| Update on the hotspots: they were great on one gig, in a huge domed performance hall-- we were down by the edge of the dome and there was enough boomy bass from the mains on stage for me to keep the time together. We certainly weren't hearing anything close to the foh mix, but everyone felt good. I mixed some of my DB in and could even hear enough in the mid frequencies to keep decent (for me) intonation.
Our keyboard player returned from a Florida hiatus few weeks later, in a high ceilinged, glass tile walled bar. He runs into the board, is a little deaf, and has been known to get playing too loud, so I had to have him in the monitor mix pretty strong. The keys really covered up the vocals in the little monitors. I definitely couldn't hear that same little bit of my DB anymore. The monitors just didn't have the frequency bandwidth to allow anyone to satisfactorily hear the vocals with even a little piano in there, and we needed a lot.
I've picked up two little 10"+tweeter monitors, and will now run two monitor mixes. They're cheap and don't handle the same wattage, but I think they'll extend at least a little below 200 Hz.
I'm still glad I got the hotspots-- I really don't mind hearing myself mostly in bounceback from the mains. Some rooms are just too hard to hear in, though.
It's interesting that no one has posted in this thread. It seems many TB'ers want a good bass tone in their monitors. I really don't care, as long as I have enough auditory info to keep the groove and know that my tone is ok out there, I'm good to go. Playing jazz in tight spots with a 6 person band makes me shy away from larger monitors-- we often just don't have the space and I'm wary of overkill.
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egad, a base tone denotes a bad age!
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