We had a gig Friday night.. outdoors, hot and humid, on the lake.
First gig with our new front man, so we had a few adjustments to make to the monitor mix. Understandable as we don't rehearse with the full PA.
So after the first 3 songs, he lets our sound guy know that he wants some of my guitar in the mix. As a sound guy, I generally advise against adding instruments in the monitor mix as the more you add - vocals, keys, guitar, acoustic, etc - the muddier it gets and the harder it is to get the clarity/separation and prevent feedback. It adds to the slugfest!
I normally monitor my sound via OUT2 to stage monitor and send OUT1 to FOH.
We have 3 monitor mixes going so sound guy folds back my FOH tones into front monitors (mix 1 - shared with frontman) and OMG!!!
For the first time I'm actually hearing what the audience is REALLY hearing !!
There was enough in the monitors to "blanket" my stage monitor volume so I played most of my gig listening to myself via the monitors!
What a huge difference.. really let me appreciate the time I put into setting up my FOH presets - and they sounded great!
Those Axe-II tones are
INCREDIBLE and
hearing myself that way was a real treat..
Think I'm going to go that way for next gig and see about leaving the stage monitor at home in future, or at a minimum.. hooked up, but not active
Going to have to rethink our monitor strategy.. LOL