| Earplugs and Stage Monitoring
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Not sure if this is the best forum for this question, but here goes...
After several band practices where my ears were still ringing the next morning, I first tried ordinary foam earplugs and then a set of good headphones (not plugged into anything, just as a sound barrier) and finally got a set of Elacin ER20 earplugs (the standard off the shelf ones, not the ones moulded to my ears) - which have helped enormously. The sound quality is pretty clear and I can at least talk to the other band members with the earplugs in - and my ears are clear even at the end of a practice. (Though I do get the other band members joking about my earplugs.)
I tend not to wear them at gigs (we typically gig once every 2-3 weeks) - partly because I like the music loud sometimes, and I feel a bit embarrassed in front of an audience while wearing earplugs. Though maybe I should just say - it's my hearing, I have to look after it. I don't know enough about hearing loss to know whether this level of noise for a couple of hours every 2-3 weeks will cause lasting damage.
However, this is getting off the point a bit. I don't know whether it is the earplugs, or whether it would be the case if I wasn't wearing earplugs, but I have trouble hearing some of the other instruments. The two guitars and I play through our own amps, while the singer goes through a PA with monitors on the floor in front of the singer, driven from the PA.
I tend to get stuck at the back next to the drums, in front of my amp but behind the two guitar amps. I wondered if I got my own monitor whether this would give me enough feedback from the rest of the instruments (i.e. whether the singer's mic would pick up enough of the other guitars) or whether it would just feed me the vocals.
Alternatively, (for practices) I could possibly run a set of headphones from the PA (a lot cheaper than a monitor) but I'm not sure whether the headphones would give me enough protection from the high levels of sound (though I guess I could wear headphones and earplugs) - and again, I don't know if I would get enough of the guitar sound into this, as we only feed mics into the PA.
Yet another option might be to get my own mic and stick it in front of the band, running it back to my own little mixing desk /headphones. Again, I don't know if this would give an adequate representation of the sound of the band (cheaper headphones /mic could well lose a lot of the bass), but it would also give me some feedback on the levels of the instruments in the mix (which is a problem at gigs, as we don't have a soundperson to monitor the performance so levels tend to be a bit hit-and-miss). Yet again, this probably wouldn't be any good at a gig (i.e. a mic placed among the audience).
I suppose another possibility would be to DI the guitar amps into my little mixing desk and make up my own mix to feed into headphones but we're then getting into pretty complicated layouts on stage. Or DI the guitar amps into the PA and just mix the guitars into the monitor channel.
Too many questions...
...so just wondering what other people do.
BTW we're a small band who generally just do pub gigs and the occasional wedding /private party so we don't have big budgets.
Geoff | 
