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Old 01-17-2012, 08:55 AM
pieterh pieterh is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Near Stockholm, Sweden
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We've had this subject crop up a lot recently, it may be worth doing a search for similar threads - or even my sig, cos I've written quite a lot before!

But to summarise, an active DI is strictly speaking a preamp. If you are going to be using a DI to feed the mixer as well as a stage amp then it should be active, though not essential if the guitar has a preamp. A passive PUP on the other hand will not have enough to drive both mixer and amp via a passive DI. A DI's job is to basically optimise impedance and balance the signal for connection to a mixer or similar balanced input.

Balancing basically sends the same signal down two cores, one with inverted polarity. Any noise picked up or generated along the way will then cancel itself out when that polarity is flipped back and added to the other, while increasing signal level at the same time.

Acoustic guitar preamps - Radial, Headway, Dtar etc - these days have a DI function, so separate units are not neccessary.

The Taylor ES is already a balanced system so does not need a DI, though generally using effects in a line would eliminate one half of the balanced signal so unless the last unit of the chain has a balanced out then a DI is recommended.
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