Does this make sense?

[honeyboy]

I was playing my G&L L2000 in church today and noticed something unusual. Normally when I am playing into an amp, I find the passive settings quieter than active. If I face the bass away from the amp I get no noise at all, no matter what pick-up choices I use. In church they have me using a DI into the board- no amp. So they turn me on and we're getting this buzzing noise. I started moving the pick-up selector and series/parallel switches because some settings are quieter than others. This didn't help at all. Finally, out of desperation, I switched from passive to active and the buzzing totally disappeared. Even on the treble boost position, which is really buzzy for me through an amp, there was no buzz. So I played the service with the active switch on and there were no problems. When I got home I was thinking maybe some wires were crossed at one time and what I thought was the passive position (all the way to the right) all this time was really active. So I took out the battery, and found out the wiring is correct.
So, someone please explain to me why my bass is quieter in passive mode through an amp, but quieter in active mode when going directly into a board.Thanks.

 

[superblues]

i'm not a pro-sound guy, but it sounds to me like your problem is one of impedance matching. your amp may be better suited to handle the impedance of your bass in active mode than the DI is.

my limited suggestion is to consider using a bass-specific DI, like a sans amp bass driver DI.

 

[JimmyM]

Could be the DI. Did you try the ground lift on the DI?

 

[honeyboy]

Could be the DI. Did you try the ground lift on the DI?

I'm pretty sure the ground lift was in the on position, which I understand is not the default position. What I don't get is why a normally buzzy active position on a G&l L2000 would become dead silent with that DI.

 

[Showdown]

i'm not a pro-sound guy, but it sounds to me like your problem is one of impedance matching. your amp may be better suited to handle the impedance of your bass in active mode than the DI is.

my limited suggestion is to consider using a bass-specific DI, like a sans amp bass driver DI.

The whole point of a DI is impedance matching. A DI is made to match a high impedance instrument with the low impedance input of a mixer. Any DI works with bass, the only thing that a bass specific DI has is EQ and preamp that are made for bass. A regular DI works fine with bass.