Passive or Active Reamp Box?

[H-evolve]

I'm thinking of eventually gearing up for reamping and so far, what I was able to find out, is that you obviously need a Reamping Box (Radial seems to have good products).

But, I see that you can either buy an active box or a passive one. What would be your recommendation? Which one's better for high gain guitars?

Moreover, people recommend doing the initial recording using a DI. Apart from the fact that you can split your signal, hence being able to listen to your real amp sound while actually recording in your interface (clean sound), is there another advantage to using a DI? Our setup is not made of super long cables, so maybe the DI is not an absolute necessity?

Thanks

 

[Plendakor]

Passive -> pick-ups actifs / Active -> pick-ups passifs.

Got that one for my passive pick-ups and worked great (and found the best price at archambault) http://www.archambault.ca/radial-boite-directe-active-ACH001965157-en-pr
Was all I needed, no fancy options.. Only bought that to be able to listen to the real amp while tracking.

 

[H-evolve]

Passive -> pick-ups actifs / Active -> pick-ups passifs.

Got that one for my passive pick-ups and worked great (and found the best price at archambault) http://www.archambault.ca/radial-boite-directe-active-ACH001965157-en-pr
Was all I needed, no fancy options.. Only bought that to be able to listen to the real amp while tracking.

Well, the problem that I'd have is that I'm playing with D-Activators (passive pick-ups) and the other guitar player in the band plays with EMGs...

Would I really need to buy the two types of Reamping Boxes? Is the difference quite noticeable?

 

[Mago]

Seems you're mixing up re-amping box & DI-Box.

Look it up in the forums, there's even a re-amping guide somewhere.

for the reamping box it doesn't matter if the pickup was active or passive, since it's a line signal at that point.

 

[Trevoire520]

I'd say passive because they tend to be cheaper and you're likely to have less ground loop/noise issues as you don't have to plug it in. But I think some of the active models can feed two amps at once which is a handy feature.

 

[deLuther]

Active reamper (with sufficient power supply) can have lower harmonic distortion and flatter frequency response, transformers tends to cut lows.
Grounding issues can be solved by using cables with shield unwired from one side.
But for Radial X-Amp there is one thing - it reduces level too much (somewhat Radial policy - ProRMP have similar behaviour, but can be modded to avoid it).

 

[H-evolve]

Well, I started by talking about Reamping Boxes, but realized I also had a question about DIs!

Let me explain a bit better :
- 1st : you got to record your guitar into your interface. Question : Do you absolutely need to do it using a DI? Or do you only use a DI to split your signal?
- 2nd : To send your signal back to the amp in order to reamp, you must send it from your interface through the reamp box. My question was: Which type of Reamp Box is the best option. Active Reamping Box or Passive Reamping Box (I didn't talk about pick-ups originally. Plendakor brought that up...). For example, the Radial X-Amp is an active reamper and the Radial JCR is a passive reamper.

I'll continue browsing the forum to try and find if there's a preference regarding types of Reamp Boxes.

 

[Plendakor]

Let me explain a bit better :
- 1st : you got to record your guitar into your interface. Question : Do you absolutely need to do it using a DI?

That's already DI. So no, you don't need an additional box. Straight into the interface.

But if you do that, you're not tracking with your amp. You can use amp sims and get great results if your latency is low in the sense that you will not notice it and it will feel like an amp. It will sounds 99% like if you would have done it with a DI box, since a DI box (active) does modify the amplitude of the signal which changes the headroom. It's like an ultra clean/transparent pre-amp but it's still a process in the chain. You're more likely to turn down your interface pre a bit with a DI Box than Guit-to-interface.

MY first post was talking about a DI Box, not re-amp box for the passive/active thing (sorry, read you quickly). For re-amping it doesn't matter but I would think an active one would be better.

 

[neptunian]

Which type of Reamp Box is the best option. Active Reamping Box or Passive Reamping Box (I didn't talk about pick-ups originally. Plendakor brought that up...). For example, the Radial X-Amp is an active reamper and the Radial JCR is a passive reamper.

Since the output of the interface is "powered" it can handle a passive reamp box just fine. Good reamp boxes use high quality transformers to drop the signal a bit to guitar-like levels. An active circuit will always add some level of noise, so go for passive on the reamp. The LINE2AMP is decent for a DIY kit.

As for a DI box for recording straight in, Active DI boxes can handle both active/passive pickups, but passive boxes are best suited only for active pickups. A passive DI box will put some load on your passive pickups and dull/alter the tone a bit.

If your interface can handle your guitar signal without clipping into the red, then you probably don't need a DI box at all.

 

[deLuther]

My mic/instrument preamp, that I`m recently also using for reamping, have noise no more than 1 db compared to Radial ProRMP (modded), but it have lower THD (because of bipolar +/-15 V power supply) and flatter frequency response, also can have gain more than 1 to 1 (ProRMP have slightly less), so it sounded closer to direct sound after active splitting. Noise is not issue with properly designed active unit, don`t forget that transformer can pick surrounding electromagnetic emission easier (especially with weak shielding), just place passive reamper on the top of your amp over power transformer to see effect

 

[Rex Rocker]

FWIW, the Radial JCR is much better regarded in this forum compared to the X-Amp. I don't think the X-Amp is very well-liked here.

But in all honesty, I have a ProRMP and it works just fine once I modded it, like deLuther mentioned.

 

[Mago]

Ah well sorry, didn't actually get if Plendakor confused you because he mis-read or if your question wasn't clear to begin with.

As he said, you don't *need* a DI box if you interface has a good instrument input and can handle the guitar.
It's always a good idea to check if you're not sure though. Like playing directly into the amp, and record a DI->reamp with same settings.
Would be even better if you can split the signal up so you'll have the same performance.

For reampingboxes I only have experiences with 2: The Radial X-Amp (active) and the Palmer Dacacapo (passive).
The X Amp sucked major ass for me. It ate so much level that I really had to crank the output on the X-Amp, which lead to nasty nasty distortion and coloration from the reampbox.
No issues whatsoever with the Palmer, sounds much better.

I think Glenn said something along the lines of "if you're using a long guitar cable after the reamp box go active, if it's short passive is good too".

 

[deLuther]

But in all honesty, I have a ProRMP and it works just fine once I modded it, like deLuther mentioned.

Also still have modded ProRMP, but recently started to use my instrument preamp as reamper, because it can convert balanced signal to unbalanced without level loss. Low frequency response is better (more flatter response overall).

 

[deLuther]

I think Glenn said something along the lines of "if you're using a long guitar cable after the reamp box go active, if it's short passive is good too".

Interesting thing (at least with ProRMP) - the longer cable from reamper to amp, the more highs you get