Back when I was playing in a band we made our own stage monitors and always brought our own amp for the stage monitors. I designed them by basically copying what I saw at a music store. 15" woofers and a good horn tweeter. They actually produced pretty damned good sound and they saved our lives because there's nothing odder than sitting behind the house speakers (which are blaring at unbearable volume) and hearing absolutely nothing you're doing. The only time our stage monitors backfired on us was when we were performing at a battle of the bands and the "stage" was a corrugated steel house-like box on a raised cement platform. Our sound was echoing around like nothing I've ever heard!Jazzyspoon wrote:...stage speakers are most often not pointing at you, so you'll be detached from your sound if you're not careful and stage monitors, if they exist at a venue, don't often work very well for full mixes.
But we were lucky with sound men. The very first gig we played the house sound man liked our band so much that he hooked up with us and did our sound on all our gigs. He was damned good, too.
Then there are people, like me, who don't give a f**k who is performing and how they are doing it... if the music is good you could be playing your iTunes library and I'd still be happy. I just want to give the people that are prepared for a nerd with a 'puter more to look at than a nerd with a 'puter. 
