Pyle PDC22 Dual Direct Box Review

Howdy!

Over the past few years I have done plenty of reviews on direct boxes, with prices ranging from 20 bucks to hundreds of dollars, but the bottom line is that if you plan on plugging your bass or guitar directly into a PA system you are going to need some sort of direct box. Today we are looking at one that just came into Rex and the Bass, and it is one of the better values out there, the Pyle PDC22. This one is a bit different, as it is a dual box that allows two instruments (or one stereo instrument) to be plugged in at the same time.

You may remember Pyle as the company that made those mediocre yet big and thumpy car speakers back in the 1980s. Well, it turns out that nowadays they crank out mediocre yet amazingly low priced pro audio equipment that is generally good enough to get the job done.

The PDC22 is a really handy thing to have around. As this is a passive unit, it is best used on instruments with an onboard preamp (active electronics), and if you have a passive bass, you may want to consider an active direct box

This unit is a bit bigger than your regular DI box, but it is not too huge, measuring approximately 5.5” x 4.75” x 1.5”. It weighs in around a pound and it has a real solid feel to it with a rugged steel chassis. These are made in China, if that makes a difference to you.

This is not a terribly complicated piece of equipment, with two 1/4-inch high impedance input and throughput jacks, two balanced XLR outs, ground lift switches, and 0/-20/-40 dB attenuation switches. That is all, folks!

This DI box is easy to hook up, just plug into the ¼-inch inputs, hook up XLR cables to the outs and run them to the mixing board. If you want you can use the ¼-inch outs to send the signal to your onstage amps/monitors too. If the signals are too hot, the attenuator switches can cut the signals down to more normal levels.

The Pyle PDC22 DI works well, and I do not notice any degradation in tone, although I do hear a slight drop in level. I have even used this unit a few times when I did not really need to so that I could use the ground lift to get rid of some extra signal noise. There is not much to it, but it does everything it is supposed to without any drama. I wish I could say that about more products from Pyle.

Best of all, the Pyle PDC22 dual direct box is dirt cheap. It has a list price of $46.99 and as Amazon price of $19.23, and this includes Pyle’s 1-year warranty. For this price I recommend picking one up and tossing it into your road case, because it really could be handy to have one around.

Mahalo!

Radial Engineering J48 Active Direct Box Review

Howdy!

I have reviewed the Radial Engineering Firefly and JDI direct boxes before and had nothing but praise for them, but they have a lot of other great products in their line-up, including the J48 active direct box.

Radial Engineering builds an impressive collection of products, including my favorite direct box, the aforementioned Firefly. Their stuff is comes dear, as they use quality components and their boxes are built with workers earning first-world wages in Canada.

First off – why would you need a direct box? If you want to send your instrument’s signal directly to the mixing board, a direct box will allow you to do this with a minimal increase in outside noise as well as reducing signal loss. It does this by converting a high impedance signal to a low impedance signal, as well as balancing this signal.

If the impedance is lowered, it will travel over long lengths of cable with less signal loss. Unfortunately, low impedance signals are more susceptible to noise created by magnetic fields – and just think of all of the magnetic fields created on stage by the amplifiers and lights. Old-school landline telephones also send low impedance signals over ridiculous lengths of wire with virtually no added noise. How do they do it?

They use balanced lines, which I am sure you have heard of if you have ever messed around with sound equipment. Balanced line split the signal into two equal parts, with one part in phase and the other part purposely inverted (out-of-phase). There is also a magnetic shield, which makes up the third pin of your standard XLR cable. Outside noise that passes through the shield is picked up equally by both wires. When the two signals come back together, the out of phase signal is brought back into phase along with the noise it has collected. The original signal is now in phase and the noise goes out of phase with its counterpart and cancels itself out.

So, a direct box (or DI box) takes care of all of this in one little component: It converts the high output impedance of the pickup to a low impedance signal and convert the unbalanced connection to a balance the line. Then you can plug it straight into a microphone line input and put your sound into the hands of the guy running the board. I hope you trust him…

This was all done with no added power, and a transformer was used to accomplish this task. Active DI boxes came out about 30 years ago because it was found that passive boxes did not work as well with high-output active basses, onboard preamps and keyboards. These units use batteries or phantom power (48V) without an expensive balancing transformer to provide the same results.

