EBS_freak

Doesn't that support my statement? 😛

Because Brown Sugar can only be played on a Fodera HTH.

My serious answer is... it's all to do with the price that Bass Direct buys them in at! They could sell them for the same price... although I'm guessing that that would not be such a good business model for them.

Well, you could... A bridge, a nut, some tuners, some strings, a pickup or two and you are there. Would be a bit of a beach to play though.

Ha! Be careful, your playing may turn to stinky poo or something if we are led to believe all that we read. So what happens to the Genz collection now? Mind you, I'm guessing you'll be keeping at least some of it for those ad hoc gigs you may get asked to do. Next step... custom IEMs. I know you'll say, nah, happy with the ZS10s... but I remember you saying that about 4 string Stingrays I'm intrigued - so presuming that you used your split bass monitor channel, what EQ and processing have you got going - or have you not got to that bit yet? Is that whats being sorted out at the tech rehearsal? As for heft, I've got another project planned this year...

Fairplay @Chris2112, that's a decent, informative post!

That would do it.

Can’t help you on the K&M front but I’ve switched to a dg300b Hercules stand and it’s great. Also particularly good for me because it will also grip the iPad whilst it is in an Otterbox Defender case.

I played the Grace pre that was reviewed in the US Bass magazine. (I happened to pop in there and it was there along with the then new Demeter amp). I’m sure there is a pdf out there - but basically, Grace, as expensive as they are, are lovely.

You’re not alone

This is a difficult one... because the Sennheiser stuff (100/300/500) is all compander based (being analogue). In reality, it’ll probably be Ok because you are probably doing a HPF to take out some of the lows on your bass anyway, especially if using subs... but my view is I’d rather the bass got there as intended in the first place and I choose what happens to the low frequencies at the desk for FOH. My vocal mics are all EW500 G3 and have proven to be superb though. GLX is digital (full range, no compander) but on 2.4ghz which means it’s more prone to interference and personally, I don’t like the inbuilt batteries. I’d rather have something that I can nip down the petrol station and get fully charged batteries for incase I forgot to charge the inbuilt batteries. Therefore I would be more likely to go for the Line6 equivalent to give me the AA option. In reality, unless you are playing venues that have a lot of WiFi going on, you are going to be ok 99% of the time. When I was running a Sony DWZ, I only had troubles at 2 venues - 1 which was a conference based hotel that had some serious amounts of WiFi going on - and the other when I was doing a broadcast in a tv studio... which didn’t really come as a surprise given the amount of stuff they had running. That was 2 gigs in around 300 that I was using the Sony for... so hardly the end of the world. If you want to go “pro”, digital and get onto a channel 38 frequency, I think the QLXD is probably the cheapest way about doing it but still going to set you back around a grand (maybe slightly over) per channel. I went ULXD - but back then QLXD was not out. So if you were to push me as to what to do if you are looking at keeping to a budget... well I’d probably go Line6 G5/75 or something along those lines and if I get interference at a gig, well, there’s always a cable. As you probably know, my ULXD had to go back to Shure to be repaired - that just cost me £300... that would buy something Line 6 based Im sure. It’s certainly something to consider when dropping large amounts of cash on wireless. My other half runs a v75 (headset) on her spin classes and it’s proven to be a great piece of kit. Anyway, which ever way you go, the costly bit is going to be getting away from 2.4 if you think that is important to you. Funnily enough, out of all the wireless I’ve got, it would be the ULXD, the most expensive unit, that failed! Argh! So to wrap up... err... it depends! As for the Roxannes and acrylic build up - Id get the acrylic added and seamlessly polished in by JH... I’ve never personally adjusted any IEMs with err nail polish!

Cheers Rich. The ZS10s are well worth it for the money. You may listen to them and think that they are sonically amazing (I have some friends that think they are). It’s the same as when you get IEM threads and folks say that 215s are amazing and you’ll never want for anything else... well, that all depends upon what their benchmark is! For the money, the ZS10s should be in everybody’s gig bag - as a primary IEM, or as a backup down the line. In reality, if you want critical listening, you’d be better off buying some over the ears for that type of listening and some IEMs for live use. The amount of money you need to spend on IEMs to get the same level of performance as an over ear... probably 4 times the amount. That’s the trade off for going small! If you are going to CIEM company, do make the time to sit and try them all out - it’s the best thing you can do to understand the differences that are talked about in this thread!

