![]() ![]() I used a couple of different guitars for these short samples. I wanted to give a sense of what a DI signal to a high quality preamp would sound like as opposed to running the signal direct to a PA or even a really good acoustic amplifier. Both units offer a high impedance output as well to run to a tuner or an acoustic amplifier that is close to the instrument. Connect your guitar using a standard instrument cable to the instrument input on the StageBug. This power allows the transformer to cleanly change the impedance. In either case, you connect the StageBug via XLR cable to a microphone input on your interface or mixer and activate the phantom power. For electric guitars, I have been proven successful with their passive DI boxes (D1 Pro, D2 Pro). For acoustic use, I like the active DI units, as I do for microphone activators. Radial has never let me down, and when I determined I needed to get some DI stuff I looked first to Radial, found what I wanted and stopped there. I use their Bigshot ABY boxes to build wet/dry and wet/dry/stereo rigs and have a few of their tube based preamps as well as their old super clean FET boost. In my case, I support Canadian builders when I can, and over decades, I have always been impressed with the build quality and audio characteristics of the products from Radial Engineering. They also have one called the StageBug SB-4 built specifically for piezo pickups (image above). I use an Active DI from Radial Engineering called the StageBug SB-1. I prefer the K&K Pure Mini family over any piezo, although Taylor’s Expression System 2 goes a way to eliminate that nasty nasal tone that most piezos have. I wanted to be able to record acoustic guitars not just by using a microphone, but also to use the pickup if the guitar has one. This is delivered over the XLR cable, so it is simple. Impedance conversion is done by a transformer and some impedance converting direct boxes are passive while others are active giving better performance and using the interface or mixer input’s +48v phantom power. What we really want is a High Impedance to Low Impedance conversion very close to the guitar. These can be the often found TRS cables that look like TS cables unless you check, or the more durable and more reliable XLR type connectors found on microphone cables. They use what are known as balanced lines. Low impedance runs do not use traditional guitar cables. Some PA / mixers limit the number of inputs as well and have the further challenge of distance from the player. Some interfaces limit you to one or no high impedance inputs, a bit of a pain when recording. Higher end microphones are all low impedance. For longer runs, and for better fidelity, you want low impedance. The longer the cable from the guitar to whatever it is plugged into, the more loss you get, starting with the high end. Since that is much less probable, we have to deal with the limitations of high impedance. This means a high impedance output unless there is a preamp built with a low impedance output involved in the configuration. In any of these contexts, the connection is a TS guitar cable into a jack somewhere on the body. Pure Minis are by default contact transducers that sit inside the guitar under the bridge plate (similar to the positioning of the piezo in Taylor guitars), but you can extend that to include an in body microphone as you would find in a Maton guitar from Australia such as those played by Tommy Emmanuel. The less common is the contact pickup / internal microphone as one can find in the K&K Pure Mini family. Piezos come in a couple of sub flavours, those that have a preamp, such as what we find in a Martin SC-16 or in the still piezo but better sounding Taylor Expression 2 pickup system, or those that have no preamp such as the popular and inexpensive under saddle systems from folks like Fishman and others. The most common is the piezo which requires a power source to work. If we examine the pickups in acoustic guitars, they tend to come in a couple of broad based flavours. Heck it might even be a piezo pickup (turns head and spits on ground) and you want it to sound good. You want to record with it, or play it through a PA. You’ve got a really nice acoustic guitar that has a built in pickup. ![]()
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