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BAE PDI - DI Box
- Thread starter TheArchitect
- Start date
BAE is a serious player in the studio electronics game making vintage inspired high quality gear, I'm sure their offering of a DI is a solid choice. All their gear that I have used is impeccable in build and sound.
Yes they are! Thats why it's surprising this is so unknown.. it fits my needs so I will be acquiring one. I will let you all know
BAE is a niche market generally out of the normal circulation for the usual bass effects users.
I've got the stereo version, great sounding DI, the Carnhill transformers within it do the thing, add the fullness that you'd expect, however; the grounding and shielding for my particular DI box was so bad that I almost couldn't use it with instruments that had pickups. Would get all sorts of interference and noise until I took mine to a local tech to get it modded. It's a good DI box, I like my JDI more though
I own a Finally as well, I could probably do a shootout of the three (Finally, BAE, and JDI) at some point
BAE is pretty well known for their their build quality. Did you speak to them about this?
I would think so. I have never seen or heard of such an issue with a DI in 30 years of recording
Long story short I didn't and the reasoning was that I also owned a BAE 1073MPL that needed a trim pot replaced. It would cut out randomly; pot needed to be fixed long story short. Getting a hold of BAE to fix it and eventually have them send out a replacement was nearly impossible. Couldn't get anyone on the phone, emailed multiple times with no luck etc... Finally got them on the phone and it just sounded as if I was the biggest inconvenience for them to get me to ship out my pre to have it fixed. Their response seemed like I was such a hassle I offered to have my local tech fix the pre if they ship out a replacement pot. They charged me for the part and shipping and never followed up or anything. Paid $45 for shipping and the part on top of labor etc... I ended up selling the 1073 and getting an Avedis MA5.
So on to the DI. Soon after I had the part replaced on the 1073 I had a recording session where I was trying to utilize the thru outs of the BAE DI. Figured I'd run instrument in, take an XLR out to a preamp, use one thru to run effects and the other thru to go to another tube bass preamp so we had options in the mix phase. What I found was that the signal going to the effects (in this case a sub-octave) was sending a suboctave signal to the other outputs! My XLR feed had sub-octave as did the other thru! Also there was an audible hum and if the ground lift was pushed I would get a high pitched squeal. I continued to try and use this DI in sessions and ended having to use something else multiple times. I eventually took this to my local tech who worked on the 1073 and told him what was happening. I told him if he could make it better do whatever it took and I'll pay for whatever mods he could do. One of the things he pointed out is that the individual Thru's aren't isolated so no surprise that there was interference between the multiple outs. He also stated that there wasn't much in the way of shielding so interference would be common. Overall he wasn't impressed, although he did confirm you're getting real Carnhill transformers in these boxes. He rewired my entire box and used different paint to help with the shielding; overall I've yet to have the same issues since he's worked on it, but I was really disappointed when I first received mine. I've had it for over a year now, it works solid for keyboards; and bass sounds nice and fat through it. I ended up buying a JDI when this was in the shop (and eventually a Finally for a small pedalboard) and prefer the sound of both of those units over the BAE but of course ymmv.
As far as shielding, I don't understand that comment. The entire enclosure is the shield.
So you plugged bass into input, xlr to a pre, 1 thru to effects and the other to an amp. The effects came after the DI. Its not possible for the effects to be in the other outputs unless you looped the output of the effects back into the DI somehow. We are missing some details somewhere
There will almost always be hum in 1 of the ground lift positions. That's why its there.
Nevermind..None of this matters.. its long in the past...
So you plugged bass into input, xlr to a pre, 1 thru to effects and the other to an amp. The effects came after the DI. Its not possible for the effects to be in the other outputs unless you looped the output of the effects back into the DI somehow. We are missing some details somewhere
There will almost always be hum in 1 of the ground lift positions. That's why its there.
Nevermind..None of this matters.. its long in the past...
I'm just telling you my experience! I hope they're not all like the one I have, but the one I purchased took work to get it to function properly.
To clarify, I had bass in the input, XLR to a pre, Thru 1 was going to an OC-2 and then the HI-Z input of another pre, Thru 2 to an amp which was mic'd up. The sub octave effect could be heard in the XLR input as well as in the amplifier although both of those signals were not in line with the OC-2.
The hum even with the ground lift enabled was so audible that the DI couldn't be used is my point. If you tried to disengage the ground lift the DI gave out a loud squeal which I've never had a DI do that.
And for shielding I'm not talking about protection of the unit, I'm talking about conductive shielding.
Parallel wiring on the in& thrus. one big group hug.
I'll put my new on through some paces and see what I find. If you don't hear from me, I haven't had any issues, or haven't created a situation where they would arise.
I'll put my new on through some paces and see what I find. If you don't hear from me, I haven't had any issues, or haven't created a situation where they would arise.
So am I. The enclosure is a Faraday cage around the whole thing. It shields everything in it.
I've been using this PDI regularly for the past 3 months, and I'm quite happy with it. It sounds like I want it to, which means better than most of the other stuff I see on the bandstand. It's got a heavy iron transformer type sound, which is what I wanted. I can go direct with a lot of my bases - passive bases - and I'm happy to just send that along to the sound manager.
There are other DI's with which I am quite happy, but they all cost more and most of those are active, which eliminates them from competition / comparison.
When I see a Neve DI on the bandstand I'm not going to unplug it and use my PDI. But I do unplug all the radial stuff. I just like this red one better.
If you're reading this thread to find out if this box is worth buying and using, I give a solid yes vote to that. At this price I haven't found anything I consider equal or better.
There are other DI's with which I am quite happy, but they all cost more and most of those are active, which eliminates them from competition / comparison.
When I see a Neve DI on the bandstand I'm not going to unplug it and use my PDI. But I do unplug all the radial stuff. I just like this red one better.
If you're reading this thread to find out if this box is worth buying and using, I give a solid yes vote to that. At this price I haven't found anything I consider equal or better.
