You have some excellent points!
> musicians are not soundtechs
We ran headlong into this! What I ended up doing was to take an entire practice with each team to do training.
We taught them:
• sometimes reducing an instrument in the mix will clear things up than raising the level of a different instrument
• to pan strategically by separating instruments with similar frequency and tonal ranges
• to save their settings
• that the purpose of monitors is to allow them to hear what they need to hear in order to play rather than to create a perfect CD-quality sound in their head
Then the techs listened in on each person's mix and provided suggestions until each person was comfortable with the general mix which each musician could work from as needed. (We should probably do this again as it's been a couple years and our musician base has changed somewhat - we do train each muso as they come on a team.)
> it takes a break-in period
For some this was longer than others. This is true for several reasons. Some musos focus on the interaction of other musos - these folks need to have the avioms set up so they can hear everyone distinctly, including the voices of non-singers so they can communicate. Other musos focus on the reaction of the audience - these folks need to hear the house or they'll feel disconnected.
Some musicians just don't want the distraction. That makes sense to me - I already have too much to be thinking about (I'm simultaneousely playing an electirc guitar rig, an acoustic one, a synth module - all through one guitar and pedals, singing lead, directing the team, giving vocal cues to the projectionists, interacting with and leading the congregation, and staying connected with God and asking where He wants us to go in the midst of all this). But I find it easier to tweak my own aviom between songs than to try giving directions to a sound tech who is doing a monitor mix.
To help with our break-in period, we required the musos to use the avioms (after training them). This was more because of the sound issues we faced which the avioms addressed rather than anything else. But because not using the avioms was not an option, even the people frustrated by them had to learn to adjust. Two nearly quit over the matter out of frustration (a drummer and a vocalist). But we really didn't have much of a choice, and now those same people are some of the strongest supporters of the aviom system.
> hire an experienced sound tech
We're not in a position to do that, either. And with as busy as the guys are working on the house mix, getting a good monitor mix just didn't happen, even when I had my own custom monitor mix. Now I can hear what I want to hear, and at levels I like.
Avioms carry their own set of issues. So does using amps or stage monitors. I look at it in this way: do whatever works best for the audio compromises your church faces (including budget, musos, techs, acoustics...). For years I used a stage amp (I'm an old head banging rocker from the 70's/80's). Then I switched to an off-stage amp with a sound cabinet in an enclosure. Now I'm playing through a tweaked X-3 live running direct. (That's my electric channel - different story on the acoustic one). Tools change, needs change, solutions change - even for old dogs like us.
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