Hate to break it to you kids, but downsizing and ampless gigs didn't just start a few years ago when micros and neo speakers came out on a wide scale.
It certainly didn't feel like downsizing when we wheeled in 80 lb solid state power amps and those big "sugar scoop" cabs for the PA, but it was. And ever since PA's got powerful enough to fill venues in a painfully loud but clean way, there have been ampless musicians. Keyboard players were the first to adapt, and who could blame them? Even the smallest keyboards of the day were big and bulky and you needed a good handful of them to get gigs. So why wouldn't you run them to the PA and just monitor them with a floor monitor at your first opportunity?
But bassists and guitarists had these little instruments and often only one back then, so we hung onto our big stuff, and there wasn't much downsizing going on with us, though there were folks who cut their 810's and 215's in half and did smaller gigs with them. There were some lower wattage combo users, but most of them either had adequate PA or played quieter in smaller rooms. And they were still pretty big compared to combos today.
But the slow crawl we did to ampless setups happened anyway. I started seeing bassists do it around here. First major band I saw doing it was Devo in 1980. At first I thought they were all DI but found a couple mic'ed MusicMan combos off in the wings. A bit disconcerting, but OK. Then a few more, and a few more, and I saw a set of IEM's first time in like 1990 with Sinead O'Connor on SNL. That was really disconcerting. I was afraid it was a sound tech/singer conspiracy to get us all using them, and I hated the idea of listening to my awesome tones on a portable music player.
Well it took 25 years to become truly widespread through all of live performance-dom, sound techs and singers, but mission accomplished. IEM's are consistently cheaper and better at lower prices all the time. Bassists can tailor their DI sounds with preamps that don't cost much money or take up much room, or they can show up with an instrument cord and say, "Plug me into something and let's go." Guitarists are finally not balking at the latest in digital gear, and those who still are also have a lot of choices for running direct in other ways, all of which are perfectly usable. Even drummers will sometimes forego their acoustic drums for digital despite the flaws if it pays enough, and if they won't, you can just put them in a glass box.
And I'm certainly no stranger to downsizing, either. I've done arena gigs with a B-15 and been asked to turn down. Even did a short series of ampless gigs earlier this year. It wasn't horrible. Everything sounded fine. I've got a handful of small stuff I use pretty much exclusively at the moment ranging from top of the line to the cheapest of the cheapest practice amps, and it all sounds terrific because it's well chosen and I play more right notes than wrong
But dang do I miss hearing myself through a big juicy 810! And oh how I miss the sound of a good 412 on guitar! And I hate when the drummer goes digital or gets stuck in a box. And it's not that I want to hear them loudly, either. They sound great to me at low volumes, too. Once heard a guitarist using a 412 with a 5w tube amp and he sounded so much better than the players I work with using smaller cabs. And I've done many gigs with an SVT and 810 at B-15 volumes and it was still amazing sounding.
And you try telling that to your band and venue manager when you show up for a small patio jazz gig with a 412 or 810, and they look at you like you are a mental patient. "No no," I said, "It works quietly, too!" But they never listen. And God forbid you want to ride with someone else and insist on that 810! Even a 410 is enough to get you dirty looks these days.
So you do what you need to do to keep getting the calls. Honestly, I don't mind the reduced schleps at all. I can get in and out of gigs faster than a sax player if I don't have to tote my upright. And my stuff is all quality or at least well-chosen cheap and I don't think I ever sound the least bit bad. But dang, do I love to hear myself through the big stuff! No matter how big the small stuff is, it just doesn't have the physics of the big stuff.
