I've passed on your thoughts to the frottoir player and the sound guy.
The loud band issue is interesting...to me, it's all to do with the foldback level and mix....loud is a relative term....without foldback it's pretty quiet !!...you can definitely hear the acoustic rubboard then ..LOL.
We play to fairly big dance floors and halls/venues with a lot of depth and width.
Peole say our FOH mix and level is really good...on stage , we modify the level through the foldback mix...but with drums, bass, guitars, mando, keyboard,accordions, fiddle, lap steel, rubboard and 4 - 5 vocals operating, ya gotta have 'punch' or ya die !!!
..a Cajun or Bluegrass Folky Acoustic Ensemble we ain't !!..but we get the folks up 'n dancin', that's for sure.
Wow - that's a HUGE band. No wonder it's a challenge.
If the rubboard player wants to do a "solo" make him get in front of a mic on a stand, or somebody elses vocal mic. Otherwise, I agree with the consensus here - no mic. It's not like the rest of the band has to hear the rubboard when he's off in the crowd, and the rubboard player certainly doesn't need any foldback/monitors to hear himself!
We are a 6 piece band ...which is big enough....but the fiddle player swaps to lap steel in some songs, accordion player ( Piano and Button )swaps to keyboard,rubboard player plays a little didgeridoo, bass player drums also, mando player swaps to bass at times when we don't need mando...and so on.
Vocals are me on lead with occasional leads and back up vocals from 4 others.
It all works..we've been doing it this way for 5 years now....but from a PA point of view, we have all instruments in the mix through our 24 channel mixing desk.I guess if we took the rubboard out of the mix altogether we'd gain something...for the poor sound engineer, I mean.LOL
Joel said it best, but the rest of the recommendations fall inline to what I have experienced. Rubboards are really more of a visual cue to the audience rather than something that they hang on every note (or scrape). They are loud instruments in the right hands. Sounds like a little ego may be in play, too. "I can't hear myself because of all you loud instruments not wanting to give me a breakdown..."
Just sayin'.
Rubboard players can go there. They've got ZERO load-in and they make an equal cut, right?
Ha Rick..what can I say ?? yep...just WHAT can I say ?...yes, yes and yes.
Our rubboard player , God bless him, does have that ,what they call, " value added " factor...he's got, and gets us, a lot of gigs when nobody else in the band, other than me, has made any contributions in that area.
He also has this certain something when we gig....lost count of how many times I've been asked when turning up to a gig "..is the rubboard player here..? .
He's a big 'ham'....but the punters love it...says something about human nature I guess.
...there's actually been an open discussion about also running a 3 - 4 piece alternative band, being formed from the present members, for smaller venue gigs...surprisingly it's been accepted well...even though the rubboard player would not be in that loop.
I could open a Discussion Board Post about band politics and in-fighting....BUT...it may be better to not go down that road ...!!!!!LOL