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Regarding back up etc, think of it another way, especially for small/medium gigs. You are actually closer to the pa than the rest of the audience. There is now no other noise on stage (apart from drums) so in theory, if your audience is getting a good all round sound, then you should be. Theres nothing on stage where you are clouding the clarity of the overall audience sound. Worst case scenario slightly tilt the pa inwards so you can hear the front of it better, but you wont really need to.

I take a spare behringer p2 (about £30) and a spare pair of normal earbud headphones. In all honesty, if they were to go down you can still hear the PA clearly, so I probably wouldnt even use the backups.

I've seen the white one. Looks and sounded good. But then when I looked at them for sale (about £900) they seem to be a rock bass version, not the custom sig shown in all the videos etc?

It really does. I dont think I ever had a decent mix using monitors with backline, simply because I had no control over it once set and they were too close to other wedges with other mixes in them. The iems let you just put through what you want into your ears, and theres no extra unwanted noise on stage from 3 or more wedges.

Which colour / style?

One other thing is you dont need to give up your amps to use in ears. You can use your in ears just for your own monitor mix instead of wedges etc. Ie just tickle through what you need to hear.

Some bands have bassists pretty synonymous with a specific bass, but what would you all say U2s Adam Clayton is most recognised with? I really dont know on this one.

That was my experience when I first tried them a few years ago and I didnt try again and went back to amps. I got round it this year by slightly popping out the in ears so they stayed in but I could hear the crowd too. Other ways round are just placing a mic towards the crowd and having that on a channel.

Yes, it's the small pubs etc where I think iems would be great, reasons being: 1. No need to squeeze past every punter who stands in the doorways with your amps on load in and load out. Twist, turn, get injured. 2. As i mentioned before - i genuinely believe it's the amps on stage that cause the issue. They're usually firing directionally at the back of someone's legs, facing the wrong way, and trying to do two jobs (be a monitor and add to FOH sound) and not succeeding efficiently for their intended purpose. For anyone who hasn't tried it, and wants to without the expense, forget iems and just try putting everything through your desk using pedals not amps. I'd be amazed if you couldnt just gig like that as the sound will be so much clearer and balanced through your pa. Then add in your iems in time for your own personal mix if needed. To be clear though, I dont use my iems fully in and sealed like some do (I think that's what puts some people off at first) as I do find I like the ambient noise of the crowd as well. But I get a nice mix of my choosing, fully controllable at any time and FOH sound is much better. With a bit of forethought and planning the whole band can be set up and sound checked in 15 mins too. It just depends what you as a band like. For me, my last band was so loud it was awful. It was literally so loud you couldnt hear the guitarist on stage despite him being 10ft away, yet on his own his sound was so loud it could bend peoples legs. It was just a horrible frequency and volume mess. So it was very hard to play and enjoy and there was hearing damage too. Iems would have sorted that in a day. I'd have been able to sort my own mix and hear everyone and be happy and let the guy worry about the foh sound. Guitarist could have had his own mix of ear splitting mids and guitar twoddle of just him and it wouldnt have affected anyone. As it was because of that awful stage sound the band split.

Yes, works great.

I've gone this route after years of thinking about it. However.... the biggest revelation wasnt that iems are better in themselves or anything else, it was the fact that it's the amps that have been the problem for listening to everyone all these years. Get rid of the amps off stage and I reckon you can even play without iems if you can hear the pa.

Hi all, so I've gone and done it. Completely by fluke too. After years and years of valve amps, ss amps, class d, helix, pedals, sansamps, stacks - everything - I've found a great great di live sound. And it's cheap. And light. It's a behringer bdi21 (around £35) and a nux mld (around £130). So, the bdi21- your think it's because I didnt have a sansamp, but I've had plenty and bizarrely this one beats them. But, the secret sauce is to couple this with the 8x10 ampeg cab sim on the nux pedal. No preamp, no drive, just the 8x10. The sound is fantastic!! Straight into our PA it has depth, tone for days and that valve 3d harmonics. Honestly it's a great fluke combo but the sound is lush. In fairness it's probably what these types of pedals have been missing.

Simple for me...... Cancelling rehersal on day of rehersal is completely unacceptable. One off fair enough. Twice, no. Third time they're out. What's the point of trying anymore? Not learning songs? Unacceptable. As above. If they're committed they will learn the songs and turn up. If they're not ,then .......

Simplest way is to gig at 3/4 volume on your bass. Then you can go louder or quieter easily depending on requirement. Other simpler ways are digging in harder and rolling up the tone control. It's not really about being louder, more being more prominent in the mix. More costly alternatives are a mid boost pedal, compressor, boost pedal etc.

I grew up listening to my mums endless albums of roxy music. Obviously as a kid you rebel against it, but once I got old enough to appreciate they're absolutely fantastic!! On a side note though, they make me a little sad as I genuinely dont ever see any young band coming out with music like that ever again. It had maturity, technicality, skill, superb sound, hooks, melodies, numerous instruments and just fantastic all round sound.

Wow! £299. I'd say that's the best bargain on a new bass for years. Used to love mine. In all honesty I liked my lb100 tribute better than my clf l2000.

I had one and loved it. Great sound, quality, everything. Just a slight shielding hum as mentioned.

Yeh, done loads of gigs, loads of stages, then just a little pub and it went bananas. Got me thinking I've done something wrong. So I'll have to double check it.

They do look great amps those. Such a shame swr, warwick etc have disappeared. They did some cracking stuff.

Was just a really weird one. Its work perfectly before at practice, but last night at soundcheck it was just like a broken microphone. Thatbwas in passive too. Dont know what it was. I'll give it a look over this week.

Does the shure work with active basses? My flippin boss wd50 hated mine tonight. Had to use a cable for the first time in 5 years.

No, with the boss there is no manual scanning at all. Everytime you plug it in to the receiver it auto checks and finds the best possible signal. This stops it finding a good signal when the room is empty, then that freq being busier later on when the crowd is in. It's literally, plug in, let its light stop flashing and you should be good.

Still using my boss wd50. Still doing well. Just remember with any systems like these that auto scan, to put back in the transmitter before starting so it can reach for the best frequency now the room is full.