Reminds me of the communal harmonica at school. Ick. Certainly one way of building the immune system.

Nailed it - for bass players, headroom on the gig is where it’s at. You may prefer the Shure for listening to music - as it’s got a more honest frequency response... (not as hard to tune as it’s only a single driver) - but the extended lows of the ZS10s should be immediately apparent.

How he like the ZS10s?

You have to listen and see what your ears tell you!

For anybody interested in the April Fools Big Bertha - I don’t think 64 drivers per side was a coincidence!

Don’t get me wrong - there are plenty of people out there who can take good impressions, just be prepared to ask them some questions and if they aren’t following the above, start asking them more questions. If they start take an impression without a bite block, don’t have you sitting still and in silence - and ensure deep and full coverage with the impression, then there’s something wrong. Most IEM manufacturers can supply a note for audiologists to follow so they get an appropriate resulting impression. 18 drivers - well it’s 64 audios reference piece, so designed to have outrageous amounts of headroom, linear response and near perfect crossovers between all the different drivers to achieve that. It’s very highly regarded by mix engineers and audiophiles alike but I suspect it was about getting one over JH Audio when JH started the trend of upping driver counts quite significantly. Cue the fight between JH and 64, the lawsuit over apparent patent infringement, the “Big Bertha” April fools video from JH blah blah yaddah yaddah....

Don’t hide the problem with a compressor - sort out your technique! 😛 It’s true though, IEMs will reveal lots about your (and your band mates) performances! Don’t worry though, out front nobody will notice what you notice! OK the tone being thinner is going to be thinner because you haven’t got the colouration of your bass cab/monitor adding weight to the tone. I’ve mentioned earlier in the thread about running a separate mixer for monitor use but if you have enough free channels on your mixing desk, you can split your input and have one bass channel for FOH and one bass channel specifically for your ears. This way you can EQ in a lot more low end and start adding compression independently of what is happening FOH. I set this up with stingraypete not too long ago on his xr16 and I believe @intime-nick does the same on his xr18? It’s not difficult to do once you have you head around routing on your desk. As for bleed - make sure your IEMs are up loud enough to get over the ambient bleed. It may only be a couple of dB to make all the difference. The guitar amp - if you can, always mic it into the desk even if it doesn’t go foh - it enables you to take a direct feed into your IEMs on your aux, you just leave the slider down for foh. The less bleed you get from the wedges, the better. im guessing you were using the onboard WiFi on your mixer? Get an external router - the onboard ones are rubbish. Your lag and drop out issues will then vanish. Stick with it - I hope your first venture out showed you the benefits!

Re: impressions - there shouldn’t be any difference between where you have your impressions taken but realistically there is. The main issues are that most ear impressions are taken for hearing aids and those impressions don’t don’t go past the second bend in the ear. There are instructions supplied by IEM manufacturers but overall, the quality of the impression depends upon how much care is take by the person taking the impression to insure that it is good. Additionally, it’s really, really important that a bite block is used. For standard IEM impression, a half open (that’s referring to your mouth) position should be used. For singers that belt it out, you may want to consider a fully open impression. The amount of clothed mouth impressions that I’ve seen pasted on Instagram makes me want to facepalm. I’ve even seen at shows that I’ve been working at, impressions taken whilst the person having those impressions taken is in full conversation with the person that is taken that impression. The chances of the resulting IEMs fitting properly is zero. I would always have impressions taken by somebody that deals with IEMs over a standard audiologist that doesn’t know a great deal specifically about IEMs - but that’s just me. With regard to Lugs quad, I don’t believe their standard offering is a dual low - Nick requested the dual low in his quad. I think their dual low comes in on their fiver driver model. OK driver count is an interesting subject - the more drivers you add to a design, the more difficult it is to get them sounding right due to the problems of getting the crossovers right and crucially the phase alignment right. In short, you will get added benefit from adding drivers because the headroom will increase significantly however, that is no good if the phase alignment and frequency curves all go to pot. Due to crossover designs in IEMs being largely physical (done by damping etc) it’s a notoriously difficult art to master - and as I mentioned before, the larger manufacturers buy themselves out of the problems of multidriver tuning issues by having balanced armatures designed to their spec to fit in with their crossover designs. Smaller companies can simply not afford to R and D costs associated with minimum orders required from the balanced armature manufacturers... let alone the resulting order quantities to make it financial viable. For example, the quad balanced armatures of 64 and JH are are single tubed quad armatures in a single case. That alone helps solve a lot of the phase problems that you would get if you start trying to combine 4 single drivers into one tube. Similarly, if you ditch the idea of a single tube, you’d have to ensure tube length is exactly equal and damped exactly the same (remember that these things are hand assembled and scoped for phase coherence - so this would be VERY labour intensive) for each ear and the of course, they would have to match left and right. Then there’s the problem of housing the tubes in the outlet that goes into your ears - there’s a finite amount of space there and again, due to the shape of your ear not being uniform, an extra source of introducing phase issues. In reality, you can’t do this successfully unless you are having those multidriver units made for you. Having said that, you can get dual housed balanced armatures off the shelf - and it would explain why a lot of custom IEM manufacturers stop at a 6 driver IEM. (Dual top, dual mid, dual low with 3 bores at the output). With regards to size, there is a difference in physical size with driver count but this is not as significant as you may think. My 12 driver Roxannes were quite big (but not so you would notice them particularly) - and that was down to the screw on cable fixing more than anything. My 12 driver 64 audios are actually pretty tiny in comparison - that are about 1mm thicker than my other half’s triple driver 64s that she uses for the gym. The biggest influence on an IEM driver size is actually your ear. If your concha (check out pic on google images if not sure) is small, then obviously, there is less space to cram in drivers, therefore the IEM will have to be built out more to fit in the drivers. In reality, it’s a non issue - most ears will accommodate high driver IEMs without you looking like Shrek. Even the 18 driver from 64 is physically pretty small - they certainly know how to cram them in.

