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Broke Down and bought a DI

iriegnome

iriegnome

Bassstar style
Supporting Member
Nov 23, 2001
11,262
5,574
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Kenosha, WI 53140
#1
I think this goes here...
Saturday was the first time in 14 years with my current band I had PA support, but did not bring one of the bands DI's.. We have been playing smaller clubs acoustic style lately. My Acoustic B260 is the early version and does not have a DI built in. Well, the sound guy wanted to run my line, but I don't have a DI and they did not have one so I just turned up a bit. Worked out well enough.
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This got me to thinking though, I really should just carry one with me all the time. Searched and thought about a Radial, but since we are acoustic and usually the systems for these kinds of shows are pretty small, the investment of a Radial would not really be worth it for the outcome.
So I went with a Whirlwind IMP 2. $40 shipped new. My band has had 5 IMP's for about 10 years and they preform perfectly.
 
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#2
They'll work.

Actually, a spare SM58 somebody will undoubtedly have laying around ain't bad to put on your speaker, especially for mellower acoustic gigs like that, or other genres where you don't need teeth-rattling low bass from uber-loud stage amps.
 
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#4
I don't have any single coil passive basses. All of my Modulus' and my Fenders are 18V.. I don't play many others on a regular basis. Mostly when I will need this is when I will be playing my Modulus Genesis 5 string fretless w/18v Barts in it.
 
#6
FYI...the whirlwind is known as about the cheapest crap DI on the planet, yet thousands of clubs "soundmen" have a gearbag full of them...because they're cheap, and they're slogging through 5 bands a night, at least 4 of which have no clue of how to work with a soundman.

Like I said earlier, "it'll work". Your active pre in your bass, as well as the active pre in any acoustic guitars you might be running, can help.

Open one up sometime.....it's nothing more than a patchbox.

Yes, they'll "get the job done", if you know how to work with them, but so will plugging an instrument with an active preamp straight into the board.

If you don't know "how to work with them", you'll get a hundred times better sound sticking any old vocal mic on whatever it is you're trying to amplify.

It's your instruments active preamps that are making them sound good, not the boxes.....
 
#7
will33 said:
Yes, they'll "get the job done", if you know how to work with them, but so will plugging an instrument with an active preamp straight into the board.
Click to expand...

I have to desagree with you. A DI matches impendance too. IME, when I go straight to the board without a DI, I have a really loss of low frequencies when I have the on board pre-amp on, and in passive mode....running such long cables results in loss of gain and high freq due to capacitance of the cables. So DI is the way to go no matter if active or passive bass.
 
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#8
I'm primarily a Spector guy these days and I've been running IEMs for almost two years. I've used several common bass pre's with good direct outs. But I bought a Radial JDI a few months ago and it's been game over. My signal chain is bass>Peterson tuner>Board...game over. Never been happier with what I hear.

Point is you get what you pay for. You've got some great instruments give a great DI a chance, it is sonically different.
 
#9
I am thinking that this thread kind of missed the mark on a couple of key points. This is not for my main rig. This is for a small room, small PA (2-15's on sticks) and not much more. This isn't about quality. There would be nothing of quality about most of the PA systems we use for these tiny 150 person gigs. Vocal PA with a little bass and a little Cajon in there for flavor. I never boasted about a quality IMP. Just that they work. They are kind of the SM58 of the DI set. They work. Not nearly a SansAmp or Radial, but not Behringer or MF brand either. However, it may very well be MF brand. Nobody really knows who makes what these days.
This is for a tiny PA gig that I had been requested 1 time in 14 years for. I think that the IMP will fit the bill perfectly if I have to use it again in the next 10 years.
Putting a Radial DI on a bass amp that cost less than the DI would just be kind of ridiculous..
Just sayin
 
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#12
I think it's a good idea to have a "nice" DI no matter what your stage rig is. I have a Radial JDI. I have a Genz Benz amp with arguably one of the better built in DI's out there. You never know. Most of my gigs are FOH/IEM these days so a good DI helps. I've debated buying a REDDI, which costs more than my amp.
 
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#13
iriegnome said:
Putting a Radial DI on a bass amp that cost less than the DI would just be kind of ridiculous..
Just sayin
Click to expand...
I don't necessarily agree with that...but that just my opinion.

However with that being said, we all have different needs and different budgets built into out tool set.

Its part of the quality of the sound going to the house and what everyone in the audience hears (basically).

Would you even think twice about $100 difference between 2 basses for different pickups or other various options?
Probably not to your average working bass player.
So why skimp on DI which makes a huge difference in the $100 realm?
 
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#14
I guess.. Never did I think that the IMP was a better unit than MANY other options, however, I just find it difficult to spend any sort of money on something that just doesn't equate to much at all. Since adding my bass into a vocal mix would be very minimal and if you listen to even a little of the broadcast, my bass came through quite well without PA support, it just isn't really a "high quality" kind of thing. It will work for what I need, but not intended for a 5,000 person outdoor festi..
 
#15
From a guy who has spent much of his professional life working in the pro audio field, and when not doing that, designing the gear itself, I think that often way too much time, effort and ego is placed on the gear rather than the solution.

Will that DI work? Absolutely. Will it it negatively alter the signal? Maybe a little. Will it matter? Probably less than the brand of TP in the bathroom at the venue.

Now the very earliest IMP DIs used a center tapped transformer with the CT connected to pin 1, which did cause problems when used with phantom power, but I recall this bring corrected maybe 25 years ago. Hardly worth holding a grudge over eh! Yes, there are better sounding DIs out there, but this will get the job fine in the world of combat audio at least.
 
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#16
Eh...didn't mean to come off as totally bashing your DI, though that is pretty much what I did.

I've just played way too many 5-band bills where they'll meticulously place 8 or 10 mics around the drumkit and spend your whole set making each one sound like a bigger and bigger cannon....while they throw an old beat up Whirlwind straight off the bass that's on the fritz half the time and nobody really knows you're playing anything unless you stop. :D

Yes, your DI will get the job done.
 
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#17
agedhorse said:
Will that DI work? Absolutely. Will it it negatively alter the signal? Maybe a little. Will it matter? Probably less than the brand of TP in the bathroom at the venue.
Click to expand...
Of course it would work...
However I disagree with your last 2 sentences, especially in theater settings.

I have A/B-ed the recordings live from the board and you can hear the difference between different DIs.
I'm not here to argue, but state my experience.
 
#18
Small room systems with acoustics may be exactly where you do need a decent DI. Given there's not a whole ton of 'noise floor' to cover over your tone out front. Your bass may certainly sit more prominently in the mix and in the ears of the audience in those gigs than if you've got two guitarists, keys and a loud drummer hitting.
 
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#19
TonyP- said:
I have A/B-ed the recordings live from the board and you can hear the difference between different DIs.
Click to expand...

I agree. I have even A/B-ed a Radial JDI against a Radial PRO DI (less costly version of the same thing), and was actually a little disappointed that I could hear the difference through PA speakers. Granted, this was in a quiet and acoustically pretty-good auditorium, but I could hear the difference. It's subtle, but the JDI was richer, meatier, with a better sounding transient. It was just more "musically pleasant".
 
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