Guitar DIs

H

Helge A. Bentsen

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Jan 19, 2011
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Oslo, Norway, Norway
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A guitar player in one of my regular gigs asked me about pros and cons using a guitar di to capture preamp and/or amp sound. He's been looking at a Palmer unit:

http://www.palmergear.com/pdi09.shtml

I can se some use for it, but having never ever used a product like this before, I thought I'd run it by you guys for opinions and experience. I understand that he intends to use it between his head and cab and blend it with a microphone, probably the Sennheiser MKH-50 I supply him with.

Thoughts?

Edit: He's playing metal, and his current setup is a TC G-Major straight into a Engl Powerball head with a Engl 4x12 cab. Sounds pretty decent.
 
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Re: Guitar DIs

Tim McCulloch said:
But do they fix the screaming guitars in the vox mics?
Click to expand...

They can, actually. I use the H&K Redbox, and it works pretty well. This may be obvious, but there are DI units, and there are cabinet emulators. Some boxes do both, like the H&K. I use mine for recording or playing in the middle of the night as to not wake up my sleeping family (inspiration strikes at strange times...). The direct signal has your amp and effects so it is "your sound" but by not hooking up a speaker, it is silent. It would be possible to use one of these in the same way, but on the stage. If you are using IEMs, this could work. Don't forget that when doing this, especially with a tube amp, you'll need a power soak of some kind since otherwise, the guitar head will see an open circuit (a big no-no). For this purpose, I made up a box that provides either 8 or 16 ohms and can absorb a fair amount of power from the amp.
 
Re: Guitar DIs

Hi Karl-

Passingly familiar with the Palmers, mostly from Evan's posts regarding ATL's IEM rig. While my post was mostly sarcasm (seldom do I have a problem with other stuff in e-gtr mics), I also know that players can and will still use on stage gtr speakers or wedges with the Palmers. I'll put my earplugs back in Lurk Mode.

Have fun, good luck.

Tim Mc
 
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