Radial Pro48 1-channel Active 48v Direct Box Reviews

Our bass players were always having issues with their passive pickups not generating enough signal strength when running through passive direct boxes. Input trim on their channels were maxed out at +40 dB just to get enough gain to hear them in the mix. The Pro 48 DI added 10 dB at the board to their signal so we now have some headroom.

I'm very happy with this direct box. I have an old house and I was having ground loop issues with my old DI box, when connecting to both a guitar amp and an interface, even with the ground lift switch engaged. This active box does not have that problem. It is nice and quiet.

The PRO48 DI box does a great job. It splits my electric guitar signal into two allowing me to record a Direct Input signal and also mic my amp at the same time. Both tracks are strong, noise free and clean. As another reviewer said, they do seem to be out of phase however. So that must be accounted for. Recording levels are easy to set with a standard electric guitar or bass going into a preamplifier or audio interface. It is very solidly built.

Quite!!! The best there is regardless of price. I now have 6 in the studio and yes they are QUITE !!! Be careful, for the Pro48 active units are very loud! Watch you gain when setting up.

Great little active DI Box. Very transparent, and built to last. What you put in is what you will get out. It worked great on my strat, 335, and my P-bass. I would describe its sound as transparent but bright, maybe even a bit modern Hi-Fi sounding when I compared it to my Audient interface DI input and my Sansamp Bass Driver (when used with the preamp circuit bypassed and used just as an active DI Box). But truth is the others are good too, but are considered to be a little bit more colored in the sound. To me, the Pro48 sounded the cleanest, flattest, brightest, and clearest overall when run by itself and into amp simulators and other plugins.

I bought this for catching a clean DI track while mic-ing a guitar amp and it was perfect for that. Think of it as J48 but stripped down and with some less features, even the Radial site says that. You would probably have a hard time differentiating between the two. The Pro48 does have a lot of output. I was close to clipping on all the instruments I have when I was recording into my interface at first, but the -15dB pad was great for solving that. It gives plenty of headroom to record with, and it does not add extra noise or change to the sound. All in all, I would recommend this DI Box to anyone looking to capture clean, transparent, uncolored DI tracks for guitar, bass, and other instruments in the studio or live, any day. It is well worth it. It is easy to see why I only ever saw great reviews online, and just know that you can't go wrong with it.

I've always settled for the passive DI Boxes until I purchased a used one of these at a pawn shop. The difference between passive ones, and these active boxes, are as night and day. These radial active boxes suppress unwanted line noise and boost the instrument signal with great clarity. I have since bought 3 more at full price to use with all of our band's corded instruments. The quality and durability is worth it. No more cheapie boxes, go Radial

Owned one for a few years now, that I use for our electric guitar gunning on guitar rig 5.
Our acoustic guitar has been plugged into a tonedeq preamp/di for about two years. Used it for the extra effects like reverb, chorus and compression. Was also using an analog board. We recently got a digital board and can now do all those effects and even better from the board itself. Also the tonedeq has become very noisy as in loud static even when nothing is being played. So today I decided to remove the tonedeq and try the radial pro48 di we already had on the acoustic. Just for comparison I turned off all effects on tonedeq and set eq to flat. First off with the radial is all the noise is gone and also a brighter, better tone. So the tonedeq is now in a drawer and I will be ordering a new radial pro48 to replace the one for our electric.
Also I have a Boss od1 overdrive pedal that we would occasionally use on light settings just to get some edge (I know, who uses overdrive on acoustic). Hardly used it though because could rarely get it to sound just right. However with the tonedeq gone and radial di in place it sounds absolutely fantastic with a very slight overdrive.
Awesome piece of equipment!

While this isn"t the most exciting piece of gear, I was surprised at how inspiring it is to be able to split my guitar signal post-pedals so I can record direct into my DAW and through a mic"d amp at the same time. This also worked great with my bass for direct recording and software amping. Build quality is fantastic.