The Radial Engineering J48 active direct box is a bit more spendy than other simple direct boxes on the market, but it uses the phantom power to run a balancing transformer and has a military-grade printed circuit boards so that it ends up being a durable piece of equipment that works very well and should last for the rest of your career.

Looking at the unit, it is about the same size as an effect pedal (5 ½ x 3 x 2 1.2 inches), and it has a 14-gauge solid steel chassis painted in a lovely deep blue with neatly screen- printed graphics. It is shaped sort of like a hardcover book, so the steel wraps around and protects the switches from being torn off if you drop it or as it bangs around in your road case, There is a rubber pad on the bottom to help isolate it and to keep it from moving around.

The input panel has the usual 1/4-inch instrument input and traditional thru-put (to send your signal on to an amplifier). There is a merge switch that changes the thru-put jack into a second input, thus allowing a stereo signal to be summed into a mono signal. The instructions printed on top if the box, in case you forget how it is supposed to work. There is also a -15dB pad switch in case you have an exceptionally hot input, and an LED for the 48V phantom power check.

On the other side, the output panel has a balanced 600-ohm XLR connector with a hot pin 2 hot per AES specifications. There is a polarity reverse switch to toggle pin 2 and pin 3 to allow interface with older non-AES compliant equipment. The ground lift disconnects the pin 1 to allow for input and output isolation. The LOW CUT switch is an 80Hz high-pass filter that minimizes resonant feedback with acoustic instruments. This switch also headroom by eliminating unneeded bass frequencies.

In the real world, it does all of this exactly like it is supposed to. After you get it set up and plugged in you can forget it is there and get down to the business of making music. It is really nice to have a product that does exactly what the company says it will. It specs out with a 20Hz to 30kHz frequency range and it is quiet and perfectly isolated and with no added distortion you can count on your signal getting to the board just the way that you created it. You can use it to run straight into the board or into the snake with no fear of overloading the system.

I have tried it out with really high output basses (Alembic, Sadowsky, MusicMan Bongo, and Kubicki Factor) as well as a variety of keyboards and acoustic guitars with active preamps, and all of them worked spectacularly with the J48. They sounded exactly the same as they did when run directly into an amplifier, and I am completely hooked.

All of this quality and performance do not come cheaply. The Radial Engineering J48 active direct box has a list price of $220 and a street price of $199. It is worth every penny, and you should have one in your gig bag! Mahalo!

Radial Engineering JDI Direct Box Review

Howdy!

I rained down praise upon the Radial Engineering Firefly direct box last month, but they have a lot of other great products in their line-up, including the JDI passive direct box.

Radial Engineering builds an impressive collection of products, including one of my direct boxes, the aforementioned Firefly. Their stuff is comes dear, as they use quality components and their boxes are built with workers earning first-world wages in Canada.

First off – why would you need a direct box? If you want to send your instrument’s signal directly to the mixing board, a direct box will allow you to do this with a minimal increase in outside noise as well as reducing signal loss. It does this by converting a high impedance signal to a low impedance signal, as well as balancing this signal.

If the impedance is lowered, it will travel over long lengths of cable with less signal loss. Unfortunately, low impedance signals are more susceptible to noise created by magnetic fields – and just think of all of the magnetic fields created on stage by the amplifiers and lights. Old-school landline telephones also send low impedance signals over ridiculous lengths of wire with virtually no added noise. How do they do it?

They use balanced lines, which I am sure you have heard of if you have ever messed around with sound equipment. Balanced line split the signal into two equal parts, with one part in phase and the other part purposely inverted (out-of-phase). There is also a magnetic shield, which makes up the third pin of your standard XLR cable. Outside noise that passes through the shield is picked up equally by both wires. When the two signals come back together, the out of phase signal is brought back into phase along with the noise it has collected. The original signal is now in phase and the noise goes out of phase with its counterpart and cancels itself out.

