Whizzer speaker stage monitor

[mshilarious]

Farview, why is a wide dispersion needed in a monitor? I usually try not to stray far from my beer so that I can take advantage of any breaks during a song. The only reason I move around the stage at all is to try and hear more of the other guitarist or singer. If I had a monitor, I would have no reason to move around. Keep in mind that we're typically in small to medium clubs with small stages.

See, that's where maybe a 5" jobbie might work for you, especially if you don't have an open mic. If it's only $10 for the driver . . . give it a shot, and let the singer cough up the bucks for a real monitor. I don't see the point of the 8" though, for that much woodworking I'd just step up to the real thing. Heck, in the bad old days, I've used crap 10" guitar amps as sidefills

Ah, I remember my first band's PA . . . the guitarist's parents sprung for the PA, it was two 2x12 cabs and a 6 channel powered mixer. Eventually we figured out we needed monitors, because the singer was the drummer so we got these self-powered things that must have been 3" drivers or something. The guitarist used a 2x12 Fender amp and I had a biamped Peavey 15" and 2x12" rig. The drummer played with the freakin' John Bonham tree trunks, turned around of course.

I'm pretty sure nobody ever heard the vocals

 

[travelin travis]

Usually it's a 1k signal.

That would have been my guess too.......like mshilarious said, knee jerk reaction. But tweeters are usually crossed over well above 1k. I'm lost on this one. Where's Harvey?

 

[travelin travis]

See, that's where maybe a 5" jobbie might work for you, especially if you don't have an open mic. If it's only $10 for the driver . . . give it a shot, and let the singer cough up the bucks for a real monitor. I don't see the point of the 8" though, for that much woodworking I'd just step up to the real thing. Heck, in the bad old days, I've used crap 10" guitar amps as sidefills

Ah, I remember my first band's PA . . . the guitarist's parents sprung for the PA, it was two 2x12 cabs and a 6 channel powered mixer. Eventually we figured out we needed monitors, because the singer was the drummer so we got these self-powered things that must have been 3" drivers or something. The guitarist used a 2x12 Fender amp and I had a biamped Peavey 15" and 2x12" rig. The drummer played with the freakin' John Bonham tree trunks, turned around of course.

I'm pretty sure nobody ever heard the vocals

Sounds like fun to me.

When you say that no one ever heard the vocals, do you mean the band, the audience, or both?

 

[mshilarious]

When you say that no one ever heard the vocals, do you mean the band, the audience, or both?

The band, the singer, the audience, probably even the microphone

 

[MadAudio]

I'm guessing an in-ear monitor is not an option for you.

 

[travelin travis]

Mshilarious, if I decide to try the hotspot monitor, do you have any suggestions for a small driver?

 

[travelin travis]

I'm guessing an in-ear monitor is not an option for you.

In ear would be far out of my budget. Unless you know something I don't. Actually MadAudio, maybe a diy wired in-ear thing might just work. I used to have a mp3 player with a line in that sounded pretty damn decent. Maybe I could tap the mixer send from the snake and use that. The battery power of that thing was like 40 hours for a AA. The included ear buds sounded pretty decent too. I'm not sure if the line in can be directly monitored thru the phones out though. My little neice just got one of these and I might have to borrow it and find out.

 

[mshilarious]

Mshilarious, if I decide to try the hotspot monitor, do you have any suggestions for a small driver?

I haven't used this unit, but I have the Eminence units I linked before, and the Peavey Extreme RAGE! has an Eminence. I really like their stuff.

So:

http://www.partsexpress.com/pdf/290-400c.pdf

Go with the "Small Sealed Box" design (the first one), and note that 200Hz high-pass recommendation and heavy fill requirement! It would be like an 8" square front, tapered to the back, to get the 0.1ft2 volume. The graphs show useable response to 5kHz (-3dB), which gets you through the critical range for intelligibility of speech. Whereas the Dayton 5" was heading south at 2kHz. Also the voice coils on Eminences are nice and hefty, I feel confident they can take some abuse. If you got one of those on top of your amp (assuming you are close to it), and one tight on the drummer, you might be OK.

Like I said, the singer is on his/her own . . .

 

[Farview]

Farview, why is a wide dispersion needed in a monitor?

because you have to fill the space that you occupy with sound. If you just have a little beam of sound, when you turn your head you become off-axis with it. When I was talking about moving around, I was talking about standing in place turning and bobbing your head.

Are you saying that 102 db is no good without a certain amount of dispersion?

It would be like trying to read a billboard using a flashlight. Anyway, I'll bet your band is pushing more than 102db.

A small speaker will likely beam upper frequencies in a narrow path? Would'nt that help in preventing feedback?

Only if your ears are far enough away from your mouth.

 

[Farview]

In ear would be far out of my budget. Unless you know something I don't. Actually MadAudio, maybe a diy wired in-ear thing might just work. I used to have a mp3 player with a line in that sounded pretty damn decent. Maybe I could tap the mixer send from the snake and use that. The battery power of that thing was like 40 hours for a AA. The included ear buds sounded pretty decent too. I'm not sure if the line in can be directly monitored thru the phones out though. My little neice just got one of these and I might have to borrow it and find out.

Just get a headphone amp if you are going to do that.

 

[travelin travis]

I already have a headphone amp so I might as well try it out first. I'll have to pick up a couple of pairs of earbuds and make some headphone extension cables. I think I'll try using some velcro cable wraps to tie my guitar cable and the headphone extension cable together so that I still only have to drag around one cable. If that does'nt work, I'm giving that little hotspot monitor a shot. Hell, the required volume of 0.2 cubic feet for that 6" eminence would equal a cube enclosure with 8" x 8" x 5.25" internal dimensions. That's pretty damn small, cheap, and would be easy on the back. Hopefully the earbuds thing will work well. I found some Sony MDR...sumthing or nuther earbuds for $8 a pair that supposedly sound better than the Iriver earbuds that came with my mp3 player. The Iriver earbuds were'nt too shabby at all, especially considering they were throw ins.

 

[travelin travis]

Anyone tried Cresyn in ear phones? They seem to get pretty good reviews abroad. I might try a pair of those.