I recently played a venus that doesn't allow stage cabs (all in-ear-monitors, a.k.a, IEM). After verifying with Aguilar that I could use the head as a preamp without damaging the power output section, I found a couple of interesting things.
My first experience was hearing lot's of undesirable distortion. Oh no. Were my tubes bad? Is there something wrong with the DI/pre/post? I asked the sound tech to regain my channel. He said I looked ok. Still...bad sound. Great. Now I've got to pack it up and send it in. All fears were dispelled when I took the amp home an checked it out myself. Sound tech was volunteer--so I'm not going to be too critical, he may not have know the difference. I ended up doing a little investigation and found a couple of easy gain/eq adjustments at the board that helped.
First of all, the preamp sounds reallly great. There is no issue with the DI (it was the sound board). The DB751 DI is unbelievably quiet. It has HUGE headroom. (So much that I had to use a limiter to keep the sound tech from changing my gain during the performance. Maybe some constructive intervention was needed here.)
Initially, I sent the signal as pre, but that was too much for the board/tech. I ended up sending it post and rolling the gain way back. Even though the tone was lower gain than I really liked, I was floored by how quiet it was (no...the signal wasn't gated at the board--in case you were wondering).
If anyone is considering using an Aguilar DB751 DI, I expect that you will be very pleased with the result. I love this amp. It does pack a punch. On a couple other posts, people had mentioned "watch the power", "it might be loud". I agree--in a good way. (Use decibels responsibly.)
I'd be interested in any observations that other DB751 users would care to share. I found Adam Nitti's sound clips to be extremely helpful (Thanks Adam!)
Aguilar Amplification: Bass Pedals, Bass Pickups, Bass Preamps, Bass Amplifiers, and Bass Speaker Cabinets
