Amps vs No Amps On Stage

Fro

Experienced
I’m in a couple of bands right now. One is an old school style rock band. We have amps one the stage. I use a CLR as backline. We use whatever PA is provided, or bring very little. We just show up, kick ass, and take names later.

The other band I’m in has a more “polished” production. We don’t have any amps on stage. Everything is direct. We are all on in-ear monitors. The drums are still acoustic drums, but behind a drum shield. We also use some backing tracks. The backing tracks are just keyboards, because I can’t play the keys and guitar at the same time, and we don’t have room on most stages for a 5th member.

I’m starting to second-guess the approach of the second band. The main reason we ended up running everything direct is because I was tired of hearing sound guys bitch about how they couldn’t mix us with the drums too loud, or the guitar too loud, or whatever. So in defiance, I decided to remove everything they were complaining about and give them a blank canvas to work with.

I do appreciate some of the advantages to the no amp, in-ear set-up. It’s easier to sing. I can hear my vocal mix the best this way. I am also able to keep my guitar as loud as I would like. The Axe Fx sounds killer with the in-ears. But it really does come down to getting the mix just right. We do run a Presonus board with Qmix. More often than not, the mix is decent. But I’m not one to want to sit a tweak all night. So if it’s close enough when we start, I just run with it. I miss the ability to just walk around the stage or lean over if I want to hear something more or less.

I do feel the isolation with using the in-ears. We do use ambient mics, which helps some. The isolation isn’t so much with the audience, but with the other band members. We’ve had this current line-up for a year now, and I have yet to play a show or rehearsal with the drummer and bass player without the in-ears. I wonder if we would be making a better musical connection if we went back to a traditional set-up.

I would also like to be able to just walk into any environment and play. Right now I need to bring a split snake, the Presonus and a computer every where we go. It seems like such a hassle and extra set-up. Truth be told though, the sound guys love it. The extra time it takes to set it up is won back by not needing to spend time getting monitors set and tweaked. It’s more work for us, but less work for the sound guy.

I also wonder with the smaller club shows how strange it must sound for anyone who gets close to the stage where you can’t hear the mains as well, and then only hear drums. I can see where it wouldn’t matter so much in a larger venue where people aren’t crowding the stage, like at a festival. But we even had some issue with that where the PA was flown, and when you got close you were under the PA. Then it was all drums again.

We’re making our own list of pros and cons, and are trying to decide what direction we want to go with moving forward. I was just curious if any of you had similar concerns or thoughts or discussions. For reference, we play covers, 80’s 90’s rock, pretty standard stuff.

Thanks!
 
Our band uses both in-ear and amps on stage. I run the backline thru the mixer using aux channels so the sound guy can decrease the stage volume and adjust EQ if necessary. note I said decrease only, as I have found that if you let them increase the stage volume too much then it plays havoc with my gate settings and feedback. So volume boost is done thru the mains only. We play mostly small clubs so some stage volume is a must have!!
 
The IEM method is far more professional and as long as you have a soundguy that knows what he's doing, will sound way better to every audience you run into.

Keep in mind, we are now into a different age of Music delivery and production. MOST if not all the bar goers these days are used to SUPER polished top notch recordings of their favorite tunes played anywhere they like. Today, as a band, its hard to compete with that and is a HUGE reason DJs are wiping the floor with live bands for wedding gigs these days...

... the point being that IEM allow a soundguy to put your band into a professional sounding category that can sound better then a recorded song. Audiences will REALLY enjoy that. Amps on stage are great for creating that needed stage energy to put on a good show, but the "good sound" is pretty much wasted on the musicians. You are saving your best tones for you and not the audience.

Simply put, if you are just a weekend warrior and do this pretty much only for the Fun of it... get those amps back on stage... but if your goal is to grow a band and be professional, stick with IEMs.
 
For small stages / shows I try to weigh the benefits of in-ears.

If it doesn't make the load in /setup / tear down faster and easier, then I don't like to use them.

It's more satisfying to me to use backline / wedges. So why use in-ears if there are no big benefits?

This assumes you can get a good FOH sound without an in-ear rig! :)
 
thsi has been my biggest gripe in my band as well. We all run direct, except acoustic drums of course. 5 piece band, 2 guitars, bass, singer. In a previous band, we were a three piece with a singer, so really 4 piece I guess, but i went direct there as well sometimes, and I did notice a change in crowd response over when I would bring my powered wedge and run it as stage volume. When I would leave the wedge at home, people wouldnt get within 15 feet of the wedges in front of us, cause the "mains" sound would go past them on the sides...when I'd bring a wedge, we would get people up front all night.....

....was a strange to thing to figure out, but made sense when I did.
 
We ran into this too with a similar set up. Our solution was to add a center fill monitor. Basically one powered wedge in the front like a monitor, except turned to the crowd with a full mix. Works great. Still much easier than hauling a back line.
 
One time I went just ears no backline, and the response from the crowd was that we sounded "distant", people up front couldn't hear my guitar at all. My ear mix was slammin, but out front crappy. So I still use ears, and bring my wedge for stage volume and guitar interaction when needed. I like the spls behind me too.
 
How does this work?

I'm using a presonus board. outputs from the axe go to the mixer, then assign those channels to the mains and aux's. Aux outs go to a matrix pwr amp then to CLR's. Same type of setup for the bass. This gives our sound guy complete control (ya make sure you have a good sound tech) of stage volume and FOH. Due to our loud drummer there does need to be significant stage volume. The main reason for us to use the in ears is we are running backing tracks, lighting control and effects control (no pedal dance for me) thru our DAW so we use a click track for timing.
 
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