stage monitors for an old church building

[soundguy123321]

well our church has a contemporary band. consiting of 3 quitars , 1 bass , 6 mics. we got a small stage maybe like 13 by 11. iam looking for stage monitors powered or nonpowered iam not to familiar with stage monitors. and what to go by. budget is $300 to $400. i have been looking at the Yamaha CM10v but not sure. thanks

[Tim Padrick]

Go with IEMS. You can go wired pretty cheap. The sound out front will be a lot better, and you'll hear better.

[liko81]

I've used CM10s before. Yamaha makes decent speakers, and these have some pretty good power handling for a church environment. If you go with floor monitors you won't be disappointed in these.

I will echo the IEM suggestion. Personal monitor systems are not inexpensive, but since you don't have anything at all you have no "sunk costs" in an existing monitor setup. You can also do this with aux feeds and the returns on your stage snake (if you have a few available), much like you'd be doing for floor monitors, but instead routed to bodypacks and ear buds.

One thing to understand with any monitor setup; less is more. Each person should be able to hear themselves (meaning the more monitor mixes you can provide, the less people will fight each other to hear themselves in their mix), and maybe the kick/snare (for the beat) and the bassist or rhythm guitar (for tonal base). The idea is not necessarily to give the performers what the house is hearing; you give them what they need to hear in order for them to self-balance and lock in with each other, and you then tweak that at the board to produce the house and/or recording mixes.

[cmchamp]

With a stage that small, and instruments on their own amps, 2 stage monitors for the vocals with the horn in the horizontal plane would suffice, as long as the instruments' volumes are under control.
That's a small, congested stage.

As mentioned above, floor monitors are for reference of pitch and time.
C.

[Rickcperry]

Originally Posted by Tim Padrick

Go with IEMS. You can go wired pretty cheap. The sound out front will be a lot better, and you'll hear better.

Totally agree with this... You will have total control over the sound without so much stage wash. Then you can try ISO cabinets for guitar next

[liko81]

Originally Posted by Rickcperry

Totally agree with this... You will have total control over the sound without so much stage wash. Then you can try ISO cabinets for guitar next

... Or DI the guitarist's pedal board (I know, I know, he'd rather drink molten lead). Any way you slice it, after IEMs and taming the drummer (which you didn't mention you had) with a booth or V-drums, on-stage tube amps are the next biggest stage sound source.

[Nathan J]

I've got CM12v monitors on our stage (12" version of what you asked about) -- I'm happy with them and like the finish (for the price it's awfully hard to beat them). The price is right for a small stage.

IEMs would be ideal, of course.