instrument DI box bang-for-buck

[FNM]

Do you want a DI that's going to add to/change the sound coming off the guitar or something that's just going to give you the pickup?

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

I don't even know really. The main use would be for reamping rock guitars, but will be used for pretty much all the standard DI things if it sounds good. I found a schematic for a jensen phantom powered active circuit that I think uses the same transformer as the passive one so I might just get the transformer and put it in a box that gives me the ability to try both. If I was smart I'd just get the JDI, but I'm not smart and I like to do shit.

Anyone ever gone down the rabbit hole of experimenting with what kind of effect paralleling your guitar to two different inputs has on the tone to the amp? Is splitting the guitar signal a dumb idea if I might not (probably won't) even use the direct signal. Never thought about it much till I started looking at DI schematics. I guess I could find out myself like the old days.

[dave watkins]

I've been experimenting more with DI guitars, partially because of covid, and having to track from home during the 1st couple moths of it last year as I lost access to my studio space, but I've also been trying to refine my studio setup for songwriting efficiency, i.e. spend more time writing and recording and less time moving mics around and tweaking amps. A couple things I've found in this process:

I only have a couple cheap passive DI and they work acceptably, but I've found that I like using the DI input on my cheapo ART MPA more if I'm actually thinking about recording something I'm gonna keep vs just having a D.I. track just in case in addition to having a mic'd amp. Having a variable high pass filter on the way in seems to help for me when using in the box amp sims.

In completely non scientific testing, when I've used a normal passive DI's parallel in/out on the way to an amp, or using a y cable to create a parallel in/out when using the MPA, I've not really noticed any massive difference in tone or how things feel, most likely this is because of the transformer in the DI circuit, you're basically just creating a longer cable, so the tonal differences are going to be similar to what you'd experience with a 25' cable vs a 10' one if you are using passive pickups. Definitely different than the attenuation and other problems you get if you plug a y cable from your guitar into 2 different guitar amps.

Also, In the past I've always been relatively uninspired by modeling, especially the in the box solutions that have been available. Been messing with the Neural DSP amp sims over the last couple months though, definitely modern, but they are pretty incredible as far as the feel and dynamic touch sensitivity.

[permanent hearing damage]

i keep thinking about getting a dedicated DI, as i sometimes have need for one. I have a ton of mic pres with a DI input jacks and I usually just use those, though I use a fairly crazy way to get to it if player is in my live room: Radial Bigshot ABY with one input heading to the amp, the other into a Radial SGI (if you don't have one of these, I highly recommend it), and use the receiver end of the SGI to go into the mic pre DI in the control room.

if the player is close by, you could just utilize just an ABY, but the SGI will run you more than most DIs if they aren't close by.