Intro and amp question

[ootini]

Hey all,

I'm brand new here! YAY Bit of background on me, I'm from the UK and play in a rock band. My main rig is made up of a Roland A90, Kurzweil K2000VP, Roland XP80 and some other guff when I can be bothered using it.

My question regarding amps is: I'm fed up of turning up to gigs and the in house rig not having enough monitors, so I want to get my own for emergencies. I was wondering if a Behringer Bass amp would be suitable, as I have the chance to pick one up rather cheap. It's a wedge shaped unit with a single 12" driver. It would be running of the dedicated monitor aux out of my submixer, so obviously the main LR outs would still be going to the FOH desk.

Would I be better with a "proper" wedge monitor, or would the bass amp do? Thanks very much in advance.

 

[Becky]

Welcome to the forums! It's nice to have you here

 

[ootini]

Welcome to the forums! It's nice to have you here

Thanks very much! Nice to be here.

 

[goz211]

It'll do the job if it's very cheap and you're on a tight budget.

Jogging headphones run from the headphone out on your mixer would be even cheaper.

 

[ootini]

That's a good point but I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be onstage using headphones or ear buds. Not because the physical comfort but by using them I'd be "blocking" my ears to a certain extent which might make it difficult to hear the rest of the band on stage, could be off putting, but I'll definitely try it out at rehearsals. Thanks

The bass amp has active and passive inputs, any ideas on which input I should be using for a line level output from the mixer? I know I could just try them both, but I'm cautious of overloading the preamp and cooking it with a very hot signal.

 

[goz211]

Jogging headphones won't block your ears - I mean the ones that have little hangers to go over your ears to hold them in place. They aren't set into the canal (or whatever you call the opening) the way mp3 or phone ones are.

I use various monitoring things over the course of a working year. One of them is a set of (cheap) jogging earphones I picked up in Tesco.

The little speaker is angled in such a way that the ear is only half covered.

I used them (and a headphone mixer) with a function band I used to dep with that had decent side fill monitors that could feed a little bit of keyboard back on stage for the rest of the band to hear and to get cues etc.(the ones not wearing earphones).

BTW - some of the band used a (relatively expensive) IEM (in ear monitoring) system - tried my cheap joggers and couldn't hear much difference - certainly no more bottom end. They reckoned the money must go on the wireless bit - the quality of sound was similar to what they could hear when they plugged my joggers in (via a cable).

That being said - all the big acts use IEMs these days. Much less on stage volume, far easier to mix - you can wander all over the place with your mic.

 

[ootini]

Cheers for that, think I'll try em out!