I haven’t got direct experience of the the Lugs quads but based on other quads that I have experience of, I can tell you what the difference are likely to be based on the differences in the driver types. The UEs have a a balanced armature in the high and a dynamic driver in the mid and another in the low. The Lugs have 4 balanced armatures and Nick asked for his to be configured as one in the high, one in the mid and a dual low. In a nutshell, the following is generally true of balanced armatures - 1. Incredibly detailed 2. Moderate headroom 3. Not especially good at bass 4. Clinical sound signature 5. More expensive than dynamics and generally... for dynamics (although this depends on the spec/size of driver) - 1. Not as detailed as balanced armature (but still detailed!) 2. Greater headroom 3. Good at bass 4. Warmer sound signature 5. Cheaper than balanced armatures 6. Larger casing and earlier models needed porting So looking at a standard balanced armature quad with dual lows, the presence of two drivers in the lows gives increased bass response and crucially headroom. The bass is very tight and precise. Compare that to a UE6, there only needs to be one dynamic in the low to give a similar bass response and amount of headroom and the presence of a dynamic in the mids tends to make the UE6 have a notably warmer timbre than its balanced armature based counterparts. The trade off of is that the definition in the lows and mids may appear to be a bit more “smeared” - but unless you A/B the two together, I would wager most people wouldn’t even notice. The UE6 retains the balanced armature in the highs for all that lovely sparkle, detail and “air” which dynamics don’t produce nearly as well as a balanced armature. So why UE6 - they typically come in cheaper than the quads from the main manufacturers but offer similar performance in the lows - which is the attribute you spend most of your money on to achieve. The UE6 gives a performance to rival quads at a cheaper price. Lugs however, being a relatively newcomer to the scene - are producing very budget friendly high driver count IEMs that undercut the bigger names. After exchanging PMs with Robert on fb, I’m pretty confident he knows what he’s doing and has plenty of experience in the market in previous jobs... but as I say, I’ve no direct experience of having any Lugs in my own lugs. Worth noting, there’s a lot of newcomers to IEMs that are shoving many drivers in custom shells without any regard for damping, tuning or phase alignment... so be aware for looking for bargains... cos you could be buying tripe. One of the significant differences between the big boys and the smaller companies is that they have the buying power to spec drivers to manufacturer out deficiencies in the inherent problems you get when you start combining multiple drivers into an IEM design. For example, 64, UE and JH all have their own proprietary drivers whereas other manufacturers make do with whatever they can get “off the shelf” so to speak. Hope this helps!

Absolutely - I use them in all kinds of situations.

Just how many ways are you trying to kill rock n roll?

If you’d like yeah!

In which case, don’t bother with a pre... get a digital mixing desk... that’ll give you a very powerful EQ section and dynamics processor to use with your FRFR.... and gear you up ready for IEMs...