Z Man wrote:

My need is a DI that I can bring to gigs as I'm sick of getting stuck
with crappy DIs that they have there. The difference is I need the
"flow through" portion of the DI (i.e. the connection that comes out
of the DI back into my amp) to be as transparent as possible.

I don't put anything inline between my '76 PBass and my '68 SVT head.
I can hear when my signal has been compromised by a crappy direct box,
and in situations like this I'm forced to either unplug the direct box
entirely (and **** off the sound guy) or play through the lame box and
have the life sucked out of my amp sound (as happened this last
weekend with a particularly sh***y behringer box).

It's almost impossible to find one and they cost a lot, but the Evil
Twin is one awesome direct box. Pass-through is beyond superb, and the
DI feed to whatever is fabulous. While I now have more experience with
it that with other hi-end DI's, my opinion is that the ET works way
better for me than did the likes of Avalons, Demeters, etc.

If I can get a DI box that also sounds good as a direct signal to the
board, then wonderful. But, I'm more interested in the initial signal
split and why some boxes can do this well and some can't.

Put a lot of crappy stuff in the pass-through, and ther you don't go.

--
hank alrich * secret mountain
audio recording * music production * sound reinforcement
"If laughter is the best medicine let's take a double dose"

LeBaron & Alrich wrote:

It's almost impossible to find one and they cost a lot, but the Evil
Twin is one awesome direct box. Pass-through is beyond superb, and the
DI feed to whatever is fabulous. While I now have more experience with
it that with other hi-end DI's, my opinion is that the ET works way
better for me than did the likes of Avalons, Demeters, etc.

I just remembered that Millennia Media will soon offer a DI, too.
Obviously, that's got to be worth examining. None of the good stuff is
cheap, although the Baggs Paracoustic DI, aimed at piezo pickups out of
acoustic instruments, does a remarkable job.

--
hank alrich * secret mountain
audio recording * music production * sound reinforcement
"If laughter is the best medicine let's take a double dose"

I like the Demeter VTDB for this app. The "pass through" is a direct
connection and is tube buffered from the mic level output. and its
sounds great with a P-bass.

"Z Man" read this in the National Enquirer :


I don't put anything inline between my '76 PBass and my '68 SVT head.
I can hear when my signal has been compromised by a crappy direct box,
and in situations like this I'm forced to either unplug the direct box
entirely (and **** off the sound guy) or play through the lame box and
have the life sucked out of my amp sound (as happened this last
weekend with a particularly sh***y behringer box).


I, as sort of a slacker (but one who is accustomed to working with pretty
decent spec stuff on corporate band shows of various levels all the way up
to IBM and some other household names. We use a truckload of the Countryman
boxes BTW, among a few others that are higher up), am just a little
surprised that a bass, of all instruments is compromised to this degree, and
in particular in a live setting. I guess I just don't run into but a handful
of guys that concerned about how the bass sounds, on that fine a level, and
to the benefit of so few. I suppose I could see Vic Wooten doing some utter
hair splitting, decrying the loss of the 16k... But he also doesn¹t use the
P bass and an old SVT. Somehow I thought the charm in that rig was the low
gurgle and not the ultra fidelity.



Also, are most DIs in live situations active or passive?

Yes.




-- TAPKAE
http://tapkae.com

"We're the cleanup crew for parties we were too young to attend"
(Kevin Gilbert)

"Z Man" wrote in message
om...
I asked this question personally of the ever helpful Fletcher, but I
wanted to put this out to a broader audience:

My need is a DI that I can bring to gigs as I'm sick of getting stuck
with crappy DIs that they have there. The difference is I need the
"flow through" portion of the DI (i.e. the connection that comes out
of the DI back into my amp) to be as transparent as possible.

I don't put anything inline between my '76 PBass and my '68 SVT head.
I can hear when my signal has been compromised by a crappy direct box,
and in situations like this I'm forced to either unplug the direct box
entirely (and **** off the sound guy) or play through the lame box and
have the life sucked out of my amp sound (as happened this last
weekend with a particularly sh***y behringer box).

