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Oddball IEM Question

Dreamsinger

Dreamsinger

Jun 3, 2012
349
185
Seattle
#1
All too often I wind up in a situation where the bass is fine FOH but due to stage volume the bass is buried. When I can't hear myself, well...you know, clam digging, train wrecks, etc. What I'm trying to come up with is a headphone amp that I can mount on my pedalboard that has a 1/4" out I can send to the amp. Everything I've found has XLR outs. The reason this needs to be self contained is that I don't always know what I'll have to plug into. Any ideas?
 
#3
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#5
s0c9 said:
You could use a "Y" cable out of pedalboard into Rolls PM351 (or equivalent) with the other leg going to the amp ??
Click to expand...

That's what I'm thinking but I'm used to the flow going from the input of the female down the legs of the Y to male 1/4". The flow in this case the flow would go from the output of my pedalboard up the leg of a 1/4" male to the female 1/4" (goes to bass amp) then down the other leg's 1/4" male to feed the headphone amp. Logically it should work but it just doesn't look right.
 
#6
y-cable.png

It's pretty simple... Y's are designed to take/split a single signal to TWO devices (note the signal flow arrows in the pic above), not merge 2 devices into a single device.. that's what mixers are for.

Yes, you may need some gender-bender adapters (don't have a Y cable in front of me). And remember, we're talking Y-cable, NOT an INSERT cable...
 
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#8
s0c9 said:
View attachment 577901
It's pretty simple... Y's are designed to take/split a single signal to TWO devices (note the signal flow arrows in the pic above), not merge 2 devices into a single device.. that's what mixers are for.

Yes, you may need some gender-bender adapters (don't have a Y cable in front of me). And remember, we're talking Y-cable, NOT an INSERT cable...
Click to expand...
I used to play with a guitarist who used two amps and switched back and forth between them. It used to give the sound man fits because when he wanted to adjust the guitarist's volume he didn't know which slider to grab. We solved this by using a mic splitter in reverse with three XLR gender benders to combine the signal from the two mics into one send to the board.
 
#9
Here's the latest and greatest on my self monitor project; I tried a Rolls PM351 and Y'd from my pedalboard output to the Rolls and to my bass amp. The only gripe was that there's no panning capability on the Rolls and since I need it biased to the right for my hearing I'm now messing with an ART PowerMix III. Better but I'm waiting for a set of custom molded IEM's from Dream Earz to make any further assessments. So far this works well as far as hearing myself but getting adding the rest of the band into the mix is a little bit of a challenge. Since I go to jams a lot I don't always know what the house has available. I can't always count on a monitor feed from the board. A sound guy that works for a band using all wireless IEM's told me he puts out a PZM and feeds it to the monitor mix to add a little ambiance. I picked up an old Radio Shack 1090B to try as proof of concept before I plunk down $400 for a Crown. The goals I'm shooting for are to isolate myself from excess stage volume, to make sure I can hear myself first and second to control how much of the rest of the band I hear. It needs to be self contained and capable of being set up quickly (at least as fast as the guitarist setting up his amp between sets). The motivation for this is that due to not protecting my ears over the long haul my ability to play has been compromised. I like IEM's anyway and think I'd do this even if my hearing was still good. I also think that if I had something like this 25 years ago i wouldn't have have lost as much of my hearing.
 

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