live monitors.

[a-lenthe]

I'm not sure if this is in the right forum or not.. move if necessary.

ok. I'm in a metal band with 2 geetards. and we've played quite a few shows. Anytime we've been an opener, the monitors have been great. I can hear both geetards, vocals and both the kick and snare.

Then a few weeks ago we headlined a show. Set up the monitors ourselves, During sound check. The sound guy (a good friend) asked what we wanted. We ran a sound check and it sounded ok. I asked for a little bit of 2k on the bass for me to hear myself over the loud guitars.. and when it came show time.. I couldn't hear a thing. I asked the guy running the monitor board to turn me up, which didn't happen. So... I ran back and cranked my rig, (svt4-810) and still, i could barely hear myself...

So, I'm asking for a rough estimate to set up the monitors during a sound check. Any one with some suggestions, I'm Kinda a live Noob.

thanks!

[jschwalls]

Monitors are a touchy situation...I have a 31 band eq on each monitor mix and front of house.
I cut 100 alot. And cut 250 and 630 hz as well... I personally never boost anything on the monitor eq. Also I have found that drastic cuts and boosts on eq's should be smoothed out , kinda a connect the dots approach.
But i kinda cheat, I use a spectrum analyzer on all monitors and front of house as well. The old school analog type will do wonders for any system.
Our singer has to get pretty damn close to the monitor for it to feedback.

And as far as frequencys.. I give each instrument its own eq and no other instrument can have it.. what I mean is... whatever frequency I boost on one guitar, I will cut that frquency on the other guitar and vice versa. Same goes with kick and bass... kick gets a boost around 50hz and 3k, so the bass gets cut at those frequencys... The bass gets boosted at 80 hz and 800hz, so the kick is cut at those frequencys....

What I am doing is trying to leave as much room for vocals as possible in the mix...

thats my approach anyway.