Do You Practicing Using A Headset?

[Dick Sexton]

A few months ago, I started using an RP150 to give me some Delay and Reverb. I know, I know, not an RV-3 but it suits my needs. I had never tried practicing through headphones up until then. It has a headset out, so what the hay, I thought I'd give it a try. I have some hearing loss from working around high speed blower motors and turning an amp up in a "bedroom", is not good. Consequently I was not hearing everything I was or wanted to play. Your mileage may vary, but I have been amazed at what I am hearing, good and bad. You might want to try it, if you have not. Just curious to know if others are using this as a practice tool.

[Ray Montee]

Jeff Newman at one point, was pushing the use of some great headsets for practice. They had LARGE ORANGE ear-muff thingies, tone controls, etc.

They were so great to practice with, were comfortable to wear and after a short while, I couldn't stand the sound of my playing when I didn't have them on.

My yongest son, without my knowledge, started touching the jack to the wall A/C outlet screws and he could pickup radio stations. Before I knew it, they were wasted. I feel that was a great loss. They were really great to use.

[Charles Davidson]

I have used headphones for years on guitar and steel. I use a little gadget called the Ibanez rp200, just plug in your CD player and guitar,can practice ANYTIME without disturbing anyone,it has two phone outputs if someone else wants to play along with you. Also sometimes use my 112 AMP It has a CD input and phone output. YOU BETCHA,DYK?BC.

[Dick Sexton]

Thanks gents!

I can hear things that I was missing. Both good and bad. The bad, I'll now work on. The good, enforce...

Another tool in the bag...

[chris ivey]

i got a little zoom 505 guitar effects thing real cheap once. i noticed recently that it has a hesdphone jack which is cool cause you can play with no amp and experiment with lots of effects. course i never practice so i rarely use it.

[Alexa Gomez]

I tried using the headphone out on a Roland Micro Cube, yet missed the sound of my lap steel coming out of the amp. Thus, I started using these little Pignose 7-100 amps and enjoy rehearsing so much the more.

[Gary Cosden]

I use a Sansamp Blond pedal and Lexicon Alpha. I use the monitor out on the Alpha and get a really nice Fender amp sound with way more gain than you could ever need. I love it. Headphones, with a good set up, are the best for practicing, at least in my view.

[b0b]

I sometimes practice through my Pod XT with headphones.

[Les Anderson]

I used to use them a lot when I was beginning steel. My beautiful wife made me use the headset when I would sit and play scales for an hour straight. She just plain could not handle it.

Now, I practice with the amp about eighteen feet from me so I can hear what others hear and I do a lot of practicing playing along with CDs. By doing this, I can get a pretty good idea what the audience hears when I am on stage at a gig. (I still practice scales daily)

[Don Sutley]

I practice using headphones on my Digitech RP355. The upside is that I use a Twin Reverb simulation and it sounds great. The downside is that I don't have a Twin Reverb and I can't duplicate that sound with any of my other amps playing live.

-Don

[Alain-Yves Pigeon]

Just to be sure not to annoy my lovely wife, I made sure I got some ways to play using headphones. So, first, I got a Vox amPlug AC30, it was fine but I could not use any reverb.

Then, I got a Fender bullet amplifier with a headphone output. It was fine but had the bad habit of catching every electrical noise of the house but it had reverb and I could practice with it while the lovely lady of the house was out.

But finally, I got this Tascam CD-BT2 which is a bass trainer (I also play bass) and it can be used with a CD to play along which you can slow down, you can change the key of the CD also and all kinds of bells and whistles. It proved to be a very fine learning instrument when I got some Jeff Newman Woodshed Workshop, I could slow down intricate passages, loop these and practice along the record to finally bring them up to speed when I could master these. Now I use it every day to learn and practice except when my wife is out. Only the cat listen to me then and it seems to love it. Great. I think the same Tascam unit is made for the guitar and is called a CD-GT2. This truly is a neat learning instrument and if I could find a unit with these features but that would run on RAM rather than on a CD, it would even be better because I'm afraid the laser or the motor will give up sooner or later on this product. More than once have I forgotten the unit in Pause for the overnight only to get to it the next day and the motor was sort of noisy because it was left in pause. I hope someone will help me find this instrument...

In conclusion, for beginners, this is a real blessing to be able to practice without getting on someone's nerves! I wished it could have been available some 40 years ago when I learned the cello.
Best,

ayp

[David Mason]

Yeah, a lot. I am aware that I also have to practice in real-world conditions, in order to understand how to tune an amp to a room. Headphones can be harmful if you get stupid, people like Pete Townsend and numerous others blame their hearing loss more on home studios than live work.

Open phones are probably safer, but closed ones let you play at a lower volume and hear yourself - it's trying to keep up with a drummer where phones post the most danger. A little mini-mixer lets you do all sorts of things, from playing along with tracks with everything adjustable, or playing soundtracks to football games, to listening to those secret pleasures that even your wife would laugh at. If you like loopers, running it off the effects loop of a mini-mixer is the best way to get some tone into the little devils.

[Eric Philippsen]

I practice with a headphone amp every day. Completely dry signal. Nothing gets hidden and it's really the "no-excuses" way to practice. My headphone amp is a Little Walter amp and it allows for the input of a CD player,MP3, etc.