If I can get a DI box that also sounds good as a direct signal to the
board, then wonderful. But, I'm more interested in the initial signal
split and why some boxes can do this well and some can't.

Also, are most DIs in live situations active or passive? I'll probably
want something that can be used in most club situations....

Thanks in advance,
Z

A couple bass player friends of mine like the Raven Labels stuff, it might
be worth checking out for you, especially the ADP1 direct box :
http://www.raven-labs.com/mainframe.html

Bass Northwest is a good place to buy Raven Labs and other bass stuff :
http://www.bassnw.com/raven_lab_adp1_direct_box.htm

If you are not involved with The Bottom Line mailing list for bass players
you should join up and ask there :
http://www.magpie.com/tbl/

Best of luck!

John L Rice

Z Man wrote:

My need is a DI that I can bring to gigs as I'm sick of getting stuck
with crappy DIs that they have there. The difference is I need the
"flow through" portion of the DI (i.e. the connection that comes out
of the DI back into my amp) to be as transparent as possible.


And in response, on 16 Aug 2003 11:44:37 -0400,
(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

So, buy a Countryman. Or the Radial J48.

Also, are most DIs in live situations active or passive? I'll probably
want something that can be used in most club situations....

Most DIs in live situations are passive, and very crappy, because the PA
guys are on a budget and don't want to shell out for a decent active box.
An active box will almost certainly load your instrument a lot less.

I will second Scott's suggestion. Some of us live sound guys are a
little more concerned with the quality of the music, and we use
Countryman Type 85 and Radial JDI and J48. There is no DI which loads
your bass pickups LESS (i.e., is more transparent) than the
Countryman. If there are any that sound "better", to various peoples'
ears, it is because they change the sound in some way that those
people like.
Mike T.

The expenisve DI boxes suggested (Countryman, for example) will spit
out a great tone from both ends (as good as what you shove into it,
anyway). But since you're asking specifically about keeping the
passthrough clean, and didn't mention caring what the DI output sounds
like, I thought I'd mention that it's ONLY the very high input
impedance of the DI that makes sure the passthrough sounds just like
the source. Like Scott says, it's a stright wire connection and it's
only the loading of the pickups that messes up the tone.

So in a general sense, a passive (transformer-based) DI is going to
mess up your sound more than almost any active DI. There's a limit to
how high the input impedance of a transformer can be, and there are
sonic and financial consequences to pushing that limit. While it is
possible to make a low-impedance active DI, or a just plain
bad-sounding one, it's relatively easy to keep the input impedance high
and your amp sounding great, even if the output of the DI isn't so
great. A FET front end is pretty much the standard for anything that
doesn't cost a huge amount of money. A tube front end can work well
too.

Doesn't the SVT have a preamp output that you could feed to the
soundguy?

ulysses


In article , Z Man
wrote:

I asked this question personally of the ever helpful Fletcher, but I
wanted to put this out to a broader audience:

My need is a DI that I can bring to gigs as I'm sick of getting stuck
with crappy DIs that they have there. The difference is I need the
"flow through" portion of the DI (i.e. the connection that comes out
of the DI back into my amp) to be as transparent as possible.

I don't put anything inline between my '76 PBass and my '68 SVT head.
I can hear when my signal has been compromised by a crappy direct box,
and in situations like this I'm forced to either unplug the direct box
entirely (and **** off the sound guy) or play through the lame box and
have the life sucked out of my amp sound (as happened this last
weekend with a particularly sh***y behringer box).

If I can get a DI box that also sounds good as a direct signal to the
board, then wonderful. But, I'm more interested in the initial signal
split and why some boxes can do this well and some can't.

Also, are most DIs in live situations active or passive? I'll probably
want something that can be used in most club situations....

