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Tubey + DI

#41
Yep, that Hartke definitely made my short list. And I'm anticipating not needing presets on this unit. I played that game already with the BDDI, which was used for the same purpose as this will be--a hairy rock sound. I had the programmable for months, found the only presets I needed was ON and OFF. Sold it for a regular BDDI. Then decided I wanted something that did full on distortion. Got the source audio. Then discovered it can't really do the tubey rock thing as well as I'd like. And neither did the BDDI, so... here I am. Having the DI is really just a want, not a need. I have one on the back of my amp head anyway.
 
#44
As many have already mentioned, the REDDI is the king of the tube DIs. But, as you have noted, is quite expensive. I picked up a Radial Firefly a bit ago and love it. A good bit cheaper than than REDDI and more flexible with the second input. I seriously considered the REDDI but the cost, size and weight made it not practical for everyday use for me. So, the Firefly has really done it for me.
 
#46
kurosawa said:
I'm definitely a dyed-in-the-wool tubester. But the thing with Cold War milspec tubes is this ridiculous rigid construction. These things were supposed to take the punishment of being launched in ICBMs. And here, there is a special thing going on with the sound, a super hifi thing, and only some tubes have it, 3D to the max. Actually, it was a handful out of hundreds I tested (six).

Hey, have you played with the Russian milspec tubes for the Reddi? If they're as rigidly constructed as these US milspec tubes, maybe they'll do the same tricks for you. Reading about the 1970 Voskhod box plate 6N1P-EV now, sounds like quite a tube!
Click to expand...
It is. But it's very different from the Sovtek that comes with it. I flipped for the NOS Russian tube at first. Went all nuts and bought three. But it ended up being too much goodness for me. It sounds wonderful and is built superbly IMHO, but it boosts the gain by almost 4db and it can be pretty overwhelming in a mix where the bass isn't meant to be so big at the 125hz area. I like a strong 125 but I've come to find out that when you give soundmen a REDDI, most will just run the channel nooned and the NOS tube is too much. So I went back to the Sovtek.
 
#47
slap5string said:
Its not that the BDDI sounds bad - I like the tones I get out of it - I just prefer to have a mid control. I know most BDDI guys will say "cut the bass and treble if you want to boost the mid" - I get that. I still prefer the ability to tweak the mid AND bass and treble. The paradriver takes it one step further with the freq sweep control which I love on my RPM and as Tech21 pointed out on another thread - the Paradriver is basically the RPM in a stomp box.
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Yes the para is a stomp box version of the RPM while the BDDI is kind of a stomp box version of the RBI. But what I could wish is that Tech21 would add the mid control of the RBI into the BDDI or at least into the PBDDI!
 
#48
rodneyat said:
As many have already mentioned, the REDDI is the king of the tube DIs. But, as you have noted, is quite expensive. I picked up a Radial Firefly a bit ago and love it. A good bit cheaper than than REDDI and more flexible with the second input. I seriously considered the REDDI but the cost, size and weight made it not practical for everyday use for me. So, the Firefly has really done it for me.
Click to expand...
Tony Levin did a shootout of a bunch of DI's and he did the Firefly, too, and I thought it came out pretty well. I wasn't expecting much out of it when I saw it, but for a DI that's more like a hybrid amp, it sounded good.

But for me, the REDDI is totally worth the few extra pounds. Not the easiest DI to fly with (though I do) but it's only 10 lbs. Everything mentioned here is great stuff, though. Certainly not trying to be a tube snob, even though I am ;) But it's all good...I still have very high opinions of the VT and Bass Attack.
 
#50
JimmyM said:
It is. But it's very different from the Sovtek that comes with it. I flipped for the NOS Russian tube at first. Went all nuts and bought three. But it ended up being too much goodness for me. It sounds wonderful and is built superbly IMHO, but it boosts the gain by almost 4db and it can be pretty overwhelming in a mix where the bass isn't meant to be so big at the 125hz area. I like a strong 125 but I've come to find out that when you give soundmen a REDDI, most will just run the channel nooned and the NOS tube is too much. So I went back to the Sovtek.
Click to expand...

Very interesting. Let me check into that hump.

Starting to think the Reddi is very flavored, and that the TD-100 and Firefly are less so. I hear you that this flavoring is what "they" want. And that's OK with me so long as it preserves the detail. When I went over to Basstasters and listened, it seemed a bit of that detail was smeared, but I didn't know if it was the tube. So where is the 125 coming from? Maybe the rest of the circuit. Can it be dialed back out so the milspec tube yields the same flavoring, but all the detail, too? My wallet dreads the answers. Well, it won't be any time soon, but yeah, I can subscribe to the "give 'em what they want" sentiment, while wanting to get what I want, too.
 
#51
If you want true tube without the flavoring (slowness/bloom/swell/muddiness - I've heard it called all these things), try a Jule Amps Monique. OMG! I had the opportunity to play with one recently, and it flat blew me away. The best tube pre/DI I've ever heard. It can go fat, it can go hi-fi, but it always has tube written all over the sound. Plus, it has very usable Baxandall tone circuits, separate output volumes for DI and pre, and variable "drive."
 
#54
kurosawa said:
Very interesting. Let me check into that hump.

Starting to think the Reddi is very flavored, and that the TD-100 and Firefly are less so. I hear you that this flavoring is what "they" want. And that's OK with me so long as it preserves the detail. When I went over to Basstasters and listened, it seemed a bit of that detail was smeared, but I didn't know if it was the tube. So where is the 125 coming from? Maybe the rest of the circuit. Can it be dialed back out so the milspec tube yields the same flavoring, but all the detail, too? My wallet dreads the answers. Well, it won't be any time soon, but yeah, I can subscribe to the "give 'em what they want" sentiment, while wanting to get what I want, too.
Click to expand...
Can't say I ever thought of the detail of the REDDI as "smeared" regardless of what tube's in it. And while the sound with the NOS tube has a different freq response than the Sovtek, it can be dialed out, yes, and compared to the DI in my Countryman and the DI in my VTD when the VTD circuitry is bypassed, the frequency response doesn't sound all that different to me.
 
#55
JimmyM said:
Can't say I ever thought of the detail of the REDDI as "smeared" regardless of what tube's in it. And while the sound with the NOS tube has a different freq response than the Sovtek, it can be dialed out, yes, and compared to the DI in my Countryman and the DI in my VTD when the VTD circuitry is bypassed, the frequency response doesn't sound all that different to me.
Click to expand...

Wow, just began learning about scoops because it's time for me to do the SWR AE bypass. And it seems there are scoops and there are scoops. The Orange Micro Terror scoop is admired, and the SWR AE scoop despised. Maybe your scoop got filled in somehow when you noticed a 250 Hz spike. It would be really cool to separate the tube from the scoop and treat both independently. Almost found what I was looking for, a single-tube 6N1P mono preamp, but the kit was discontinued. Have to buy the reprint of the magazine and do it from scratch.
 

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