Radial Engineering J 48

I?ve been looking for a new DI for tracking bass and guitar. After some hefty research, I narrowed my options down to the following:

- BSS AR133 (EUR 105,-)
- Radial J48 EUR (235,-)
- Neve RNDI (EUR 299,-)


I plugged my Ibanez SR650 into each of these DI?s, into my Focusrite 44. I tracked some parts in both active and passive setting. My findings:

BSS AR133: It doesn?t look very slick. With its huge rubber sides, it does look indestructable. The sound is clear and transparent, with very low noise.

Radial J48: It looks good, and also definitely feels sturdy enough. The sound is noticably warmer than the BSS, more analogue sounding. It sounds great, but definitely coloured.

Neve RNDI: Looks wise, this is clearly the winner of the three. Like the BSS, it sounds very clear, even, and moderate in the lows.

The BSS and the Neve sound the most natural and clear, which is what I am looking for in a DI. I want the cleanest sound possible to feed to a pre-amp. However, the sound difference between these two is very small to my ears. So small, that it doesn?t warrant the price difference.

Hence, my choice is the BSS AR133. It sounds great, is super sturdy, and very affordable. Recommended!

If you do a lot of gigs where you're using your bass amp on stage but also going through the house/band PA, where you've never really been happy with the bass sound from the PA or in your monitor, then the Radial J48 is the box for you!

After years of cheap DI boxes or using the crappy DI out from an amp, the difference in using this box is night and day. I play mainly passive basses, so this active DI box gives the signal a fat boost that sounds great in a live mix, giving you tons of confidence that your tone is shining through.

The mark I gave on features isn't negative, it's just that this box doesn't need any and does its one job very well. It runs off 48V phantom power from the desk, so no batteries required. There is also a 15dB cut if the signal you're giving the desk is too hot. Other than that it seems rugged, hard wearing, you can run all your effects through it prior to going to the desk and it handles it all perfectly. If for any reason I had to do a gig without my amp, or the house amp at a venue was broken or really bad, I'd be very confident that I'd get a great sound just by plugging into the J48 and going straight into the PA.

In addition, it's a great tool for recording - the clarity and tone that comes through is so good that it will easily hold its own against mic-ing a bass cab, and of course works great with the two in combination.

I spent weeks researching the best DI box to buy and out of all the various reviews, demos and various top 10 lists, this DI came up trumps every time. Yes you can get cheaper DI boxes but nothing compares to the form, functionality and sound quality of this box, and when professional engineers say they're still using the same box 20 years on, you know its a worthwhile investment. Buy once; buy right; buy this box.

The DI is loud, clear and high fidelity. I'm currently using it to record guitars for our first album while having the facility to reamp them at a later date should we need to. You can send the signal through to the amp and also take a DI incase it's not exactly the sound you're after which stands to save us thousands of pounds so we're not using the studio to get the perfect take, instead we can use the studio to tweaking the tone on takes we already have. After lockdown, when we can get back in to rehearsal I'll also be using it live to sum stereo synth outputs to one xlr for live too

Many consider a DI box to get a good DI in recording or during live performance. Others want the ability reduce noise by shifting to balanced XLRs on the way into a mixer or flipping polarity to reduce feedback problems. This unit can deliver all that. But, there is more that you can do with this small box. For example, if you are recording bass or hot electric guitars (incl. passive ones) and have had troubles with clipping -- or have to set your input fader so low that it loses all its sensitivity -- consider buying this box. The low cut filter and the 15dB pad options can alone help you obtain better gain staging. What makes this stand out from others? Well, Phantom powering, versatility (thx to its lower input impedance), rigid protection, and noiseless operation, to name a few.

After using many different DI boxes over the years I can say this one is the best so far. It sounds amazing on accoustic guitar and double bass. You can't go wrong with this one if combined with a high quality pickup. When I use J48 I usually do not need to wrestle with EQ to get the right sound, just low cut and some slight details on EQ and it sounds amazing. The DI is very sensitive so you may need to use the input pad switch more often than you would on other DI boxes otherwise your sound may get distorted. I use this DI box for 2 years now for live sound applications and it never let me down. If you prefer to use this DI for bass guitar (especially with active bass pickups) you may want to consider JDI instead because it can handle much higher inputs without distortion.