Heavy-hitter DI shootout! Also, my best Recto tone yet!

[Metaltastic]

Hey guys, as promised awhile ago, here's my gondo DI shootout - I own a Little Labs Redeye, and wanted to see how it would stack up against some heavy hitter DI's. So I found a Countryman Type 85 and a Radial J48 for good prices on ebay, and bought them for the sake of this test! You're welcome Ta-da...

So I recorded the same riff as tightly as I could through each DI box, AND I used both my Ibanez Prestige with an EMG85 in the bridge and my housemate's Dean Evo with a Dimebucker (I know, I know, but at least it's passive!), so you guys could get the full picture! Then I reamped it throuhg my usual setup (Redeye --> TS7 --> 2 ch. Dual Rec Red channel --> Stiletto slant 4x12 --> SM57 mic'ing the bottom left speaker --> Mackie Onyx Satellite). So without further ado, here's the files!

It's a blind shootout, though I will say that the letters are the same for both guitars (e.g. a = a, etc.) Enjoy, and happy guessing! And the riff is my own from my last band.

EDIT: And here's a link to the DI's

 

[MetalJonesy]

haha i noticed that pic on ur photobucket last night!! just downloading now!

 

[MetalJonesy]

listening to the duncan shootout, tone a is alot crisper than tone B, b sounds a tiny tiny bit more muffled, and c sounds like a very slightly thinner version of a.

Think i prefer A, but the differences are tiny!!!!

on the EMG i think i still prefer A but C is also nice, however the differences between the 3 are totally less apparent than with the passive!!!

 

[Metaltastic]

Yeah, C is my least favorite personally - and listening back after some time, I realize this tone is still X-TREME low mids, so at least I can be that much more certain the 85 has got to go! But yeah, keep the comments coming, I would think there would be tons of interest in this!

 

[Melodeath]

Going to listen later tonight

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Sorry I haven't shipped the reamp yet. I plan to tomorrow, along with some china.

Fuckers at Macys don't know the difference between pure red and parchment red. Even with it clearly spelled out on the invoice.

 

[Metaltastic]

Haha, sounds good Loren - so any thoughts on the clips?

 

[mintcheerios]

Thanks for the test. I think I'll have to agree with MetalJonesy except that I don't prefer any particular one for the active pickup. I wish you had done this before I bought my DI box! Also, nice tone.

Just curious, was the 80hz high-pass rumble feature enabled on the J48?

 

[ex-250]

they go in order of how much i like them. A = best ---> C = worst

 

[Ermz]

Hey man, thanks a heap for doing this.

I'm finding it hard to tell which I prefer, since all of the tones sound very unpleasant to me. But relatively it seems like A is the thinnest and sharpest sounding out of the bunch. In real world examples that might amount to retaining the most fidelity. C seems like a thinner version of B, somewhere in between A and B's tone but that may or may not be a good thing, depending on where all the low-mid cloudiness is coming from. B is definitely the most muddy sounding.

In this shoot-out, out of the Dimebucker tests, I would say A is voiced the best. With the EMGs I could barely tell enough of a difference to comment. It seems the differences are more pronounced with passives.

All in all the differences are so minute that they don't seem consequential at all!

 

[Kadmium]

Awesome stuff. Thank you so much for posting these. Confirms what I suspected, as with the mic pre shootout; they all sound pretty much identical.

 

[Metaltastic]

Thanks guys! Ermz, come on, don't hold back, say what you really feel! But hey, I'll take a critique over no response any day! I had the bass ridiculously low on these clips, like 9:30, so it's either the 85 or the cab creating all those core mids (300-500 I'd say) - I wanna try some other pickups before I bail on the Stiletto, though! And mintcheerios, I didn't have the HPF engaged on the J48, so it was totally flat.

 

[Ermz]

Yeah, I'm really curious to hear which is which. I think at the end of the day, each may be tailored to a different set-up, though I do get a niggling feeling that the ones with the most low-mids may be the 'lowest quality', because one of the first aspects of fidelity you lose with this many signal processes is high-end, so it could be that A is 'the best'. Who knows really...

 

[Soundlurker]

I liked C for the Emg and A for the Duncan, B has some nasty low-mids/lows.

 

[alexrookie]

glad to hear that they are all working good!

i think the differences in sound are more a matter of performance than the boxes themself.


thx for the test.

 

[Erik Monsonis]

A sounds better both cases.

B sounds muffled, my least favourite

C sounds ok for both pickups, but maybe a bit too muffled with the passives.

 

[grywolf627]

Thanks for doing this Marucs! Interesting how we all have different tastes. Of course, my ears are still tired from working on that solo bit all last night, but for the EMG's, I prefer A, then, C, then B.

For the passives, I prefer C, then B, then A. But (at least on these headphones at work), there's only slight differences in all of them. Throw them in a full mix, and I think it would be even less perceptible. (?)

 

[Unavailable]

Listening on headphones atm, but there was a noticeable difference between A and the others. I liked A the best.

 

[ParsonsMatt]

You should upload the DIs and let everyone reamp them

 

[Metaltastic]

Yeah, I will after I reveal the results