Had an oops tonight where the monitor amp decided to throw a wobbly, second day of a two day festival where every thing worked like clockwork until the quad amp used for wedges decided to take an early bath. We still had drum fill and one member of the band on ears so I gave my ears pack I use for monitoring front of house to the lead singer and the bass and second guitarist had to wing it . Fortunately this bunch of old pros took it in their stride and nailed the rest of their set , whilst one of the crew belted back to the lock up to grab a couple of spare amps to get the monitors back.
When I started gigging monitors weren’t a thing , so they are to my mind, a luxury. Could you cope without ?
www.maltingsaudio.co.uk
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Ive had to, loads of times.
Vocals? High jeopardy.
Harmonies? please no...
Vocals - only if you want to empty the pub very quickly indeed
Venues never had monitors when I was first playing gigs, especially pubs. That was 20 years ago, admittedly.
I’ve also played many a random show with minimal PA on tour in UK & Europe- I thought that was par for the course?
The one time it really didn't work for me was playing in a 3-piece 50s-style rock'n'roll band - at the brief soundcheck in an empty bar it seemed fine, the bassist's very loud amp and vocals from the PA cabs were audible enough over my amp and the drums. I thought nothing more of it.
But when the bar was full and we kicked off the gig, I was immediately aware that I could only hear the drums and my own amp. I was at least in time! The partial saving grace was that for that style of music, you can just play Chuck Berry-esque double-stop stabs and the odd solo, and as long as you're in the right(ish) key it more or less works... although the bassist was looking daggers at me half the time and occasionally shouting - inaudibly - at me across the stage, we did just about get away with it.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I can think of one occasion where the monitor mix was so bad and loud/feeding back, despite me asking the engineer several times about it, that i just reached down and turned off the powered wedge. At least with the main speakers you've got some idea what it sounds like out front.
In terms of using wedges, I’d happily never use one again.
Since I provide PA and wedges there is always something of quality by my feet. When I started in the 70s monitors were non existent to us local musicians and I remember a few home builds along the way before compact commercial stuff was available and affordable plus mixers capable of a decent monitor send were not common back in the day. Anyone else remember the HH 100w PA amp, then the Peavey 200w then 400w mixer amp boxes, oh how we looked forward to that!