Thanks in advance,
Z

Thanks for everyone's help. It does sound exactly like a loading
problem on the pickups when I use a bad DI. I think that I might be
particularly susceptable to loading issues due to my SVT being so old
and possibly from not having it worked on in so long (the output is
apparently well under 200W for a 300W amp and it's trying to drive an
800W cabinet)? But the tone is beautiful so I won't be mucking with it
anytime soon.

I seem to recall using a countryman before and not having problems
with it, but I couldn't remember. I'll give one a shot and see how it
goes.

Thanks again everyone.

Z

Active DIs minimally load the pickups, but the few I've
seen have the unbalanced output jack in parallel with
the input jack, so patching on to a conventional amp
can load down the pickups. Do any of the active DIs
have a buffer amp driving the unbalanced output so
that this doesn't happen?

Gidney and Cloyd wrote in message y.com...
Active DIs minimally load the pickups, but the few I've
seen have the unbalanced output jack in parallel with
the input jack, so patching on to a conventional amp
can load down the pickups. Do any of the active DIs
have a buffer amp driving the unbalanced output so
that this doesn't happen?

Demeter VTDB, retrospec Juice Box, and (provided you perform a minor
factory-authorized modification to the circuit board) the BSS AR-133
all have this feature.

In article writes:

Do any of the active DIs
have a buffer amp driving the unbalanced output so
that this doesn't happen?

Yes, I've seen this but I can't remember for sure where. You might
look at Little Labs or Radial, or the new (and maybe not available
yet) Millenia Media direct box. These guys do direct boxes a little
(or a lot) differently from almost everyone else, and needless to say,
they're more expensive than your run-of-the-mill FET or transformer in
a box.

On the other hand, understand that pickups are intended to be loaded
by amplifiers (admittedly, not all amplifiers present the same load)
so maybe you really want that. Also, be aware that an instrument
connected to an amplifier through a buffer will sound different than
when it's connected directly to the amplifier. The Millenia Media box
even has a selectable impedance for the output that goes to the
amplifier so that you can present the amplifier with different source
impedances, as different pickups can be.




--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

Buster Mudd wrote:
Mike Tulley wrote in message . ..

There is no DI which loads
your bass pickups LESS (i.e., is more transparent) than the
Countryman.

Well, if "loading your bass pickups LESS" is by definition inversely
proportional to the DI's input impedance, a Demeter VTDB loads them
less by a factor of two.

And my DIY DI project from the March 1998 Recording magazine loads it
less by a factor of five, although it doesn't give any ground isolation.

I must disagree. It is the Countryman that changes the sound in some
way that people like, especially if those people are using the DI on
run-of-the-mill guitars, basses, etc. and their only other choice is a
Whirlwind or ProCo DI. But the output of a Countryman Type 85 is most
definitely NOT uncolored; it's just that the coloration is far more
pleasing & complimentary to most input signals than 99% of the other
DI's out there.

The Countryman still has a transformer in it, which does introduce some
coloration in there. But it's not a bad coloration.

Listen to how a Countryman skews the balance of treble to midrange on
a known signal; there is a disproportionate emphasis of material above
4kHz, probably as a result of the large phase shifts inherent in that
DI. The closest thing to an ideal Input=Output DI I ever heard was the
original Radial JDV. Comparing that side by side with a Countryman
Type 85 is like comparing a Hardy Twin Servo to a Mackie XDR in terms
of honesty & accuracy.

Dunno. Part of the problem is that we don't really have a reference
for what the direct output signal is _supposed_ to sound like. An accurate
reproduction may not be a good thing at all, actually.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...

An accurate reproduction may not be a good thing at all, actually.
--scott

That should be tattooed on every engineers forehead.

Gidney and Cloyd wrote:

Active DIs minimally load the pickups, but the few I've
seen have the unbalanced output jack in parallel with
the input jack, so patching on to a conventional amp
can load down the pickups. Do any of the active DIs
have a buffer amp driving the unbalanced output so
that this doesn't happen?

