# DI Guitars Live?



## ssskai (Mar 3, 2010)

Just wondered if this would be a good idea, i have searched for another thread on it and i don't know if i looked hard enough but i didn't find anything and i don't really have too much time to waste searching for too long.

I have heard bands like Tesseract and Meshuggah use DI rigs live and my band want to experiment with it, we are all going through pod x3 or xt pro's in to marshall 20/20 power amps atm and we are sick of having a great sound that decimates as soon as you shove an inexperienced sound engineer with an sm 57 in to the mix which i have been told alters your sound drastically.

We are forever changing our patch settings with every gig but its getting very tedious and we seldom have a good sound out of it due to not having enough time to sort it all out during sound check. Our sound is quite similar in tone to meshuggah in that it is very cold and clean, compressed and harsh etc, it doesn't translate well at all through an sm 57 live it seems and we really want to try DI, would it be a good idea to go from our Marshall 20/20 valve power amps via line out to the mixer? and use the cab as a back line only?

also, would we need a di box to accomplish this well?

it works for so many bands with a similar tone and texture to their guitars and we really hope its the answer for us too.

cheers ss.org


----------



## Ckackley (Mar 3, 2010)

My band DI's out to the board all the time. Myself and the other guitarist use Digitech gear and our bass player has a Korg bass processor. We plug into the processors then run the processor out to a DI where it splits to the stage snake then to whatever we're using for stage volume. We used to use the monitor mixes for stage volume but some clubs have shitty monitors so we started to bring either powered PA cabinets or "zeroed out" amps. The only mics on stage for us are vocal mikes as our drummer uses electronic drums. We rarely get feedback and there's not much a tech can do to our tone to alter it. It's hard to get the point across to techs sometimes. I feel bad for the guy that runs up with a handfull of SM57's and asks where our amps are only to be sent away scratching his head. Once the techs get used to it though, they really seem to like it. The other advantage we have with doing it this way is we can adjust our EQ's so that everything has it's place in the mix sonically. Short of horrible volume tweaks there's not much the tech can do to screw with us. 
I'm not sure how the Marshall power amp will fit in to a DI situation, but if you get most of your tone through the pods, I'd split the signal before it gets to the power amp.


----------



## JohnIce (Mar 3, 2010)

I use my Axe-Fx to go DI and I don't have any problems with it. I also don't use a power amp. What I do, when I have the space in the car and on stage, I use a powered monitor to send one output to and another output to the mixer, but I don't know if you can do this on the POD.


----------



## ssskai (Mar 3, 2010)

cheers for the replies guys, well im pretty convinced DI is the way to go now with my band. i was thinking i have stereo outputs from the pod x3 pro, XLR outputs that is, here is a detailed pic of all the outputs:

http://www.zikinf.com/_gfx/matos/dyn/large/line-6-pod-x3-pro_2.jpg

basically i have two leads patching to the power amp from the "stereo live outputs" to my power amp, we will probably opt to use our power amp and cabs as stage backing and refuse to have them mic'd. this leaves two xlr outputs which we could possibly use as the DI ?

Im told that we can use the "line outs" from the marshall 20/20 as it is simply a bypass of the poweramp itself so acts as a 1/4 inch jack output either way for di purposes if we cant use XLR. 

What im really thinking is, is it worth getting a DI box for me and the other guitarist to connect our guitars via Jack out from the power amps line output and put this in a DI box, or is it better to go via the XLR out route? 

I really hope im not being confusing as im finding it hard to word all this.

Cheers


----------



## newamerikangospel (Mar 8, 2010)

You can run a line out and mic at the same time (I dont really like it, but some people do). However, you will need to turn cabinet modeling on if you are running straight to the PA, so you may as well leave your power amps/cabs at home since you will 1)have to spend time/effort lugging extra stuff around, 2) get a better sound out of your PODs cab modeling then a DI box's eq curve.

Most venues only run mono, so you wont need to worry about your stereo outputs.


----------



## 8string (Mar 10, 2010)

JohnIce said:


> I use my Axe-Fx to go DI and I don't have any problems with it. I also don't use a power amp. What I do, when I have the space in the car and on stage, I use a powered monitor to send one output to and another output to the mixer, but I don't know if you can do this on the POD.



On the x3 live/pro you can send a signal via xlr to the desk and 1/4" to monitors if you like. so no probs there. aes/ebu on the pro even.


----------

