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As an actual drummer, you are in a niche group here, I think what almost all of us do here is just... listen to music! so the reviews are based on such, and our preferences vary for the type of music we're into and what kind of sound we like with that music.
It seems like you want a very pretty custom (who doesn't?), but maybe you should chcek out what some pro drummers use, I'm sure there's a bunch of drummers that have gone through different custom IEM's and found their favorites.
And yeah, the J-phonic do not have any particular focus on the drums at all, so you might get distracted by the other musicians =P To be honest the best reproduction of drums I've heard is in dynamic driver IEM's, but that's just me. If you want to be adventurous you could get a dynamic driver IEM and put a custom tip on the end of it though =P Perhaps you should add the Thousand Sound TS842 to your list as well, it certainly looks cool and should deliver dynamic punch along with shimmering cymbals.
I like to have personalized stuff
I know earphone in the shape of your ear may already be called "personalized" x) But if I can make it look like I see it, than why not?
But after all sound quality and build quality is much more important.
I searched and asked through drummer's forums and among my drummer friends, but still most of them use monitor speakers, not earphones (at least not for monitoring purposes, just for metronome). And the rest, who use IEMs are not really aware of the sort of earphone they use. Buying "Shure around 100$" is enough for the most. Because main factor is that it should not fall during gig and not break easily. SQ is something secondary as long as you can more or less hear what you play.
After all, drummers spend a lot of time choosing instrument and tuning it. We (ok, at least me) believe it will sound good during gig, and don't need to hear it 100% accurate. Hearing dynamics of what we play has a much greater value when we talk about drum monitoring. But distortions are out of question. And hearing bass and other instruments nicely is great advantage.
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Thousand Sound makes some good monitors and the
TS842 would be great for drumming with a dynamic driver for bass, but the price is higher than your budget. Add the Livewire Trips and Alclair triple drivers. What qualities are important to you in the bass region? Flat presentation, plenty of reverb, fast attack, etc?
Yeah, I have already stretched my budget as far as I can (and a little further) so nothing more than 450$ with shipping is acceptable
After all, even if I already play gigs for over 200 audience, we still get just return fees for transport. And that won't change for some time.
The qualities I expect from bass region (and also through the whole spectrum) are: detailed, fast and reasonably flat. I don't need to have a lot of bass. I can eq it with mixer and also through E11 amp bass boost if needed. The best iems I owned for now was nuforce NE-6, which was quite good for me but not enough for monitoring. Also I had EP630 - this one was very muddy; and q-jays one - bass covers wide part of spectrum in my opinion. In home I use ATH-A900 and 25 year old rig composed of Yamaha A-720 and some 10 years old speakers (Diora Polaris 200
). So as you can see I yet never heard any BA driver. But I believe it must be good and also I get used to the sound very fast.
