DI boxes

[CommonCourtesy]

Anyone use one in their live setups? Been looking up favourite bands and stuff, the most common one I've seen is the Radial JDX (red box) one, apparently gives cleaner signal and makes the sound guy's task easier when mixing your guitar. Also stops bleed coming from any other source and I see the point of not wanting the guitar amps blasting into the vocal mics.

So do I actually need one? Or is it just an optional luxury?

[Dave Sloven]

I have one for my bass and DIs are very common and useful for bass but never tried a guitar one.  I do know that the EQ and effects on the bass DI don't work well on guitar, but it might be the case that it works alright as a straight DI without any of the effects turned on.  It is an MXR M-80.

I did find this post asking about using it for guitar that way:
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/backline/861086-using-mxr-m80-bass-di-guitars-bypassed-di-portion.html

If your bassist has one maybe give it a try.  It's a very common bass pedal.  If you play bass sometimes in song writing sessions or whatever and don't want to lug a bass amp or risk blowing speakers on your guitar set up you can plug the bass into it and run it straight into the PA>  It has EQ, distortion, and a noise gate but I'd turn all of that off if using it with guitar.

[downfader]

The one I really always liked was the Sansamp GT2. Its been going for yeaaarrrs and iirc is all analogue so suffers from none of that digital malarky 

DI gear often has other uses other than live. You can record with them. Practice on the quiet with some of them late at night. They're small, sometimes battery driven.. Its an option every guitarist should look at imo.

[CommonCourtesy]

Yeah my bassist uses a Sansamp, and he sounds good through it.

I have grown used to the experience of arsey sound guys not getting a good mix from my guitar amp, people knocking the microphone out of position on the cab and not being able to crank the amps as they don't want it to overpower vocals.

[MDV]

Little labs red eye or, if you for some reason don't want a reamper (you should), countryman 85.

Better than the radial stuff, very similar price.

[gwEm]

I've used:

SansAmp GT2 - pretty good
SansAmp British - really good
Award Session JD10 - ok
Amt M1 - between ok and good

None of them were as reactive or cleaned up as well as a valve amp. The feeling of getting feedback is not as musical either. Nevertheless, they sound just as good to the average punter and are a hell of alot smaller.

[darkbluemurder]

I used the Hughes & Kettner Red Box and later a Palmer DI box. Both have frequency balanced line outs. Especially the Palmer worked very well on stage.

Cheers Stephan

[CommonCourtesy]

I used a Radial one during recording, the red box, should I be looking at an active or passive one? The passive is powered via an adaptor I think.

Or I could just get a Kemper profiler and run that through the PA haha.