Looking for a D.I. Box for My 388

M

Mark7

Well-known member
The 388 mic inputs are wired pin 2 low and pin 3 high. Does anyone know if there are any DI boxes with the same wiring on their XLR outs, and in what price range?
 
I don't know of any DI boxes that have pin 2 low and pin 3 high. Pin 3 is normally earth and Pin 2 is normally high.
 
On the 388 and the DI I have pin 1 is ground. The 388 manual calls pin 2 low and pin 3 high, but I've no idea if that means pin 2 is negative and pin 3 positive, or vice versa
 
As far as I know the 388 has balanced input mic preamps so your regular DI box will work just fine as long as it's passive (no phantom on 388).
Worst case the signal will have opposite polarity to what you're expecting, as you say, but this is true with pretty much any preamp, mixer, cable, adapter, microphone, etc.

If you're using the DI box for some instrument like bass or e-guitar then polarity isn't really important.

It matters if you record something with two paths - two microphones or dual outputs -
and even then you'd likely use a dual DI or matched pair so they'd be correct to each other anyway.

Many DI box will have a polarity switch which simply swaps 2+3 around.
If you your recordings to digital at any point polarity can easily be flipped there too.
You could also make a little xlr-xlr with a DPDT switch so you always have a polarity-flipper on hand, if you think you're likely to need that.
 
Mark7 said:
The 388 mic inputs are wired pin 2 low and pin 3 high. Does anyone know if there are any DI boxes with the same wiring on their XLR outs, and in what price range?
Click to expand...

If I understand you correctly you have a mic input XLR with non-standard, reversed polarity wiring? Odd but I cannot see it matters when being fed from a DI box since, AFAIK there is no convention to preserve 'absolute phase' for DI boxes?

If it is a problem it can be solved with a short, 'flipped' XLR cable. If you can't solder just buy a short mic cable and chop in half and rewire to taste with some 'Choc-bloc' terminals. At microphone impedances, the short piece of unscreened wire will not matter.

Dave.
 
I wanted to use the DI for a mix of direct and miked signals when recording guitar. If I can't do it with a DI then the only other way I can think to do it is to send the guitar in direct via a preamp and then use the Aux Send (pre fader) to send a signal to the amp and mic the amp.
 
The polarity of the signal coming out of the speaker is going to be arbitrary anyway. There are a number of places along the line where it could end up reverse of the amp input and you’ll never know (or care) until you try to mix it with the DI. You’re going to have to “check phase” by trial and error no matter how your DI is wired.
 
Tried connecting a cable from the aux out of the 388 to my guitar amp via the patchbay in my rack, Got a horrible noise (and I hadn't even picked the guitar up yet). So I'm not trying that again,
 
Well, that horrible noise was because the jack in the aux send was loose. Tried again and there was some hum but no other sound.
 
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