Do any of you record bass/guitar with a Direct Box?

C

chad kennith

New member
I just found out about these. Could you recommend a good one to record a bass guitar? Also can you record your instruments straight into an audio interface, that has a preamp? Thank you.
 
Always.

Bass straight into the audio interface. No DI box, the interface has an Instrument jack.
Guitar through a Digitech modeler then into the audio interface.
 
Usually straight in to instrument input level on interface.

I have a EDEN bass preamp DI that pretty much just introduces more noise than I would consider useful in regards to good tone in my experience. Much better results for me using other effects after recording to enhance or sculpt tone.

Sometimes a great bass amp with a mic in front of it can give good results as well, but usually not so much in my experience.

It really depends on what is needed for any project.

If in doubt or limited inputs, go direct and work with it later. Nine times out of ten I go with the direct signal.

Not the same ever for me with acoustic bass or acoustic guitars that have a line/instrument level out.. They almost always sound like crap...
 
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Bass/guitar straight into my interface, always...I use ampsims/modelers for my bass tones, but use a re-amp box to record my di & amp'd guitars at the same time....I can re-amp for a different sound tone later if I need to...
 
Behringer BDI21: bass DI/tweaker works wonders.
Sometimes DI guitar, sometimes straight to interface but, more & more frequently, mic cab jobbie.
 
Bass guitar straight in to Presonus 44vsl. we don't use amp modeling, as we haven't felt it necessary, but that seems like a fine thing to try. We just use compression, some EQ, and maybe some reverb. Very minimal, though I do have a nice array of basses/tones to choose from going in.
 
I've recorded a couple of "ideas" direct through my interface but mainly do the mic'd amp deal with guitar.
 
For clean electric sounds I've been getting into using the instrument input on my preamp and then not even using an amp model - just some compression and eq maybe.

And I pretty much always record bass that way.
 
Timely post. I go into my interface, but I am now starting to experiment with micing and I'm thinking about picking up a purpose built DI box. Coincidentally, I was looking up bass mic techniques on youtube today and came across this video on DI vs. line in -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dewuieQtm3Y

Granted, it might be the case that there are other factors, but *if* all other things are actually equal, there is quite a remarkable difference between going line in and going through the Radial J48 first, just based on this video. Even if there are other factors in play here, the J48 can still be used as a splitter (fer doin what minerman is mentioning a few posts above) so I might pick one up anyway. If it also improves the DI tone, then bully.
 
When I play acoustic with a pickup live, I try to use a Radial JDI. I have a J48, but it seems a little noisy, and I usually don't pack it for gigs because I don't feel confident that there will be phantom power for it - I guess I only tried it once or twice - I should revisit it. I think the JDI sounds good - much lower output of course, being passive. I haven't recorded with either one. And I'll *always* mic an acoustic for recording (and preferably for live performance, if I can get away with it), not that anyone is suggesting otherwise.
 
I always DI my guitars and then reamp them later. I like being flexible about my tone so I can't stand having to decide on an amp tone while I'm recording, especially if I just don't know what the rest of the track will sound like.

Straight into my interface.
 
kindafishy said:
Timely post. I go into my interface, but I am now starting to experiment with micing and I'm thinking about picking up a purpose built DI box. Coincidentally, I was looking up bass mic techniques on youtube today and came across this video on DI vs. line in -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dewuieQtm3Y

Granted, it might be the case that there are other factors, but *if* all other things are actually equal, there is quite a remarkable difference between going line in and going through the Radial J48 first, just based on this video.
Click to expand...
The line input presents a 10K Ohm impedance, which is way too low to get any useable treble from a passive guitar or bass. It works sometimes as a half-assed cabinet simulator, but if you're going to an amp sim after (or re-amping), we generally don't want that.

A DI box, whether passive or active and including the DI/Instrument input on an interface, is designed to present a much higher impedance to the pickups so that you can keep a lot more of that treble. It's only kind of the DI that's responsible for the brighter tone here, but it's really the interaction of the pickup with it's load that is making the difference.

