Playing Bass with In-Ear Monitors: How to Get the Feel Back
"If you had 10 seconds to explain what BackBeat does to another bassist – play it. That's all you gotta say. Play it. Speaks for itself."
– Mark Damon, The Pretty Reckless (opening for AC/DC's Power Up Tour)
You switched to in-ears. The mix is cleaner, your ears are safer, the sound tech is happier. And your bass feels like it's coming from another room.
Why in-ear monitors kill the physical feel of bass
You're not imagining it. Low frequencies aren't just heard – they're felt. On a backline stage, your cabinet was moving air into your body: chest, back, legs. That physical signal is a huge part of how bass players lock in with the drummer, judge note length, and control dynamics. Earbuds can't reproduce it. A driver in your ear canal delivers the pitch, but zero of the pressure.
Mark Damon knows this firsthand. As the bassist for The Pretty Reckless – currently opening arenas for AC/DC on the Power Up tour – he plays on in-ears every night, often 50 yards from his amp. Here's how he puts it:
"When you close off with in-ears, it feels like you're playing with a plastic bag over your strings. Everything seems the same, but nothing's alive."
Why turning up your IEMs doesn't work
The first instinct is to crank the bass in your ears. Two problems:
- It's hearing damage, not feel. You're pushing SPL into your ear canal to simulate something your body used to receive through your torso. Your ears fatigue, your mix gets muddy, and the feel still isn't there.
- The information is different. Tactile response tells you attack, sustain, and lock with the kick drum in a way volume can't. Louder isn't the same signal.
How Mark solved it
Mark had the original BackBeat for years on smaller gigs. When the G2 shipped, he ordered five units. The moment it clicked:
"I was 20 yards from my amp. It felt like my back was right next to it. I smiled. There we are."
On the AC/DC stages he plays now – thrust stages where the amp is invisible behind him – the G2 is what keeps the low end consistent from wing to wing.
Mark's rig
- Bass: Ralph Napolitano '52 Custom P-Bass with 60s DiMarzio pickups
- Strings: GHS
- Tactile monitoring: BackBeat G2 (clipped to strap)
- Wireless: after the G2 in the signal chain
- Amp: Ampeg Heritage SVT
- Cabinets: two Wizard 8x10s
- DIs: Rupert Neve pre-DI and post-DI (both to FOH)
- Pedals: Wizard Crunch compressor (always on), MXR Phase 90, Darkglass Microtubes B3K, EHX Micro POG, tuner, volume
- In-ears: JH Audio
The wider answer for any bassist
Not every bassist plays arenas, but every bassist on IEMs faces the same problem. Options for getting the feel back:
1. Keep a cabinet on stage anyway. Works, but defeats the purpose of the silent stage – stage volume bleeds into every mic, and the sound tech is back to fighting your rig. Not an option in volume-restricted venues.
2. Throne/platform shakers. Tactile transducers bolted to a drum throne or a platform you stand on. Great for drummers, who sit still. As a bassist you have to stay planted – move two feet and the feel is gone.
3. A wearable tactile transducer. A small transducer worn on your body, on the bass strap, that converts your signal into physical vibration. The feel travels with you anywhere on stage, adds zero volume to the room, and the sound tech never knows it's there. This is the category the BackBeat G2 was built for: ~11 oz on your strap, plug your bass in (or your monitor mix with the kick drum in it), and the low end lands in your body again.
What a full IEM rig looks like with feel included
Bass → wireless or cable → G2 (signal-through) → DI/board. Your monitor mix comes back to your IEMs as usual; the G2's aux input can take that same mix so you feel bass and kick together. Nothing about your front-of-house signal changes.
In-ears solved isolation, hearing safety, and mix consistency. A wearable transducer solves the one thing they broke. Together they're a complete rig – the ears get the mix, the body gets the low end.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why can't I feel my bass with in-ear monitors?
Because in-ear monitors deliver sound to your ears and nothing to your body. A bass cabinet moves air, and that moving air is what you feel in your chest, your back, and your legs. An in-ear driver sits in your ear canal and is physically incapable of producing that pressure, no matter how it is mixed or how loud you run it. You are not losing the notes. You are losing the physical half of the signal, and no adjustment to your in-ear mix restores it, because the mix is not where it went missing. Getting it back requires something that produces vibration you feel rather than sound you hear, which is what a wearable tactile transducer does.
Why does bass sound thin through in-ear monitors?
Two reasons, and only one of them is about sound. The first is driver size. In-ear monitors use very small drivers, and reproducing low frequencies convincingly at that scale is difficult, so many in-ears roll off or thin out in the bottom octave. Custom in-ears with dedicated low drivers help here. The second reason is the one most players are actually describing: even a perfectly reproduced low B still sounds thin if you cannot feel it. On a stage with a cabinet behind you, part of what you interpret as weight is physical pressure on your body, not information reaching your ears. Take that away and the note reads as thin even when the frequency response is accurate.
How do I get more low end in my in-ear mix?
Start with the mix itself: ask for your bass and the kick drum prominent, check that your in-ears are sealing properly, since a poor seal loses low end before anything else, and consider custom moulds or a model with a dedicated low driver if you are gigging regularly.
But there is a limit worth knowing about. Many bassists keep pushing their own bass up in the mix, trying to hear their way to a sensation that was never auditory to begin with. That crowds everything else in your ears and drives your overall level up, which is a hearing risk. Players who add tactile feedback frequently report the opposite adjustment: with the low end reaching them physically, they turn their own bass down in their in-ears, and the rest of the mix opens up. It is worth trying that direction before assuming you need more bass in your ears.