| My own design and construction custom onboard pre's will happily drive a standard PA poweramp via a balanced out, if I set the gain on them that high. Sounds excellent, and by that I mean, very little audible signature which was the design goal (pickups, bass, tone controls and preamp do the sonic shaping). Most of the lower/mid cost commercial outboard DI's I've tried in the past have sounded pretty dire.
I can only think of Wals as having an onboard DI, but there may be others. | 