So, a direct box (or DI box) takes care of all of this in one little component: It converts the high output impedance of the pickup to a low impedance signal and convert the unbalanced connection to a balance the line. Then you can plug it straight into a microphone line input and put your sound into the hands of the by running the board.

The Radial Engineering JDI is a bit more spendy than other simple direct boxes on the market, but it is a durable piece of equipment that works very well and should last for the rest of your career.

Looking at the unit, it is about the same size as an effect pedal, and it has a solid steel chassis, painted in a lovely green hue with neatly screen printed graphics. It is shaped sort of like a hardcover book, so the steel wraps around and protects the switches from being torn off if you drop it or as it bangs around in your road case, There is a rubber pad on the bottom to help isolate it and to keep it from moving around.

The input panel has the usual 1/4-inch instrument input and traditional thru-put (to send your signal on to an amplifier). There is a merge switch that changes the thru-put jack into a second input, thus allowing a stereo signal to be summed into a mono signal. The instructions printed on top if the box, in case you forget how it is supposed to work. There is also a -15dB pad switch in case you have an exceptionally hot input.

on the other side, the output panel has a balanced 600-ohm XLR connector with a hot pin 2 hot per AES specifications. There is a polarity reverse switch to toggle pin 2 and pin 3 to allow interface with older non-AES compliant equipment. The ground lift disconnects the pin 1 to allow for input and output isolation. The speaker switch is a second -30dB pad that can be used in with the -15dB input pad to allow the JDI to be connected in parallel with a speaker. This function includes a speaker emulation filter circuit. And lets the sound guy can tap the post-distortion signal, and

Unseen by human eyes, inside the JDI is a Jensen JT-DBE transformer, which is used as its main driver. The Jensen has magnetic memory, thus eliminating phase distortion. It is quiet and perfectly isolated and with no added distortion you can count on your signal getting to the board just the way that you created it. You can use it to run straight into the board or into the snake with no fear of overloading the system.

In the real world, it does all of this exactly like it is supposed to. After you get it set up and plugged in you can forget it is there and get down to the business of making music. It is really nice to have a product that does exactly what the company says it will.

As this is a passive device (no battery or phantom power required), the JDI is perfect for hot devices such as active or self-powered instruments, including acoustic guitars and basses with built-in battery-powered preamps, and AC-powered equipment such as drum machines, DJ mixers, and keyboards. These types of devices can overload active boxes, making them sound thin and shrill. The JDI can handle any of these things without distorting.

All of this quality and performance do not come cheaply. The Radial Engineering JDI passive direct box has a list price of $220 and a street price of $199. It is worth every penny, and you should have one in your gig bag!

Mahalo!

Radial Engineering Firefly DI Box Review

Aloha!

I have amassed quite a collection of DI boxes, and I have to say that my favorite of the bunch is the Radial Engineering Firefly, which is also the priciest of the bunch. This is not too surprising, I suppose…

Radial Engineering builds an impressive collection of products, including one of my favorite passive direct boxes, the JDI (which I still need to write a review of…). None of their stuff is cheap, as they use quality components and their boxes are built with workers earning first-world wages in Canada.

Firefly is big and heavy for a DI box, measuring around 5.25 x 8.25 x 1.75 inches, and coming in at a bee’s dick under 4 pounds. This is a solid piece of work with a gnarly 16-volt external power supply and depending on how you want to use it, you might want to spring for the optional rack mount kit. No matter how you use it with the quality of its construction it should last you for years and years of studio and/or road work.

On the back you will find the sockets for the power supply as well as two ¼-inch input jacks. These allow two guitars to be plugged in, although only one of the signals can be used at a time. They are switched with the select switch on the front panel or with the optional footswitch. There are LEDs for each channel so you know which one you have selected, and each one has its own trim pot. There is also a ¼-inch “Insert” that allows you to run effects straight into the unit for both channels.

The outputs on the back are a balanced XLR out and an unbalanced auxiliary ¼-inch out. This means you can run the ¼-inch out to your stage amp and the XLR to the mixing board. Or a recording console. There is an extra ¼-inch tuner out too.

Some other extras (also on the back) are little tiny ground lift, phase polarity, and pre-post switches. The pre-post switch will change whether the amplified signal comes before or after the tube. Mmmm. tube.

