DI Active or Passive?

[martijn_2m]

Hi everyone,

I am preparing for a set of gigs in the next few months. I will be playing my NXT NS EUB and Breedlove acoustic bass. I would appreciate some thoughts on my setup:

I intend to leave my amp and cab at home, and play directly through the PA (because of ease of logistics and stage appearance). However I want to be able to switch between EUB and acoustic bass easilly. Here's the setup and the questions:

The EUB has no preamp onboard so I use an Aguilar Tonehammer preamp which will directly be connected to the mixer/pa. The acoustic bass has an onboard preamp (LR Baggs) which sounds great.

My thoughts are: I can switch between the basses before going into the tonehammer, but I'd have to disengage the preamp everytime I switch. Or I can get an additional DI for the acoustic bass (as it won't need a preamp). Then, is it better to get an active or passive DI (I am thinking JDI). Or, alternatively I can get another tonehammer or sansamp device to be more flexible (seems overkill). Somehow I do prefer to keep 2 seperate signals going to FOH for flexibility.

If anyone has any thoughts on this, let me know!

Thanks,
Martijn

[bassbrad]

Running 2 lines is certainly the way to go and as popular as JDI di are these days I still prefer my trusty old Countryman Type 85.

[TimmyP]

Radial PZ pre. Active in for one bass, Piezo in for the other, switching,.... and you won't need the preamp. http://www.tonebone.com/tb-pzpre.htm

[bongomania]

+1 to the Radial PZ unit. Otherwise, get a simple buffered A/B switch (Radial also makes one of those), and a passive DI. The only time you want to avoid a passive DI is if your instrument has particularly low output.