A simple box with all of the in and out doors you know.
Has a ton of headroom so even the tallest guitars, basses, and keyboards will fit without hitting their head.
Even handles my modular synth levels when you add the extra padding and pillows.
Seriously full, and rich sound you expect from Radial.
Canadians are always nice to you!

better than what peter from Grupo Love secreto expected, this solved many problems during live performances. Thank you sweetwater for helping him on his choice

Very clean and lots of gain! Up till now I was only recording acc. guitar with mics but I have found that recording my Taylor's using their preamps(line in) on one track going through the pro 48 and using a condenser on the other track brings the music alive I mean really alive. Thanks Chris you always get it right! Jeff B San Diego

I have to say that I was literally blown away by this device. I was a little skeptical because I was set on the more expensive J48 (twice the price) but budget was an issue and I could do without the dual inputs. We plugged it into a MOTU 828 Mk II that has very clean (but, to me thin) pre-amps that required a lot of gain to get any beef out of a guitar. The first thing we noticed is that we could turn the gain all the way down on the MOTU as the Pro 48 pinned the meters on the first note. After dialing down the gain on the MOTU to infinity we were astounded by the difference in sound. It was clean but had a full body and presence that was noticeably more full and musical than anything we had heard. That was with a two Humbucker Strat so we tried it with three Texas Single Coils and the depth and clarity was also immediately noticeable. Of course we had to dial up a little more gain on the pre for the Single Coils but nowhere near what we usually do. We A/B'd several times with every switch and tone setting and I just don't know why I didn't get this box before. I can safely say that the sound is so natural and present it's as if you never heard each instrument's unique beauty before. You will notice a really musical and pleasurable difference and would likely wonder why you too never got one of these long ago. With the guitar volume turned all the way up and nothing going through the pickups I was able to push up the faders to 6 db with almost imperceptible noise on the Humbuckers and an incredibly low noise for Single Coils. This box has enough oomph so you can trim the gain just right for the Single Coils and get an incredible amount of 100% clean headroom. If you haven't tried the Radial Pro 48 you really haven't heard your axe. It's that good.

I am using The Radial Pro 48 for Bass Guitar and I have found that it sounds so good that I just bypass the EQ on the board. Every bassist that tries it is blown away at how cleanly it reprduces the sound of thier bass. Its built like a tank, takes phantom power and always sounds perfect.

Yes it is a good DI box indeed, cleaned up my signal made amp sims sound better and gave interface more head room. Shipping was quick service was great! You really can't go wrong with getting one of these, cleans up guitars so much and makes them come to life.

I bought 2 for my studio. I"ve used them with a Juno DS so far and they do what they do. Like most Radial products, which I have quite a few, there"s nothing sexy to blab about, they are great tools, built for pro use and built to last! No brainer.

This is a great little unit. It's got a good-feeling weight to it. It's a bit smaller than a regular sized Radial box so it fits in a guitar case a little easier. It has a transparent sound and a really hot output. Don't be afraid to use the pad!

However....

I got it to split my bass to record a clean and distorted track. I immediately noticed the two tracks were out of phase. After trying multiple cables and inputs, I contacted Radial about it. They said....

"The XLR output on the Pro48 is wired pin-3 hot and has been this way since the product's inception. Originally, there was an issue in-between the creation of the original circuit board design and the initial production of the product where this change somehow occurred.

"It was of course a mistake that we would have rather not have happened, but with so many units currently in the field we felt that making a change would be more of an issue if people started mixing the revised units and original units in their setups."

That's fine, but the manual says it's pin-2 hot in multiple places. It's also not stated anywhere on their website that I could find. The least Radial could do it state this in the manual. They also told me how to fix it if I wanted to (cross two resistors), but I don't feel like doing that right now.

I would have given it 5 stars, but I feel they could easily change the manual and website to reflect the manufacturing flaw.

As with almost all Radial's stuff, this is a great piece of gear for things like acoustic guitars. Great durability, great sound quality.

This is one of those peices of gear that you use and just kind of forget about. It does it's job very well, so well you get on with the task of making music without giving it another thought.

Changed the whole sound of Worship when the praise band (high school age) went from just using amps to going through the sound board. The congregation was able to here each instrument, no matter where they were sitting. Also, gave the band (ASK- Ask, Seek, Knock) more confidence as they could now here themselves through the monitors.

Thanks for the help.

I at first bought one of the non active ones plus this active one. I like these better for guitar. Transparent and 3 dimensional.

So I just bought two more of these.

I guess I'll use the non active one for keyboards.

Pretty hot signal so I often use the pad.