EBS_freak

Short answer: Yes. It would be that bad. Longer answer: The whole idea around IEMs is that they cut out the ambient sound on stage and the thinking is that if you want to hear something, you can't hear it unless it is put into your monitor mix. Attenuation is typically -26/-27dB (like putting your fingers deep into your ears. If you are hearing your bass amp clearly with that level of attenuation, your bass amp is too loud anyway! A single driver is a problem because they don't have enough headroom, especially when you are most interested in the bass. What happens, is that the balanced armature runs out of headroom and starts clicking or distorting, or both. Your over ear noise cancelling headphones are going to sound great - they will have big dynamic speakers that can handle a very dynamic program of music (e.g. lots of transients, both low and high). What you are effectively asking a single balanced armature to do is a pretty large ask - with live music as opposed to music that has come out of a studio and been mastered, compressed and limited. It's like putting a 1 litre engine in a big 16 wheeler and for it to have the torque and power to shift things as the stock engine would. You would expect it to cough and splutter... and not give the greatest performance... to the point (with bass at least), it's a thoroughly miserable experience. I'm talking with quite a substantial bit of experience in this area. If you haven't already, this should give you a flavour of where to take things on the IEM front. My advice would be to save your money, avoid the journey and start saving for some UE6s. In the short term, they may stick out your ears a bit - but the ZS10 (I mention them in the thread below) are a good middle ground if you can make them fit into your existing tips... but having said that, sleeves/tips are never as successful as custom IEMs... but then again, they don't carry the same price tag either.

With a single balanced armature, especially for bass players, they will be a one way street to misery. You'll want an IEM with minimum or a triple (bass, mid treble), or what I would consider the minimum, a quad balanced armature (double bass, mid, treble). Headroom is key. Balanced armatures are rubbish as bass... hence you'll want to ideally double them up. You can get hybrid setups (where dynamic drivers are used over balanced armatures), which will give you more bass, more headroom - but less fidelity. Think of it like this, would you gig with a 1x10... or a 4x10? Of course, you'll want the latter for the headroom, so the bass remains, clear, free from distortion (even if you can't hear distortion, if it's present, it will fatigue your ears and you'll be tempted to turn it the volume - which defeats the purpose of inears).

More from Silverstone...

Designacable and lynx custom are my go to when I can’t be bothered to make my own.

Excellent festival this weekend. I’ve been taking a bit of a break from playing to work on my video stuff and been shooting stuff for my friends Britpop tribute. Anyway - Turns out this other random guy had missed live music and all the festivals that he couldn’t go to. So what did he do? Get a full blown stage built over his lake and hired a pro crew from Sheffield Area and held his own on his front lawn and booked all his favourite bands - Deacon Blue (the guys fave band) closed. They’re pretty epic. (ps pic from soundcheck before the audience arrived…!)

Congrats. Glad to hear you’re loving them! As you can probably gather, I think these are the sweet spot for a bass player looking for a decent amount of low end for the money. Looking forward to hearing about your experience!

I’m sure it was rubbish anyway.

“Bass Laundering”

@Dood- nice review enjoyed that. Only thing I would say for future videos, for me, the speed at which you need to deliver your narrative bits need to be more akin to the pace you get if you playback the video at 1.25x. Can't argue with the content though.

I think Hipshot make Foderas bridges. Hipshot have the BEST customer service. As an example, I asked them about range of adjustment on one of their bridges for a bass I was building. They sent me every available option of spring and saddle adjustment screw foc for all saddle slots to make sure the intonation would be spot on. Brilliant stuff.

Just cos the response is quoted doesn’t mean It can get that low with any sort of significant drop off. Additionally, whether the amp can sustain lows without sagging… and then there’s the ruggedness of the speaker itself.

Again, if you are going to use FRFR/PA cabs, ensure they can handle the transients of live bass.

Is your receiver on the floor or behind you? If it's behind you you may want to mount the transmitter on your strap behind your body. Your body does quite a good job of absorbing RF so, if you have your transmitter in line of sight to the receiver behind you (e.g. directly by your amp), you may find yourself in a better position. If in doubt, always carry a cable.

Out again Friday... for another go. Could be quite interesting - it's a private festival with Deacon Blue headlining.

Oh man. Sad to read this 😞

😉

Yeah, with the Otto from the Simpsons hair cut (lockdown locks), behind the camera.

Phone call went like this... "Got quite an interesting gig tonight... fancy bringing down a camera or two?" For those wondering what one man (me) and a load of cameras can do...

Some folks may find section 7 of the IEM bible thread useful -

Playback mix I presume? (Virtual soundcheck)

Ive done similar in the past

Some woud argue that in my case, it's defo accurate.

Just a word of warning on FRFR cabs - make sure they can handle bass!

Hence the link - I didn't want to regurgitate the whole lot... but yeah... this ^ If people aren't using PAs, maybe sacking of the rig and buying a couple of top end tops is the way to go. That way you can use a top as a traditional rig if you are playing with a band when you need to play without IEMs.

This ^ The key things to consider are this - 1. They offer hearing protection, enabling you to have monitoring at a safe level 2.They offer an enhanced clarity over traditional monitoring solutions, you only hear what you want to hear, with minimal influence from ambient sound 3. You can move around the stage without impacting what you hear 4. They are a lot easier to carry around than a pair or wedges or rig (see them as a replacement for your rig, or monitor wedges, or both - and then you'll see that comparatively, they are cheap... and your back will thank you for it) 5. They enable you to go ampless 6. They enable consistency across gigs 7. They look cool as fk and makes it look like you mean business @Hammer_If you haven't already, check out the following thread - https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/389429-the-iem-bible-thread/ - all the advantages and tricks and tips are cleared off in there.