Behringer Bdi21

I've used this box on and off over the last 10yrs as a live ampless solution. It works. It has 2 outputs so one to the mixer and one to an amp or wherever. Sounds pretty good, but if everyone in your band is using high quality gear it will seem now that good. Put every button on noon and go for it. This is only my live experience. I don't record or anything else. It will pass in a bar band and no one will notice, but I'd get a old Zoom B2 and use it instead for high quality effects cheap.

I have used this for a Church gig for over five years to get into the mixing board. It is tough simple and reliable, passes a clean signal thru no problem. Buy the power supply and save the scramble to replace a dead battery when you are ready to play. I don’t own another DI so I can’t compare. It works for me.

If you get only one pedal when you are starting out, especially if you practice with headphones, get this one. It will give you basic tube amp sounds without an amp, and more realistic tones than a headphone amplifier alone. And a DI for when you eventually get onstage. And it's cheap!

The knobs are smooth and stiff, so they aren't finicky to adjust and won't go out of adjustment. The pedal is heavy and solid. It can use a battery, which is convenient sometimes, but the pedal fails very slowly as the battery dies and gets into overdrive range more easily, so your tone gets hard to control and without you realizing.

With a hot, active bass, I tend to have to keep the Drive to minimum to keep the tone clean, but then the overdrive is great. With a passive bass, there is more range of clean tones, and still overdrive near the upper limit.

I was able to get various clean tones and even a pleasant approximation of Lemmy's overdriven tone (with a suitable bass guitar). Near it's upper limit, the Drive needs very fine adjustments to prevent excessive clipping. The Presence EQ can get overwhelming quickly, but gives a good clank if that's what you want. The Level output can drive my headphone amp without problem, and seems fairly powerful. (I have not tried it direct to headphones.)

When inactive, and blend set to minimum, it's a plain active DI. With blend to full, the Drive, Level, and Presence have no effect, but the Bass and Treble EQ still work. Activate the pedal, and the Drive, Level, and Presence take effect, which gives you a second tone (usually overdriven) option.