I really don't think that's necessary. First of all, the buffer would
add its own coloration, for better or worse. Secondly, a DI with a
very high input impedance (say 10M or so) in parallel with a typical
amplifier input impedance (1M to 3M or so) is not going to be a big
deal to most any wirewound bass pickup. And since the only real
reference you have is the way the amp sounds without the DI involved,
this is relatively easy to verify.


ulysses

On 20 Aug 2003 08:26:51 -0400, (Mike Rivers)
wrote:

In article writes:

Do any of the active DIs
have a buffer amp driving the unbalanced output

The Millenia Media box even has a selectable impedance for the output that goes to the
amplifier so that you can present the amplifier with different source
impedances


Hi Mike,

I'm calling our new box (TD-1 Twin Direct) a "Half Rack Recording
Channel" rather than a DI Box, though it offers a number of DI
functions. Here are some of the selectable aspects:

1.) DI input (impedance buffer) amplifier can be switch selected as
an NOS Mullard CV4024 vacuum tube, or discrete FETs. This is the "Twin
Topology" aspect of TD-1.

2.) DI input impedance can be switch selected as 500K, 2M, or 10M. We
can customize up to 22M upon request, but I've not heard a difference
on any test source loaded with 10M vs. 22M, including finicky
piezo-electric bridge pickups.

3.) DI input has a Direct Out that can be selected active (buffered)
or passive (unbuffered). When unbuffered, DI input impedance will be
determined by whatever is plugged into the direct out. When buffered,
DI input impedance value is in parallel with 1M.

4.) The "selectable output impedance" you mention probably refers to
the dual REAMP outputs. Each REAMP output has a transformer-based
circuit which closely emulates the output characteristics of
single-coil (Strat) or dual-coil "hum bucking" (Les Paul) pickups.

There are a total of nine outputs on the Twin Direct. And besides the
DI input, there is an HV-3 microphone preamplifier (65 dB gain), a
balanced line input, and a "Speaker Soak" (guitar amplifier) input. A
parametric EQ (20 Hz - 25 kHz) and numerous other functions are
designed into TD-1, which is why I prefer to call it a "Half Rack
Recording Channel" rather than imposing the semantic limitations of
"Direct Box."

JL
http://www.mil-media.com

Buster Mudd wrote:

(Buster Mudd) wrote in message . com...

Well, if "loading your bass pickups LESS" is by definition inversely
proportional to the DI's input impedance, a Demeter VTDB loads them
less by a factor of two.


Or maybe it's a factor of 10 & some change: Countryman has 2M input
impedance, VTDB has 27M input impedance.

Ah, but who's counting?

I think you were closer the first time. A Countryman Type 85 has an input impedance of 10 Megohms. Demeter
VTDB-2 has an input impedance of 27 Megohms, making it a factor of not quite 3.

I can't believe I know that trivia off the top of my head.

/Bob Ross

Scott Dorsey wrote:

The Countryman still has a transformer in it, which does introduce some
coloration in there. But it's not a bad coloration.

While I have always found the Countryman DI's to be truly pro built and
beyond just reliable, I have never been able to cuddle their sound.

--
hank alrich * secret mountain
audio recording * music production * sound reinforcement
"If laughter is the best medicine let's take a double dose"

"LeBaron & Alrich" wrote in message
. ..
Scott Dorsey wrote:

The Countryman still has a transformer in it, which does introduce some
coloration in there. But it's not a bad coloration.

While I have always found the Countryman DI's to be truly pro built and
beyond just reliable, I have never been able to cuddle their sound.


What sound? The Countryman was designed to be transparent and
NOT have a sound. The sound is to be found downstream with what
you interface it to. What little sound it does have is very subtle.

--
AudioGaff

Right, and having used them a few hundred times I find that to me, they
have a pretty obvious sound, very clean and somewhat brittle. Just put
one next to an Evil Twin and see what you think.

Dang, Hank, you must be trying to get a pickup to sound tolerable. The
Countryman does an admirable job of making **** sound as bad as it really is.
I've found with Fishman & Underwood pickups that even a low end cheap tube DI
helps by intentionally NOT presenting a faithful representation of the input at
the output.


