I play and record both guitar and bass, I have recently gone away with a guitar / bass amp and have purchased a multi effects pedal to cover everything.

I am now wanting to get a set of studio monitors to play through instead of going through headphones. I have what would be considered a small space so I am only looking at 5" monitors (usual suspects: HS5, KRK, JBL etc). Not overly keen on an FRFR speaker given size.

I understand that studio monitors are by design flat to give the best possible mixing / mastering platform. Given that I am going to be using these 80% of the time for playing guitar / bass through would it work if I ran a small mixing analogue desk between my multi effects pedal and the speakers to colour the tone to my liking? Especially when playing bass for more low end. Understand that I can only get so much from a 5" speaker and I may need to look at a sub as well.

I’m also interested in this solution as there is a lot of feedback that studio monitors are “fatiguing” to listen to long term when using the monitors for general music listening so if I can tune the tone where needed with the mixing desk and remove entirely for recording and mixing purposes.

Would this solution be realistic? Any other ideas for my situation?

  • drunkencolumnist@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    So in a nonpro/recording context, this is how I play guitar but I have more digital pieces. Basically running an interface into amplitube and out to my 2.1 sound system (which certainly adds color but w.e).

    I don’t really know a ton about different studio monitors, but in my setup i have to turn my receiver up fairly high to get decent volume. Not sure how much gain you’ll have, but you may want a speaker that can handle a lot of power. Not sure if there are other risks but I’m not playing loud so I’m not pushing my system anyway.

    The mixer should be fine although there are prob 100 ways to take the brightness for casual listening/fatigue