I record passive guitars and basses through a buffered guitar pedal (lately usually my Boss DigiDelay, since my DIY booster died) and then straight to a line input. The pedal shows the guitar somewhere between 500K and 1M - much closer to what an actual amp might present - and has no problem driving the line input, partly because it's not inductive.
 
ashcat_lt said:
The line input presents a 10K Ohm impedance, which is way too low to get any useable treble from a passive guitar or bass. It works sometimes as a half-assed cabinet simulator, but if you're going to an amp sim after (or re-amping), we generally don't want that.

A DI box, whether passive or active and including the DI/Instrument input on an interface, is designed to present a much higher impedance to the pickups so that you can keep a lot more of that treble. It's only kind of the DI that's responsible for the brighter tone here, but it's really the interaction of the pickup with it's load that is making the difference.

I record passive guitars and basses through a buffered guitar pedal (lately usually my Boss DigiDelay, since my DIY booster died) and then straight to a line input. The pedal shows the guitar somewhere between 500K and 1M - much closer to what an actual amp might present - and has no problem driving the line input, partly because it's not inductive.
Click to expand...

I'm a bit of a knuckle dragging sort of "musician", and I am having a little bit of a tough time grokking this. Can I ask for a little bit of a dumbed down version of this information so that someone who is of the sort, "me plug in guitar, me make pretty sounds" can understand?

Impedance for dummies.

So, what does this mean, this 10K Ohm impedance? Without knowing, I am guessing that this is a measurement of the signal that the line in of my interface is expecting - or maybe this is one end of an expected circuit path, with the other end being a sound source. Does this measurement refer to the level of a signal, or is this a different characteristic of a signal that is not really the same thing?

You are saying that a DI box will present a higher impedance to the pickups. This is making me think that it is like completing a circuit, and it is all about matching the two end points properly for ideal electrical signal transfer.

What does a typical guitar, say a Les Paul put out and why is that not good for straight into an interface? I am guessing that the use of a DI box (such as the aforementioned Radial) will, by design, take a guitar signal and 'turn it into' something that is better for an interface, thereby giving a more 'accurate', 'full' or 'balanced' raw tone?

In short, is it really just sort of 'truth' that "me plug guitar in DI, me make prettier sounds now"?
 
I use a MOTU Z-box for recording all of my guitar and bass direct so I can re-amp at a later time. I feel the zbox also adds back that touch element that you get when plugged into the front of the amp and it sounds amazing with amp sims also.
 
Like the others, bass straight into my interface.

Guitar - recently been running the guitar through a Radial PZ-Pre, splitting the signal to record the unEQed signal direct to the interface and then miking the amp (from the amp out on the Radial). Gives me a choice of using either/or.
 
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I use to plug directly in to my Tascam US-1800 and used amp modelers on bass gtr. Lately, I've been plugging in to my 11 Rack, there's some really good bass amp modelers in there.
 
Both, depending.

Guitars: Usually DI during the song creation process, since like most home recorders I use the studio to flesh out the composition, instrumentation, etc rather than walking into a studio with a completed song to record. By going DI during this time it allows me to continually change the tone as the song develops. Once the song is completely developed I may re-record some or all of the guitar parts by miking an amp if I think I can get a better tone or performance by playing through a real amp. Other times I leave the amp sim if I dialed in the perfect tone, or don't wish to sacrifice a perfect performance.

Bass: Always DI, and no amp sims, period. Now, my recording partner is my father, Russ Miller aka Dino Rock, and commented earlier in this thread. As he noted he has a room full of very nice basses with all kinds of different string and pickup combinations. That means he can try the part on 5 different basses to find the right tone for the song, after which I only need to do minor EQ and compression work to finish mixing the bass with the rest of the instrumentation. Because he has so many tonal options to start with we never need to use a bass amp sim to get the right tone. But if, like many home recorders, you have 1 standard bass guitar laying around that you're using for every song, you may need to use an amp sim to dial in the right tone. And there's nothing wrong with that.
 
