again, found lots of jazz opportunities in our new community. The MKIV seemed a bit overkill for just that, so I soon was playing all my gigs through RE cabs and AI Clarus amps. Right after I had sold the Boogie on Ebay I got a call from a guy in our community's music club who led a large vocal ensemble that sang doo wop and early rock backed by a piano. He wanted to know if I could help them out. I recruited bass & drums from my jazz group, but I still needed a way to get a rock sound.
I had a Boss GT-5 that I had used in my earlier life for rehearsals and home practice instead of my MKIV. After some experimentation I figured out that if I ran the output of that into the effects return on a Clarus with the tweeter control on the RE set to give a balanced sound, it wasn't too different from playing the modeler through a powered speaker.
We played rockabilly, doo wop, early rock and surf music but nothing with a highly-distorted tone. I never had any problems achieving adequate volume and never heard any sounds of distress from the speakers. I used a Twin-8-Tower and Stealth-12-ER before Rich built me a custom Twin-8-Tower-ER, which did a great job.
After about a year I left the group, which shortly after reorganized, with the drummer taking the band and a singer to form his own group that was popular here until he recently had enough of being a bandleader. I used to occasionally sit in with them, using an AI Coda or Ten2 combo, which worked as well as the Clarus & RE, and was quite a bit lighter.
Of course I have a story about that. The first time I sat in with them with the AI Coda we played at a country club restaurant in a large active adult community. We were set up facing a glass wall about thirty feet across, with a small dance floor in front of us. We played an hour dinner set at modest volumes, took a dinner break ourselves, went back to play our next set, found that the glass wall was actually a set of disappearing sliding doors that opened to a large patio area outside, which proved to be the dance floor for the rest of the night. We turned way up. I was regretting taking my tiny Coda, but after our first tune our sound guy came back in from all the way in the back of the patio to tell me I was way too loud. Also said it sounded great.
At the end of the night a guy came over while I was packing up and asked where my amp was. I pointed to the Coda and he said "Oh, just that straight into the sound system?" He was disbelieving when I told him that I wasn't in the FOH, just the keys and vocals were. He said "I could have sworn you had a Twin Reverb or Dual Showman from out there."
Danny W.
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I looked at the AI coda combo
online ....it appears that some of their products are now upfiring ....
“The Coda is an evolution of our previous generation downfiring woofer systems. The upfiring woofer gives it a more open sound and the switchable midrange level allows it to sound more forward (like the previous generation Corus) or more neutral (like the previous generation Coda). Its small size belies its outstanding full range sound.”
I didn’t about know these ....
Edit ....
there are some interesting
white papers on their site
explaining their thinking
(This is the sh1t I’ve been boring
on about , how come no-one pointed
me at this stuff ?)
Last edited by pingu; 03-10-2022 at 01:18 AM.
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See reply #75. Originally Posted by pingu
Danny W.
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Oh yeah .... doh Originally Posted by Danny W.
sorry guys that kinda slid by me
have you used an up firing Coda Danny ?
or the purely up-firing Upshot ?
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it’s not the sound, it’s the feel. Amp modellers etc have been able to replicate the sound of a blackface fender well enough to fool people in a blind test for a while now. The thing guitarists tend to notice however is the feel, the way a tube amp responds while playing and this AFAIK has yet to be well reproduced by any modelling amp, analog or digital. Originally Posted by John A.
For my playing style while I like the Fender tone I’ve never really got to grips with this aspect of tube amps; I just find them hard to play when up at gig volume. I feel this as mushiness/compression. That mushiness doesn’t really suit my style or technique, while it would suit someone else (most people by the sounds of it.)
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Produced and/or just packaged. Certain Martin strings are manufactured in Italy and then shipped to Mexico for packaging before being shipped out - partly back to Italy. Originally Posted by JCat
You mean you flewformed Stockhausen? Originally Posted by sgosnell
I've never seen pilots wearing anything other than closed-back over-ear headphones. My own budget solution is to wear not-too-uncomfortable shooting range/hunting hearing protection. It's got passive and active noise cancellation, a possibility to filter through ambient noise at acceptable levels plus audio in. If sound quality is important I wear regular earbuds underneath, which work a lot better for me than IEMs (on all levels).
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I like tube compression and response. My style tends a bit toward legato and I prefer a less percussive note envelope. I've actually found some modellers emulate my subjective sense of tube sound and feel very well, but that's a doctrinal debate for another day. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
What I like specifically about the PR (as opposed to it's larger brethren in the Fender *.Reverb family) is that it rides the line between a touch of compression/sustain and overdrive at a sane volume. To get a tone I like out of a larger Fender is often impractical.
But the PR can also cross the line into distortion at a sane volume, which is not always a good thing. The way Quilter scales their power seems (on paper anyway) to be the solution to that, but more so in the Aviator Cub than the SB. My specific conundrum is that if I were to get one I'd have unload my PR because I just don't have any place to put more gear, so I have to chase one down to try.
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I don’t know if you’ve done anything to the speaker in your PR but I’ve been able to secure quite a bit more headroom by using a more sensitive speaker. That said, it does drive a bit on gigs sometimes; I did a theatre thing and it wasn’t quite clean. Got some complements on my tone though so…. Originally Posted by John A.
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The Fender Tone Masters and Quilters check all the boxes for me, as swing, bop, straight ahead jazz amps. All incredible amps. Far more versatile amps than many realize. They will do me just fine until my dirt nap. I hope that's a good long time. If you twisted my arm over my head and between my legs and back over my head again, made me pick just one...a Tone Master.
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AFAIK the aviator is a Superblock US with a cab. The SB itself takes up as much space as two effect pedals, but of course you need a cab at some point. Originally Posted by John A.
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Looks like a great set up Danny, but I think you could have used a Gretsch Country Club!
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I was trying to figure out what kind of gig/music dirt nap was, took me a bit before the light bulb went on. Originally Posted by jumpnblues
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I specifically asked Quilter if this the case, and Pat Quilter wrote back to me saying that the SB and the Aviator have different power amps (25 and 50 watts*, respectively). He said the one in the Aviator is the same as the one in the 101R and the one in the SB is what he called a "mainstream IC". Originally Posted by docsteve
*without getting into too much mishegas about power measurement, the AC is more powerful and louder through the same speaker than the SB)
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good to know! Originally Posted by John A.
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