A Few Questions

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sk8bobby10

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Ok so I bought a Takamine EG340SC for 266 with tax and everything, I love, just wondering what kind of deal you guys think that is? But, later that night and and the next night, I played two gigs and they both said I need a direct box for acoustic electrics. So I'm also wondering what I need that for, because I've plaayed placees where we just ran right into the mixer. But I don't know, I'm just trying get a fuller undterstanding of live sound and stuff.
 
sk8bobby10 said:
Ok so I bought a Takamine EG340SC for 266 with tax and everything, I love, just wondering what kind of deal you guys think that is? But, later that night and and the next night, I played two gigs and they both said I need a direct box for acoustic electrics. So I'm also wondering what I need that for, because I've plaayed placees where we just ran right into the mixer. But I don't know, I'm just trying get a fuller undterstanding of live sound and stuff.
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There are a couple of reasons that you might be seeing that.

What guitar were you using before, when you just plugged in? Did it have a preamp (did it take a battery)? Does your new Tak? It could be that the Tak doesn't have a preamp, or it may be that it doesn't put out as strong a signal as did the guitar you were using before.

Was the mixer farther from the stage in the two gigs where they told you that you needed to go DI? For short runs, high impedance (regular 1/4 inch) connections are OK, but for longer runs you really need to go with low impedance, and a DI converts high to low.

But whatever the reason, if you are going to play an acoustic electric on stage through the PA, a good DI box is definitely something you should have in your gig bag. You may not always need it, but you almost certainly will need it sometimes.
 
ggunn said:
There are a couple of reasons that you might be seeing that.

What guitar were you using before, when you just plugged in? Did it have a preamp (did it take a battery)? Does your new Tak? It could be that the Tak doesn't have a preamp, or it may be that it doesn't put out as strong a signal as did the guitar you were using before.

Was the mixer farther from the stage in the two gigs where they told you that you needed to go DI? For short runs, high impedance (regular 1/4 inch) connections are OK, but for longer runs you really need to go with low impedance, and a DI converts high to low.

But whatever the reason, if you are going to play an acoustic electric on stage through the PA, a good DI box is definitely something you should have in your gig bag. You may not always need it, but you almost certainly will need it sometimes.
Click to expand...

hey thanks, you guys are really helpful, and know what you're talking about, I really like the electronics on my new one. Both of them had bettery operated preamps. And yeah, both the gigs had mixers kinda far away, but one of them I could of got plugged in with a 20 footer. But about the impedance thing, could someone help me there? Is that just like the strength or maybe the frequency of the signal your guitar puts out or something? Sorry, I'm kind of new to some of this stuff.
 
sk8bobby10 said:
hey thanks, you guys are really helpful, and know what you're talking about, I really like the electronics on my new one. Both of them had bettery operated preamps. And yeah, both the gigs had mixers kinda far away, but one of them I could of got plugged in with a 20 footer. But about the impedance thing, could someone help me there? Is that just like the strength or maybe the frequency of the signal your guitar puts out or something? Sorry, I'm kind of new to some of this stuff.
Click to expand...

Low impedance connections are also "balanced", which means there are two wires inside the shield instead of just one, and the signal is "push pull", where your signal is on one wire and the inverse of your signal is on the other. This contributes to something called "common mode rejection", which is kind of technical, but what it boils down to is that any noise (AC hum, radio station interference) that gets picked up in the wire gets cancelled out. This boosts your signal to noise ratio, which is very important.

Also, the way the driver and receiver circuits are configured in conjunction with this dual wiring, there is a lot less signal loss over a long low Z cable ("Z" is a common abbreviation for impedance) than there is over the same length of high Z cable. This gets to be really important if the signal from your instrument is not very strong and the mixer is not right next to you.

Even a cheap passive (no battery) DI will help, but I advise spending a little more on an active DI. Active DI's drive the line more strongly and generally have better frequency response.
 
IMO, whoever is providing the sound system should provide the DI, but...

Buy one of these and a mic cable and you'll be all set.
 
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