Besides the channel trims, the other controls are simple, yet innovative. There is a Level knob that controls the master volume for both outputs and a Low Cut control that works below 500Hz. It will go down to -25dB at 100 Hz. The super-neat feature is load adjustable drag control, so you can change the stock impedance its preset 3.9 MΩ. The stock setting is good for active pickups and passive piezo units. By using the controls range of 22 kΩ to 500k Ω, you can get the most out of the Firefly with a wide assortment of passive magnetic pickups. This kind of flexibility is astounding.

I forgot to mention that the optional footswitch also has a mute switch. Maybe I should see about getting one of those.

The Firefly does the basic DI stuff, which is making a low-impedance balanced signal out of your bass’ high-impedance unbalanced signal. It is amazingly quiet and natural sounding, and it has a frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz. These things are pure heaven to work with when they are plugged into your board. But it does a lot more and really ends up being a kick-butt preamplifer too.

You see, this Radial unit has a Class A FET front end and a 12AX7 tube drive circuit. The tube gives the output sound a new level of warmth and robustivity. This is universally true with every instrument I plug into to it. I have tried it with a plain-old passive P-bass, my active Sadowsky, and even 18-volt Kubickis, and Musicman Bongos, and they all came out sounding better than they do dry. Having two inputs channels is really handy for having an active and a passive bass plugged in, so you can set levels for each of them and then leave them alone.

The Firefly is not just for basses, though I hear it works marvelously on double basses too. I have used it with my Stratocaster and my Martin D-18GE (with an add-on K&K Pure Mini pickup), and it killed with them too. This might be a keeper.

The only thing I am lukewarm about is the drag control. I have messed around with it and only saw small changes in the tone, and perhaps not enough of a change for me to even want to mess with it anymore. Still, this is not a deal-killer by any stretch of the imagination, and I am sure there are some aficionados that would give their left nut to have this feature.

So, the Radial Engineering Firefly is the best direct box I have ever tried, and if you want one there will be a hefty price to be paid. It has a list price of $700 and a street price of $599, though some sellers will knock it down to fewer than 500 bucks if you haggle a bit. It is worth every penny…

Mahalo!

Live Wire Solutions SPDI Passive Direct Box Review

Sugoi!

Last month I did a quick article on why you should carry a direct box with you if you plan on plugging your bass or guitar directly into a PA system, but I did not recommend any products. Well, today I am going to let you know which ones I carry around for my PA system, in case some hapless bass player shows up without one.

I think one of the best values out there for a passive unit is the Live Wire Solutions SPDI passive direct box. The latest version of this product has a few more features, and is a really handy thing to have around. As this is a passive unit, it is best used on instruments with an onboard preamp (active electronics), and if you have a passive bass, you will want to consider an active direct box (which I will be reviewing at a later date, but do not buy the Live Wire Solutions ADI…).

The SPDI is small, but it weighs in around 12 ounces and it has a real solid feel to it with a rugged steel chassis. They stuck a rubber pad to the bottom so it will not slide around as much.

This is not a terribly complicated piece of equipment, with 1/4-inch high impedance input and throughput jacks, a balanced XLR out, a ground lift switch and a 0/-20/-40 dB attenuation switch. That is all, folks!

This DI box is easy to hook up, just plug into the ¼-inch in, and hook an XLR cable to the out and run it to the mixing board. If you want you can use the ¼-inch out to send the signal to your onstage amp too. If the instrument’s signal is too hot, the attenuator switch can cut the signal down to more normal levels.

The Live Wire DI works well, and I do not notice any degradation in tone, although I do hear a slight drop in level. I have even used this unit a few times when I did not really need to so that I could use the ground lift to get rid of some extra signal noise. There is not much to the SPDI, but it does everything it is supposed to without any drama. I wish I could say that about more products.

Best of all, the Live Wire Solutions SPDI direct box is dirt cheap. It has a list price of $39.99 and a street price of $29.99, but I see these units on sale all the time for $19.99. When you find them that cheap I recommend picking up a couple of them, because they are really handy to have around.

Mahalo!