Scott Fraser

LeBaron & Alrich wrote:
AudioGaff wrote:

What sound? The Countryman was designed to be transparent and
NOT have a sound. The sound is to be found downstream with what
you interface it to. What little sound it does have is very subtle.

Right, and having used them a few hundred times I find that to me, they
have a pretty obvious sound, very clean and somewhat brittle. Just put
one next to an Evil Twin and see what you think.

But the Evil Twin also has a very obvious sound, so it's not a fair
comparison.

In fact, there CAN BE NO FAIR COMPARISON between boxes since we never
really know what the original sound actually is without a box. And even
if we did, we might not want it anyway.

All you can say is that one sounds better than another.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

"LeBaron & Alrich" wrote in message
. ..
AudioGaff wrote:

What sound? The Countryman was designed to be transparent and
NOT have a sound. The sound is to be found downstream with what
you interface it to. What little sound it does have is very subtle.

Right, and having used them a few hundred times I find that to me, they
have a pretty obvious sound, very clean and somewhat brittle. Just put
one next to an Evil Twin and see what you think.

As the owner of both of those, I have. Brittle? Not to me. And you ought
to be smart enough to know that is far from a direct or fair comparison.
--
AudioGaff

AudioGaff wrote:

"LeBaron & Alrich" wrote...
AudioGaff wrote:

What sound? The Countryman was designed to be transparent and
NOT have a sound. The sound is to be found downstream with what
you interface it to. What little sound it does have is very subtle.

Right, and having used them a few hundred times I find that to me, they
have a pretty obvious sound, very clean and somewhat brittle. Just put
one next to an Evil Twin and see what you think.

As the owner of both of those, I have. Brittle? Not to me. And you ought
to be smart enough to know that is far from a direct or fair comparison.

To treat any of these opinions as fact is to call intelligence into
question; I also would take my Jensen DI's over the Countryman, and have
done so regularly. _I_ consider the sound emanating from the Countryman
DI to have a brittle quality to it. Big deal. And since it's a DI, we
can fairly compare it to other DI's. It ain't like saying it should be a
mic.

Again, I consider the Countryman DI really good value, outstanding
reliability, blah blah. I don't care for what it does to the sound of
instruments to which I have applied it. We used these things almost
daily at AWHQ with nary a failure.

--
hank alrich * secret mountain
audio recording * music production * sound reinforcement
"If laughter is the best medicine let's take a double dose"

ScotFraser wrote:

You heard the David Gage
"Realist" pickups yet? Working usefully on a string bass and a cello of
my acquaintance.

That's the one that goes under the foot of the bridge? If so, yes I heard one
once, on a student bass player & I was amazed at how non-crappy it sounded, way
better than any Fishman or Underwood.


The thing about the bass and cello "Realist" pickups is that they seem
to work with a range of inputs from classy DI's to ordinary instrument
amp front ends.

How does it sound for arco playing?

http://www.davidgage.com/z_realist.htm quotes "Recognizing the
limitations of microphones and traditional piezo transducers, Ned and I
decided that for the working musician things could and should be better.
We felt a transducer should be equal in it's ability to recreate an
acoustic pizzicato and arco sound through commonly used amplifiers."

If it's what I heard Doug Harman playing a couple months back with
Norton it's pretty darn OK with me.

Kurt Albershardt wrote:

ScotFraser wrote:

How does it sound for arco playing?

http://www.davidgage.com/z_realist.htm quotes "Recognizing the
limitations of microphones and traditional piezo transducers, Ned and I
decided that for the working musician things could and should be better.
We felt a transducer should be equal in it's ability to recreate an
acoustic pizzicato and arco sound through commonly used amplifiers."

If it's what I heard Doug Harman playing a couple months back with
Norton it's pretty darn OK with me.

Yep, that's what you heard. I think that was his second gig with the new
setup.

--
hank alrich * secret mountain
audio recording * music production * sound reinforcement
"If laughter is the best medicine let's take a double dose"