A great preamp/DI has had a price drop (Studiospares 458190)

[jezzaboy]

Well it arrived today and first impression is it`s freekin huge!

 

Second impression is it`s fecked! The treble knob has detached itself so I have e mailed them to see what they want to do.

 

[Matt P]

I'm not sure how much use this is going to be for people as these Di boxes are no longer listed on studiospares website (and no sign of an alternative either)

 

I bought @jezzaboy's Di box (as seen above) for the cost of postage alone and i thought i'd show the internals in case anyone was interested.

 

the internals are actually pretty good, it's all through hole components, the few chips used are all Texas instruments branded and it looks like replacing the broken pot should be a 10 minute job (a replacement pot is about £1.50) to me it looks like it was designed to be easy to repair.

 

There might be space on the rear panel to add in another power jack with centre negative polarity, it would need to be isolated but that's easy enough to do. i'll probably swap out the knobs as well as the replacement pot is solid shaft so the current knobs won't fit.

 

I would have been nice if this was a smaller unit but that would make it considerably harder to repair if anything went wrong.

 

matt

[Matt P]

Well it seems that I didn't manage to get exactly the same pot, these have shorter legs than the ones fitted, nothing a pair of cutters, some flux and some solder can't fix though. 

 

I'm really liking the new knobs as well, different colours for input, tone and output. 

[JonesTheCat]

Seems studiospares aren't selling these anymore which is irritating as I'd planned to pick one up. Does anyone know of anything of a comparable price? Everything similar seems to be vastly more expensive. 

[Jack]

38 minutes ago, JonesTheCat said:

Seems studiospares aren't selling these anymore which is irritating as I'd planned to pick one up. Does anyone know of anything of a comparable price? Everything similar seems to be vastly more expensive. 

Unfortunately the reason that we're on page 3 is because it's kind of an outlier. 

 

There's the Behringer BDI21 but that's very different sounding, bass focused, and plasticy build quality. You can also sometimes find the Eden or Hartke pedals for about £50 used. 

[lemmywinks]

8 hours ago, JonesTheCat said:

Seems studiospares aren't selling these anymore which is irritating as I'd planned to pick one up. Does anyone know of anything of a comparable price? Everything similar seems to be vastly more expensive. 

 

Harley Benton do a pretty cheap bass focused preamp/DI, loads of great features and only £72 but I think I remember someone on here saying it was too noisy:

https://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_custom_line_bass_di_expander.htm

 

If you need a decent preamp/DI then it's probably best to just grab a used Nux or Fishman, something like that. They're worth their weight in gold, there's a NUX in the Marketplace at the moment:

 

[jezzaboy]

On 01/01/2022 at 12:43, JonesTheCat said:

Seems studiospares aren't selling these anymore which is irritating as I'd planned to pick one up. Does anyone know of anything of a comparable price? Everything similar seems to be vastly more expensive. 

You have a pm.

[stewblack]

Was thinking of selling mine, but they're so cheap it wouldn't raise enough money to buy anything else, and reading this thread, seeing they're discontinued, I think I'll hang on to it.

You never know when it might be handy.

[Jack]

It lives!