I have a Tech 21 VT Bass Deluxe that I use for bass. Sometimes I also mic the cab. The VT Bass is really good on its own though.
For guitars they run through an amp 90% of the time. I don't have any high gain amps so sometimes for that sound I run the guitar through a Mesa V-Twin preamp.
 
kindafishy said:
I'm a bit of a knuckle dragging sort of "musician", and I am having a little bit of a tough time grokking this. Can I ask for a little bit of a dumbed down version of this information so that someone who is of the sort, "me plug in guitar, me make pretty sounds" can understand?

Impedance for dummies.

So, what does this mean, this 10K Ohm impedance? Without knowing, I am guessing that this is a measurement of the signal that the line in of my interface is expecting - or maybe this is one end of an expected circuit path, with the other end being a sound source. Does this measurement refer to the level of a signal, or is this a different characteristic of a signal that is not really the same thing?

You are saying that a DI box will present a higher impedance to the pickups. This is making me think that it is like completing a circuit, and it is all about matching the two end points properly for ideal electrical signal transfer.
Click to expand...
Impedance is actually a pretty complex topic (really, like with imaginary numbers and stuff) that can take a while to get your head around even when you're deliberately studying electrical engineering. The quickest way to explain it is that it is like Resistance, but can different at different frequencies. When you see a number listed for most things, it's for some frequency in the middle of the spectrum, or sometimes over some range of frequencies that are considered relevant. It can have an impact on the signal level that gets through the circuit, but is not itself a measure of of level. A lot of people confuse the two. Try not to be one of those people.

So, yeah, it is more about completing a circuit like you said, but in most things audio (the only exception being the power amp>speaker connection) we actually don't want to match impedance at either end, but rather to bridge them - deliberately mismatch them so that the input (load) is much higher (usually 10:1 is good, but see below) than the output (source).

What does a typical guitar, say a Les Paul put out and why is that not good for straight into an interface? I am guessing that the use of a DI box (such as the aforementioned Radial) will, by design, take a guitar signal and 'turn it into' something that is better for an interface, thereby giving a more 'accurate', 'full' or 'balanced' raw tone?

In short, is it really just sort of 'truth' that "me plug guitar in DI, me make prettier sounds now"?
Click to expand...
A passive guitar has a pretty hefty resistance across all the frequencies. A light-wound single coil might 1.5K at DC, while the hot-wound humbuckers in a couple of my guitars are 15-16K. A typical LP PAF-style pickup will be maybe 6-8K. So if you were going for 10:1, you might think that 100K or so might be good, but remember how I said that impedance can be different at different frequencies? Well, the pickups in our guitars act as what we call inductors, which means that their impedance gets really big at higher frequencies. In order to get as much treble as possible out of them, we really need the input impedance to be as big as possible. The pots in the guitar itself, and the cable between the guitar and its first active stage complicate things a bit, but we're trying to keep it simple here, right?

Most guitar amps have something like 500K at their inputs. A lot of pedals and probably the majority of Instrument/DI inputs and active DI boxes sit around what we call the "magic 1M". The difference between 500K and 1M with most guitars is negligible and any bigger than 1M is usually not worth the other issues it can introduce, but the difference between 10K and 500K is almost exactly like turning the T pot on the guitar way down. In fact, much of the action of that Tone control on a passive guitar comes from the fact that it is reducing the overall impedance loading the pickups.

A passive DI is a bit different. It doesn't generally have much impedance of its own. Rather, it reflects the impedance of whatever it's connected to, multiplying it by a factor related to the turns ratio of the transformer inside of it. A typical 3K mic input reflected through a typical passive DI will show around 300K to the pickups, which is usually plenty, but it can shave a tiny bit off the very top end. Often that is actually desirable, and is why sometimes a passive DI actually sounds better than an active one or a higher impedance buffer when it's not going to go through an amp/cab sim. I find it a bit low for feeding a sim, but it's a very subtle thing, and I kinda go for the icepick thing, so...

I hope any of this helps. Feel free to ask more questions and I'll try to clarify further.
 
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