We were early-ish adapters, but these also weren't true in ears. Our guitarist had a professional quality soundboard with a bunch of out channels, so we each bought a cheap soundboard and used the output from the main one as our monitor channel. My setup cost me $125 and that's still cheaper than decent in ears today lol. (And I've used the soundboard for jazz trio gigs so it's paid me back in spades!)
We were early-ish adapters, but these also weren't true in ears. Our guitarist had a professional quality soundboard with a bunch of out channels, so we each bought a cheap soundboard and used the output from the main one as our monitor channel. My setup cost me $125 and that's still cheaper than decent in ears today lol. (And I've used the soundboard for jazz trio gigs so it's paid me back in spades!)