DI & Mic

[Mr Q]

How do you mic AND DI a bass at once??

thanks

[soundmanjim]

stuff the mike in front of the speaker, and di the amp as normal, but obviously you will now have two channels of bass.
Use the miked bass channel to get the crispness out of the bass as well as an overall sound, then use the di channel to fill in any low end and also use this channel as the foldback supply, rather than risk the mike which may give you grief during the bands set.

when sultans of ping f.c. played here, the engineer di'd and miked the bass cab; the bass amp actually had two cabinets, one 4 x 10" and one cab with a single 15". he miked one of the 10" drivers and gleaned the low end bass from the di supply. sounded very nice; and he did run both of these bass signals through our compressor, one channel for each.

[Apollo]

I think Mr. Q means how do you put DI and an amp together - as DI's can take the place of an amp. I was wandering this myself a while back

[soundmanjim]

youve lost me

[joseph]

Most DI boxes will have a SECOND output for the purpose of feeding the bass or instrument to an amp (also called "Link".) You take your DI feed (to FOH/MON) from the balanced output (low impedance) and your amp feed is usually just a parallel split of the input. So think of it as a Y-split with each output having different electrical characteristics. The mic is completely seperate.

Is this what you guys were asking about? I do not know what you meant by "take the place of an amp"...

By the way, how was the phase compatability of the di and mic on the same signal?

[John Bell]

Hi Joseph,
Some instrumentalists only use a DI box and use the monitors to hear their non-acoustic output.
String quartets, that use pick-ups on their violins etc, prefer DI to mics and some modern cello's have very little acoustic output.
I have known of a bass player, that doesn't like a bass rig behind him and prefers a good monitor. I assume that the low end is rolled-off, so that the monitors can handle it.
In an emergency, a good DI/amp/cab simulator, can stand in for a duff guitar rig.

[Apollo]

Yay, I was right! I thought that a DI could replace an amp!

I thought I was going crazy

[Mark]

I use a DI for an acoustic guitar without any amp for a song a band do and have no problems there it just saves the guy putting it through his bass amp, you can get a really clean sound whci gives you plenty of room for effects ect.