Bass-friendly DI Box for less than 100 CDN $ ?

[FuzzFacetious]

Dunno how much a Zoom B3 is in CND but that's a great bet, a DI/XLR box AND effects to boot!

 

[Bassmike62]

Update: got an ART Tube MP, which is labelled as tube mic preamp, but also functions quite nicely as DI, for bass, mic or guitar. The stock tube is 12AX7A, which can be easily upgraded if necessary. All for 68 $ new.

 

[Philly Watts]

Update: got an ART Tube MP, which is labelled as tube mic preamp, but also functions quite nicely as DI, for bass, mic or guitar. The stock tube is 12AX7A, which can be easily upgraded if necessary. All for 68 $ new.

Wow, never heard of one before, great reviews everywhere for the ART. Nice buy! Should do well!

 

[T.Rex]

Sure I'll bite. There are two main cases where it could matter:

1) With a passive bass and no pedals or other buffers between the bass and the DI, a passive DI can load down the signal, reducing highs, and in some extreme cases weakening the signal overall. If you want a dark vintage sound, this may be fine.

2) With an active bass or with effects or some other buffer/boost between the bass and the DI, some 9V active DI boxes may distort on your signal peaks. To avoid this, you can use an active DI that runs on 18V or higher.

Based on those two cases, some people set a rule of thumb to use an active DI with a passive bass, and a passive DI with an active bass. But of course that's just a simplification and generalization; there will be lots of instances where passive works great with passive, and active works great with active. It depends on the specific gear at hand.

If you dont mind me asking, im playing a passive bass into a compressor pedal, an overdrive and a preamp that just acts as a distortion pedal and im pretty sure im getting ground loop problems causing a lot of humming etc. With my power supply being ground and isolated and same with my amp, what would you suggest in my case, a passive or active DI sense im using a passive bass with pedals?

 

[bongomania]

Ground loops are a separate problem, unrelated to either the impedance or clipping problems I described. Both the transformer used in a good passive DI, and the buffer used in an active DI, will block ground loops via the audio path; so it shouldn't make a difference either way.