scelerat
Silver Supporting Member
- Messages
- 3,395
My bass rig is a '70s Music Man HD 130 through a single 15" reflex horn cab.
It seems that nearly every time I encounter a sound man who wants to use a DI to capture the bass sound, there's a problem. Typically, the signal path the sound guy wants to use is guitar > DI > (amp / sound system). Problems include weird feedback, distortion, and periodic signal loss.
My most recent encounter with a DI included a sound man who was noticeably agitated by the absence of a balanced/XLR preamp out, and kept trying to put the DI between the amp and my speaker cab. When I asked him to stop, he growled something about not spending four years in sound engineer school to be told how to use a DI. Are there DIs that take a speaker load from the amp like this? I didn't think so, so I told him I was happy to play with stage volume only (in a room with standing capacity of maybe 100), or simply with a mic'ed cab (which always sounds fine imo), but he didn't want the sound in "his room" to "sound like ****."
Well it sounded like **** anyway; my bass would keep getting quieter and quieter through the set until it was totally gone, then it would come back quickly but gradually (ie. not simply on/off, but 0-10 in about 5 s). I went home thinking something was wrong with the power tubes, until the next practice and I did some controlled tests, and it occurred to me that it was another instance of weird DI behavior.
I'm torn between just saying "no" to the DI, period, and insisting on a mic, or figuring out the right way. It's like there are a lot of sound guys out there who have never seen a bass amp with no preamp out or XLR (this guy wasn't the first).
I *think* the "right way" for my amp is:
- guitar > amp input 1
- amp input 2 > DI
This way my amp gets the full signal from my guitar, no shenanigans. This works for multi-amp setups, I don't know why it wouldn't work for sending a signal to a direct box. What do you all think?
It seems that nearly every time I encounter a sound man who wants to use a DI to capture the bass sound, there's a problem. Typically, the signal path the sound guy wants to use is guitar > DI > (amp / sound system). Problems include weird feedback, distortion, and periodic signal loss.
My most recent encounter with a DI included a sound man who was noticeably agitated by the absence of a balanced/XLR preamp out, and kept trying to put the DI between the amp and my speaker cab. When I asked him to stop, he growled something about not spending four years in sound engineer school to be told how to use a DI. Are there DIs that take a speaker load from the amp like this? I didn't think so, so I told him I was happy to play with stage volume only (in a room with standing capacity of maybe 100), or simply with a mic'ed cab (which always sounds fine imo), but he didn't want the sound in "his room" to "sound like ****."
Well it sounded like **** anyway; my bass would keep getting quieter and quieter through the set until it was totally gone, then it would come back quickly but gradually (ie. not simply on/off, but 0-10 in about 5 s). I went home thinking something was wrong with the power tubes, until the next practice and I did some controlled tests, and it occurred to me that it was another instance of weird DI behavior.
I'm torn between just saying "no" to the DI, period, and insisting on a mic, or figuring out the right way. It's like there are a lot of sound guys out there who have never seen a bass amp with no preamp out or XLR (this guy wasn't the first).
I *think* the "right way" for my amp is:
- guitar > amp input 1
- amp input 2 > DI
This way my amp gets the full signal from my guitar, no shenanigans. This works for multi-amp setups, I don't know why it wouldn't work for sending a signal to a direct box. What do you all think?