DI Boxes

[paulears]

In most situations, a split will work - mainly because in most DI boxes, the in and out are wired directly together anyway. Strictly speaking, in a proper DI box the DI is a high impedance device effectively bridging the line, not causing the guitar to amp connection to suffer in any detectable way (passive guitar pickups being high impedance anyway). I've got a couple of really cheap DI boxes, and one of them is detectable in use as it dulls the sound from single coil pickups slightly - the effect on humbucker type pickups is much less pronounced.

 

So....... split away!

 

The only warning is if you use in line jack sockets. They are notoriously unreliable. As usual, Neutril ones are in my experience, the best, but expensive.

[SceneMaster]

And after all this I go check the amps today and they all have a DI output!!! So no need for a DI box. The school has something decent in equipment, I am amazed. I tried a guitar out of the PA and it sounded ok along with using an amp at the same (well I got a guitarist to try it out while I mixed it). Well at least I don’t have to buy a DI box and now I can experiment with the setup as it is only a jack to XLR from each amp to the multi core so if it doesn’t work I won’t have wasted too much set up time.

 

Thanks for you help and advice everyone, it has been useful anyway…

[weatherhead]

I've done gigs like this for my (now ex) school also. This is a leaver's do you're running, right?

 

At our leavers do, we had a (very rare!) good band playing. I'm mostly a lampie too, but I play guitar, bass, keys, violin, and accordion on the musical side, so I know how I would like things to sound if it was me on stage.

 

Firstly I would say, DI the bass. Always DI the bass. School concerts we used to do , someone would walk into the hall carrying a big cube like affair that looked like it had come straight out of the back of a chav's car

 

"hey, we're not using that, you can get rid of it somewhere"

 

"but it sounds much better"

 

"do you want me to mix for you or not? I don't care how f***ing expensive it was, we don't need it so take it away"

 

In my own bass playing yes I do use effects, sometimes distortion, but the amp doesn't do this for me. Speaking psychoaccoustically, undistorted bass is a delocalised sound source (meaning you can't tell where it's coming from), and so that's what a bass ap is trying to convey. They arn't as individual as guitar amps. That's why I use a bass amp on keys as well when I am playing with the old type "swing" band who hate PA and everything post 1950's. ** laughs out loud **. But definitely DI keys as well, unless you're playing a vintage stage rhodes :)

 

From accoustical instruments' point of view, if you're playing rock you need to be loud. An acc/guitar or violin is only as good sound quality wise as the player and the pickup. The chance of high end players or pickups in a school situation is about nil so DI them too.

 

Electric guitars - here we go. At our leavers do I was able to let the guitarist use his 120w laney stack, knowing that this band are the best of the bunch you will find at a secondary school and if I am telling him it's too loud, he will turn it down, and vice versa. However, when it was with bands I didn't often work with and / or were crap, I generally found the best way to do it was to DI the guitars. Which works fine until you come to the question of distortion :s. When this was needed I found the best way that I would have done it in an ideal world is to use a MIDI controlled amp, and have it controlled in each song from my position at the desk with a MIDI controller...... sigh..... we are far from that perfect world alas. But seriously, most of these school bands are employing so much distortion and gain, that I believe the characteristics of the amp are almost lost anyway. They don't distinguish between blues drive and fuzz guitar :D

 

My advice would be, don't worry - whatever you do for them they are lucky to even have reinforcement. A lot of schools I know just don't bother. They should feel privileged that

you are even spending this much time worrying about it

[chris999998]

I don't know if anyon else has heard this but I was once told by a producer, that you should never plug an electric guitar straight into a PA, does anyone know if this is true and if so, or indeed if not, could thye explain why?

 

As far as DIing goes, my current opinion is to DI guitars, because they often seem to have a tendency to turn everything up, in one gig I did this caused me great problems balancing the vox, (I wonder, now, why I didn't simply get one of the ASMs to go turn him down, but never mind).

 

Incidentally, has anyone used the Behringer Feedback Destroyer Pro, a mate of mine swears by his, but I don't know what anyone else thinks.

 

Thanks,

Chris

[SceneMaster]

This is a leaver's do you're running, right?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Bit late now as it was on the 19th of May before you posted but thanks for the advice anyway, it was interesting reading and will all help in the future… :blink:

[mac.calder]

I don't know if anyon else has heard this but I was once told by a producer, that you should never plug an electric guitar straight into a PA, does anyone know if this is true and if so, or indeed if not, could thye explain why?

 

As far as DIing goes, my current opinion is to DI guitars, because they often seem to have a tendency to turn everything up, in one gig I did this caused me great problems balancing the vox, (I wonder, now, why I didn't simply get one of the ASMs to go turn him down, but never mind). 

 

Incidentally, has anyone used the Behringer Feedback Destroyer Pro, a mate of mine swears by his, but I don't know what anyone else thinks. 

 

Thanks, 

Chris

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The main reason, apart from the ones mentioned above is that a guitar uses an Un-Balanced line. That's fine over a short distance, there will be no noticable problems if you plug it straight into the PA. But where are most mixers? Back of stage or in the wings, meaning great long cable runs (usually) with other cables, meaning a great deal of noise can be induced.

 

A simple cheap DI will basically change an UnBalanced line into a balanced, meaning you have two versions of the sound wave, one is 180 degrees out of phase (the negative of the original wave form). This means that when it travels down the long lengths of wire, both will have the same noise patterns added to them, however when the out of phase line is bought back into phase, the noise along the lines is therefore 180 deg. out of phase of the noise on the first wire, which when the two are added together cancels the noise and re-enforces the initial signal.

 

(as a side note: Most DI's take a high impedance input and give a low impedance output)

 

More information: :blink: is your friend

[paulears]

small note.....

 

the thread has crossed into areas covered by this one

 

noise reduction

 

Nothing to do with this thread really, but some of the issues have just leapt in here!

 

paul

[dfinn]

Hi,

 

Stupid question but do you plug the guitar into the D.I. box and then into the PA or do you have to plug the guitar into its amp then take an output to a D.I. box then to the PA?

 

If guitars are using their own effects to you go Guitar - fx - D.I. - PA?

 

Is it worth D.I.ing the other Guitars or just mic their amps up with a SM57 or similar?

 

Sorry to topic jack but it looks like the original question has been answered.

 

Also could someone tell me the inputs and output the EMO DI box has. The E520 model as I have about 5 of these which I might use for our next band gig but cant remember the connections and im on holiday ATM.

 

Thanks

 

Daniel

 

Moderation: Two posts merged, please use the edit button if your post is still the last on in the thread.

[charlyfarly]

Hi,

 

Stupid question but do you plug the guitar into the D.I. box and then into the PA or do you have to plug the guitar into its amp then take an output to a D.I. box then to the PA?

 

If guitars are using their own effects to you go Guitar - fx - D.I. - PA?

 

Is it worth D.I.ing the other Guitars or just mic their amps up with a SM57 or similar?

 

Sorry to topic jack but it looks like the original question has been answered.

 

Thanks

 

Daniel

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

On the EMO DI box you will see two white jacks and a grey jack and a male XLR. The two white jacks are parallel. The guitar lead goes in one white jack then you take a short jack to jack cable out of the other white jack and put it into the input of the amp head. Then an XLR cable from the out of the DI box to your stagebox/ mixer.

Personally I would use the DI on the bass guitar and mic with say SM57's on other guitars but I think this has been discussed before on this thread!

[dfinn]

Thanks Charlyfarly thats just what I wanted to know.

 

Thanks

 

Daniel

[charlyfarly]

You are more than welcome!

Have a great day and have fun with it :blink: