Jack

I've got no problems with an active DI at all, I've got problems with 9v batteries going dead and the lack of phantom power at my (admittedly bottom feeder) level. My preferred solution would be a DI that ran from boss style power like other pedals. I actually built one using a prefab board, and I own the Harley Benton too, as well as the usual pedal preamps that also include an XLR output like the Sansamp.

Anyone going to The Wildhearts in Newcastle in December?

I dunno, that crowd looks bigger than any one I've ever drawn.

It's the boring answer but it's the good answer. If you can sell the tuner then a Stomp is the same £250 or so as the bddi would cost you. If you can bring yourself to sell the Radial as well then you probably will only need to add the £150 budget. Does everything, fits in on a high end gig... Otherwise I agree with the LMB3 and I would also suggest the TC MojoMojo. Both great pedals and together (used) well below your budget.

How very on brand.

The derail continues. You seem to have a real point to prove here but I don't know what it is. Ok, one has a really loud saxophonist on a particular stage, fine. Now, will that stage be overall louder or quieter if a hypothetical two guitarists and one bass player are playing through backline or playing through digital modellers straight to the board? If the guitarist can't hear themselves they are free to ask the saxophonist to play softer whether they have backline or not. BUT, if the saxophone won't play ball then the guitarist might want to turn themselves up to match. When using backline this affects everyone, when using IEMs this only affects the guitarist. You are now going to say "yes but then everyone will need to turn up their IEMs and risk hearing damage" and again you are correct but you are correct whether there's IEMs or not. The problem in this case is the loud saxophone, not that somebody else in the band is using IEMs. Again, nothing about live sound is perfect. I reiterate that you can have good and bad mixes using every single approach that I can think of and probably a few that I can't even conceive of. I posted in this thread in response to a post suggesting that ampless was only for big gigs, I dispute that. None of the rest of this is really relevant. As you correctly point out live music can be really loud, dangerously loud. You don't have to go to a metal show to get hearing loss. I am in favor of more options for more people to not get hearing damage. Ditching the backline is one possible way to achieve that, there are plenty of others.

Nearly everything true there is true of bands using backline and those without. The only difference is that you either need to find one (hopefully competent) person to control the mix or 4+ (hopefully competent) people to control themselves in the mix. Guess which is more likely? You are right that most sound techs are subpar, what are the chances you find a band that's entirely comprised of good ones? This thread about preamps is in danger of becoming "the pros and cons of ditching backline thread #18662" but I would argue that it's possible to get a bad mix and a good mix using either approach. What can't/won't/doesn't happen in an ampless setup is volume creep and volume wars where everyone turns themselves up throughout the night. Maybe you start with a quiet drummer, maybe you start with a loud drummer. What you don't get is a drummer who keeps hitting harder and harder because that bloody guitar amp is drowning them out. On drummers and electric kits: budget guitar modellers from Nux/Hotone/Valeton and the like are exceptional. Your own Paradriver is brilliant. Great electric drum kits are hard to come by and very expensive IME.

For what it's worth my seldom-gigging hard rock band have taken a hybrid approach and it's working really well. Electric drums, modelled guitar and bass, all of the 'backline' coming from one wedge. No earplugs needed, you can still hear the room without the isolation of IEMs, still in total control of what sound is being made where. Terrible photo as it's actually a screen cap from a phone video, but you can see the pedalboards, the edrums and my qsc wedge, all being supported by our decade-old Alto pa.

The main reason that band went to all digital fakery was in order to cut volume down massively. Also: sound quality, size, space and load in, but mainly volume. That pa is 2 10s and a 15. Some bass rigs are more than that by themselves. Now, at this point you might be thinking "there's nothing to stop you bringing a backline and using that quietly" and technically you'd be right, but a cursory look through the 'band whinge' threads on here suggests that it's difficult to do in reality. Believe me when I say that the drummer was quiet and we were actively marketing ourselves as being a quiet band in this new age of booking strife. I was often on IEMs, but not when I was also the soundman if I could absolutely avoid it. However one of the benefits of a digital desk and no stage volume is that there's not as much to do when running sound. Yes, the drum mics will be in slightly different positions and yes there's eqing for the room, but you've got a LOT more time to sort that because the bulk of the soundcheck is exactly how it was left at the last gig. I did do most of my gigs with that band using a stage wedge instead of IEMs though, much preferred being able to hear the room even if in practice I didn't do much tweaking during the set. I always did a little walkabout in the audience at least once a set (taking out the IEMs when they were in use) just to check how it sounded in the room when it had filled with people. Here's the thing though. I always had to do those walkabouts anyway. In other bands I'd have take my earplugs out (urgh) and then pummel my ears to hear how it sounded out front when 'out front' was a solid 20dB louder because of the loud drummer and loud backline, all of which kept creeping up during a gig because nobody could hear themselves due to not having good monitors. Then I'd have to shout at other musicians and try to indicate what I wanted them to do to their amps. Then the singer would start to get feedback because they needed to be louder... It's much easier to make a quick tweak on a tablet instead. Not that you need to, because people can have whatever they want in the IEMs so they can always hear themselves perfectly so they tend to play the same way and have their sounds set up the same way all night. There's some myth that going all in on ampless is somehow only for 'good' or 'pro' bands when actually if anything it's the opposite. The best players I know can be trusted to always play sensibly, quietly and appropriately in less than ideal conditions. The dentists playing acdc to four people however need a little more help, and giving them deafening 'just them' mixes in their ears means that you can control them better in the room. Similarly the bands playing big concert halls and large purpose built music venues have the room (both physical and volume wise) for stage amps. The bands who are struggling to fit into the corner of The Dog 'N' Duck benefit the most from being able to play quietly and not having stacks of amps. I for one am certainly not evangelical about any particular methodology, I began the quoted post "nothing wrong with either approach". Is doing it this way perfect? No. Can doing it this way result in fewer compromises than using backline? Oh yeah.

250 euros? That's a scam even if it shows up on time my friend. 😀

Nothing wrong with either approach but don't think that an all-pa setup won't work in small venues. This place held fewer than 100 people.

Vertical stacking, dispersion, comb filtering, etc. Doesn't matter that's still a rig that I'd use side by side lol. Awesome.

Does it need to be said? Does it need to be said by me? Does it need to be said now? Not really, no, no.

If you ever run your passive bass straight into a passive DI, or indeed through some true bypass pedals that are not engaged, then there is a chance that the passive di box will load the pickups on the passive bass down to a point where this can be heard. If you can hear it, then there is a chance that you do not like the tonal change. The physics is a given but whether it's audible depends on the pickups and the di, and whether it's a bad change depends on the player. In those situations an active DI alleviates the issue. If you have some pedals that are NOT true bypass, or pedals that are turned on, or anything else with a buffer like a wireless unit or an active bass then a passive DI will not experience those loading issues. Actually it will, but just so much differently that you can't hear it. In short you would be fine with either. I don't think your pedal is true bypass, and it won't matter either way if it is turned on. I did a comparison of an £8 and £150 passive DI box on here a few years back if that helps you. The superficial differences in sound were not meaningful to my ears, but worth noting that the LBP certainly feels better made etc. I still have several nice DIs including the Radial Stagebug 2 that would be my recommendation for someone to buy, but I always reach for the LBP if I want passive or my 20 year old Countryman for active. The only times I really use a separate DI now is when we're working with an external sound company and I want to protect my Quad Cortex from an unknown PA system, that's nearly always the LBP's job.

Very nice to see them back. Love the slick convertible combo thing. The heads say 4ohm minimum, but they sell a pre-done stack with the 115 and 210 (4ohm each, 2ohm total). How odd.