[Gary Chiappetta]

I use a JamHub for practice. With this I can create any "acoustic environment" I want to. (recording studio to concert hall). It is ideal for use with amp modelers. (My favorite is the RP-150). Band practice is cool beyond belief. Each player can control their own mix and the clarity is fantastic. For personal practice I have several input devices such as CD player, Computer, Drum machine, CD burner/player all ready to go at the push of a button. Best of all, it is completely quiet to the outside world.

[Tony Glassman]

I use a Pocket Pod which has a headphone out and a CD input. Sounds great and it's a completely closed circuit. The unit is only slightly larger than a Big Mac and costs about $120.

***I forgot to add that I run my MacBook Pro or iPod through the CD input. Also, I've got the "Slow Downer" application for the Mac when needed.

[Rick Winfield]

I use a Line 6 Spyder III, with DSP, and headphones, and CD/mp3, to spare my wifes ears, until I've reached the finished product.
Rick

[Gregg Laiben]

I use headphones thru an Apogee Duet connected to an iMac. Have access to my entire music library in iTunes and of course, YouTube, to play along with.

[Jeremy Threlfall]

I sometimes use a sansamp, and my fender champ (Champ 12) has a headphone out too

[John Wall]

I run all my gear, including CD player, into a stereo Mackie mixer and plug headphones into the mixer... Neat way to practice but I get use to the stereo and miss it when I played live... Be careful with volume... It can aggrevate your tinnitis if you have it....

[Louie Hallford]

Some of you have already posted a warning about the use of headsets for practice. my comments in that regard.

I still have a headset,but use it only after I use my tuner in a noisy environment. When I finish tunining with a meter. I still want hear to my sound live before I play.I never use them for playing any more.

I used to do audiometric testing at a power company where I worked. I tested electrical power plant workers and heavy eguipment operaters working in lignite mines.
It was easy to find the workers who operated a dozer while listening to a transistor radio thru a headset. Sometimes found one that could not hear sounds of 60 and 70 db.

Even in an air conditioned cab, the operater was probably pumping 100 plus db in his/her ears. Primary air fans and turbines in a power plant can easily be opertaing at 100 to 110 db. Of course hearing protection is required for such environments.

When testing, I could quickly find the employees that hunted, and that did not use hearing protection while shooting, and tell you if they were right or left hand shooters. Invariably almost all had 30 to 70 db hearing loss in one ear.

Saying that, at one time I also owned and played my steel through a Walkman with stereo chorus which I loved. I sounded sooo good (well I thought I did). The better I felt the louder I played.

I always found I was playing too loud as I always had a Jeff Newman track jacked up to 90 or more db which meant I probably had my steel up to 100-110db.
for it to mix like I wanted it. As others have already said Take care with your use of ear phones to play.

Would a couple of you brothers pass the offering plates before we dismiss. See ya'll next Easter.

[Walter Bowden]

When I went to Jeff Newman's school we plugged or steels into a small basic Radio Shack 4 knob, battery powered mixer along with the the output of a small basic cassette player. The output of the mixer went into an input of a small amp with headphones connected to the speaker output bypassing the built in speaker altogether.

Each student had the same setup at the side of his steel and it allowed you to play along and adjust steel and music volume separately with the backing tracks while listening to your playing without disturbing the guy next to you.

If you wanted to take a smoke or bathroom break you would take off your headphones and step into a different area of the double wide.

Since I am a smoker, I remember it was interesting to listen to 10 or so other steelers playing and listening intently to the headphone mix while me and others taking a break only heard the unamplified sounds of picks, bars, pedal changes and strings, etc. of everyone playing along to very different tunes or exercises at the same time.

Jeff took a break while we were listening to the others and joked "If you use your imagination, it could sound like a pet shop on fire."

It was very useful however because if you needed to develop ear training and playing in tune with the song, it was very effective.

[Bob Hoffnar]

I often practice without an amp at all. Usually an hour or so a day as part of my routine. I never use headphones for practicing. They make my ears tired. I put in ear plugs (custom molds) before I put on headphones in the studio for the same reason. Even then I mostly only put the headphones on one ear. I'm pretty obsessive about keeping my ears protected.

[Bob Grado]

I sometimes practice through my Pod XT with headphones

I use the Bose ear plugs through my POD XT for practice and gigs.

The Bose Ear Plugs allow me to hear the ambient sound of the stage mix and the "sweet" stereo steel mix from the Pod XT.

I set my "mike'd" amp volume for the Mains and get to hear myself at whatever volume I choose with annoying the other band members.

It works great for me.

[Brett Lanier]

I'm pretty obsessive about keeping my ears protected.

I have a set of Grado open ear headphones that I use whenever possible(other people are able to hear the music too). They have excellent sound quality and are much better for your ears than most headphones. Actually, it sounds a lot like the music is coming from across the room rather than in your head.

http://www.gradolabs.com/frameset_main.htm

[James Martin (U.K.)]

Alain, I'm just about to purchase a CD GT2 is this unit played thru the amp? and will it cope with a steel guitar. Thanks James.