My opinion on the matter is that the PM351
rocks! I use one at rehearsals and on stage.
I taped the headphone cable to the instrument cable so that I have only one line leading to me. This removes the necessity of a beltpack or wireless unit.
The bass goes to the amp, Balanced DI out, post EQ goes to the PM351. The balanced instrument out from the PM351 goes to the board or the cabinet gets mic'd. I don't get picky and will take
any line-level monitor mix that the house can provide. I carry a crate of cables and adapters with me since there is never any guarantee what the house can provide.
If the stage monitors use self-powered speakers, I'll usually just jack straight into them.
My ears are pretty screwed. I have multi-timbral tinnitus and a fractured ear bone. If I am playing with a drummer, I need to wear hearing protection, otherwise it hurts. Playing with earplugs sucks. The High-fidelity, custom-molded earplugs are really good, but they still fall short.
In my ears, I'm using the
bottom-of-the-line Shure SE215 earphones. They block out around 30db of outside sound, which is about on par with the foamies. They allow me to dial in a mix of monitor, mic and bass. It doesn't have to be too loud; just enough to make it so I can hear enough details to make the music enjoyable.
The guitarists are using the Rolls PM50 since they can't DI their amps. In the rehearsal studio, we have mic'd the guitar cabinets and we run them thru the IEM system along with the vocals.
We're fortunate to have never encountered anything catastrophic with the IEM system. Now that I understand there are serious risks with not running a limiter, I will be adding one to the system ASAP.
