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Helix with FRFR Stage amp, monitor wedge or IEM


amsdenj
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Helix users have a fair amount of flexibility in how we play live. I'm wondering what experience this Forum community has on FRFR stage amps vs traditional monitor wedges vs IEMs. I'll start with my own experience.

 

Our band uses an X32 Core with two SD16 digital snakes. We're a 5-piece with 2 lead guitars, bass, keys and drums - pretty traditional, playing rock/dance music in clubs. We do a number of out-door gigs in the summer. I have been experimenting with three different setups for myself, and the other band members. Here's my experience so far.

 

FRFR Stage amp - I have a stage amp I made that has two Eminence Beta-10CX coaxial speakers with ASD:1001 tweeters driven by a Hafler stereo power amp. With Helix, this is essentially similar to a traditional stage amplifier that I setup behind me. Sounds fantastic.

 

This is familiar because my guitar tone is behind me where I'm use to hearing it, it has an individual stage presence that provide space for the instrument, and I can hear myself very well and react to the feedback from the amp when playing. The down side is carrying additional equipment, it takes up space, it produces a lot of stage volume especially in small clubs, and can overlap and clash with the FOH mix.

 

Traditional Monitor Wedge - In another setup, I don't use the stage amp and just use a JBL EON610 monitor wedge on the floor in front of me.

 

This eliminates the stage amp, reduces the band's footprint, but still has some drawbacks. First I'm hearing my vocal and guitar monitor from the same speaker, so they're not as separate as with a FRFR behind me. Second the guitar is a lot brighter and in front of me, which is different and a little confusing. I don't hear the same warm tone as I got from the FRFR behind me because I'm looking right at that horn. However, this is more realistic with what is going to FOH, and after a while I get use to having my guitar tone in front of me.

 

But it still has the stage volume issue. With 5 EON610's for monitors in the band, we have a lot of power and speaker surface area pointing at us. This tends to get pretty loud on the stage, forces the drummer to hit harder, and in some cases, bounces off the back wall in clubs and overwhelms the FOH system with a the reflected monitor mix. This is not a good thing at all. It takes a lot of discipline to keep that stage monitor level under control. 

 

IEM - This is a third configuration where I use Shure SE215 IEM's connected to the PA through a cable.

 

This is ideal from the standpoint of limiting stage volume. But is seems this needs to be all or nothing. If there's one stage amp, the IEMs don't seem to work that well. And then there's the drummer! Can't get rid of his stage volume unless we use MIDI drums (which we have but don't use).

 

But I'm not really liking the IEMs for guitar. I need my guitar to see the speaker. Its that interaction between the speaker and the physical strings on the guitar that contributes to tone, feel and sustain. I miss that with IEMs. I just don't feel the interaction between my speaker and the guitar.

 

What's your experience? Do you use a FRFR behind you? If so, how to you deal with stage volume in small clubs? Do you use a monitor wedge? If so, does it sound and feel right to you when playing? What about IEMs? You can hear yourself, but do you and your guitar "feel" the tone? With IEMs you also need to mix in other parts of the band because otherwise you're isolated. Can you hear enough of yourself to get the feedback between what you're playing and what the amp is producing? Do you like IEMs? How do you select your monitor mix?

 

Appreciate the insight and advice.

 

 

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My setup has been pretty stabilized now for about a year.  We're a 7 person band with two female vocalist, a male vocalist and harmonica player, a rhythm guitar player who occassionally sings, myself as lead guitar, bass and drummer.  What I've settled on has a few drawbacks, but I've adjusted to it as has the rest of the band, and it seems to work well across pretty much every venue we've encountered.

 

I use a Yamaha DXR12 as a floor monitor positioned behind me and turned slightly toward the center since I stand a bit toward stage left.  I try to keep it positioned about 4 feet behind me which helps to give me the fully formed sound from the speaker rather than be overwhelmed by the horn. Our own PA system consists of a QSC line array using a floor setup with two stacks (one left, one right) each consisting of a KW181 sub and 2 KLA12 liine array speakers.  We use 2 traditional floor wedges at the front of the stage, but they only have voices and the harmonica in them.  All of our instruments and voices go to the FOH.  The Bass and I both go direct XLR to the board and the rhythm guitar player mic's his amp.  On occasion we do play some larger venues either outdoors or in larger auditoriums with their own professional sound people and systems.  In those cases we'll get separate side fill monitor mixes for the rear of the stage area.

 

Regardless of the venue we stay at a fairly consistent stage volume.  I normalize the volume of all of my patches to right around 100db with the Helix master volume set at 50% and the volume of my DXR12 set at 50%.  Depending on the situation our drummer may use a Roland TD-15K drum kit which he sends to a Mackie Thump15 on a speaker stand and angled across stage toward the center for stage sound with a separate direct line to the FOH desk.  He's a pretty active drummer but he stays pretty consistent in his volume levels whether it's an electronic kit or acoustic kit so we rarely vary our amp/monitor stage volumes regardless of the venue.

 

The bass player stands next to me and faces his bass amp angled toward center as I do, and the rhythm play stands on the opposite side of the drums from me and faces his amp (Mustang III ver 2) angled toward the center as well.  In this setup we can all hear ourselves pretty well as well as hear each other which allows for better blending of our playing.

 

We've occasionally discussed the possibility of IEM's but the band has been together so long (10 years with only a couple of changes in personnel) that we've got things down pretty solidly with our setup and we pretty much have come to the conclusion that if it ain't broke, don't try and fix it.  I could see it if we were having the problem of controlling our stage volume or an inability to hear each other, but that is just never the case.  We rarely play in really small venues, but on the occasion that we do, we simply take the instruments out of the PA and our typical stage volume seems to be about right.

 

Here's a video someone took of one of our performances from last weekend that will give you some idea of our setup.  We weren't terribly pleased with the job the sound crew did in mixing as they seemed to be adjusting it throughout the performance.  In this clip they never did get the rhythm guitar level correct and pretty much messed up the female vocalists at the beginning of the song, but got most of it somewhat right after a minute or so.  Just ignore the silence at the beginning of the clip.  The person taking the video didn't turn it on for about 10 seconds or so.

 

https://www.facebook.com/SalvationSaloonPosseBand/videos/1694896814167297/

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