I have a new GBE600 and will be gigging on the 3rd. Just wondering how the DI on the GB heads sounds. Many people think that the DI is where even respected amp makers skimp on quality. I have been using a Radial JDI - an often suggested and respected DI by bass players and sound guys alike. I know these kinds of questions are all relative and obviously I'll find out soon enough, but I'm curious about your thoughts anyway.
Never had an issue with mine. I use it both on the line and mic level settings with great success every week. In all cases it's dead quiet, and has the same warmth and clarity to it as the rig. On Sundays at church, half of our band, including the drummer, uses in-ears, and they've had no complaints about the tone which comes from the DI feeding the monitor board. The Genz rig replaced an Avalon U5 that I was using previously in this setting, so that says something. And we had a professional running sound at the time that does this for a living. He said it sounded great.
Cool. If it's in the same ballpark as the Avalon there should be no issues. I always have the Radial JDI for backup.
Well, I'm not saying one sounded better than the other, as that's a subjective statement. But in terms of tone, the GBE is very nice. I used my wt550 in place of the U5 a few times, and the engineer was always pleased with it as well. The U5 does have a certain quality to it that many people like, and I was one of them. But with the GBE, you can set the DI to be pre-EQ, which me and most FOH engineers really like. I can then make EQ changes without having to worry about how it is affecting what I'm sending to him. For live purposes, the GBE seems to be fine. I haven't used it for any professional recording, so I can't really comment there. We've recorded some of the stuff directly off the board, and I've hooked it up in my home to a firewire station, and it sounded great to me.
Sounds great.. what i like about it is that it has a switch so you can run it at Mic Level or Line Level.. Plus the normal Pre/Post switch and Ground lift. Very clean and full sounding.. no noise issues at all.. Yes.. Two thumbs up the the GB DI out
Yeah, I like that. I was always a little iffy with how to set the variable DI output on my wt550. I guess it has a place or many MFG's wouldn't include them. It seemed to make using it a church more difficult though, as small changes on the knob really affected how much signal was sent. Since I loaded in and out every Sunday, we always had to make changes to the DI setup. For my uses, the switch is much easier. I always send a Line level first since it's hotter. If they say it's too hot, I switch it back to Mic. I haven't had a complaint yet. But it's always good to have a small DI box because you never know when you'll have a grounding issue that you can't fix without one.
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