Direct In

Direct box for electric guitar that emulates a mic'd clean, pedal-friendly amp's sound, so you can gig or record without an amp while enjoying the real amp's organic sound

• Luxurious, transparent low end
• Present mids with the perfect profile (strong low-mid bark and growl, percussive and chimey high-mids, but honky mid-mids are scooped out just enough)
• Bright, detailed top end (rolled off in accordance with average speaker-cab response curves, muting harshness)

Perfect for "silent stage" venues or any time you don't want to lug your amp along.

Even if you don't plan on going amp-less, you can keep it on your pedalboard as an insurance policy in case your amp ever breaks down at a gig.

Plug your pedalboard's output into its input, connect it to the mixer board or recording interface using an XLR/microphone cable, and use the THRU jack to connect to your amp if you are using one.

Plug and play! All analog; no menus, no complicated setup; just the exact right sound every time. You can always adjust the eq on the sound board or recording interface to dial it in to the context of the mix, but it is ready to go and sounds amazing into a flat eq right out of the box.

The Skreddy Direct In features:

• (a solid-state emulation of) the full preamp section including bridged Normal and Brilliant channels
• 3-band Hiwatt* model tone stack set to my favorite levels (typical David Gilmour settings)
• power amp emulator including Presence calibration
• speaker cab emulator
• balanced XLR output that sends a strong noise-free signal to the sound board or recording interface (includes a bit of resistance drag to eliminate that typical loud "pop" when plugged in).

THRU JACK

The THRU jack is a passive, parallel line from the INSTRUMENT jack that you can send to your amp on stage or any other 1/4" instrument split you might want. The input impedance of the active circuit is very high, so it won't suck much tone when you split its signal passively. Any passive split will suck some tone, though; and this depends on the input impedance of the other (parallel) circuit. I chose to keep it passive rather than risk altering the tone being passed through with an extra buffer circuit; plus this way it will always work even if the Direct In is not powered up. Another benefit of keeping the THRU jack passive is that you can actually use either the INSTRUMENT or the THRU jack as your input, depending on the way you prefer to set up your board and cables.

VOLUME

The only adjustable control is VOLUME, which of course you'll want to set to avoid overloading the receiving device. Test for levels using the loudest and most extreme signal peaks you anticipate from your guitar and pedalboard to keep it safely out of the red. If you hear a high-frequency distortion on hard string attacks, this is probably a fast transient that might potentially not register on the dB meter; and the way to fix that is to just turn down the VOLUME slightly to give the receiving device more headroom. Typically you'll find that about noon is the best starting place. An analog mixer board will be more tolerant of a hot signal than a digital interface, but that doesn't mean you should blast the mixer board. High settings on the VOLUME knob will bring up the noise level. Experiment with the interaction between the VOLUME control and the input gain of the mixer if you have time; but again, about noon should work in most situations (maybe a little lower than noon for a digital interface just to be safe, and maybe a little higher than noon for a robust analog PA mixer).

CLEAN

This is not the sort of amp emulator you should expect to give you any amount of overdrive (that will all come from your pedals); it is bright and clean and articulate yet lush and smooth at the same time, with lots of headroom. It is designed to give you the most transparent pedal-friendly platform possible, and it does sound like a circa 1977 Hiwatt* model DR103, because I tested meticulously against it until I matched not only the tone of the amp but also of the speaker cabinet frequency response. It features a punchy attack, which approaches the actual feel of the real thing and works exceptionally well at loud gigging volumes, where the particular frequency scoops come into play to prevent excessive ear fatigue or harshness even with raw-sounding fuzz pedals.

FINISH

Finished in a textured black powdercoat that resembles the "elephant skin" tolex of the Hiwatt* amp it's modelled after.

WARM UP

Even though there are no tubes in this little box, it still requires 30 seconds to a minute of "warm up" time before it will pass signal. This is because of the extensive power-supply filtering (just like the amp), and that is how long it takes to charge up all of the filter capacitors (they are like electric sponges that need to absorb voltage before any can be squeezed out of them).

Power supply requirements:

Recommended: 18v for best results. It works fine with 9v, but that might (possibly) allow for transient distortion on hard string attacks (maybe?).
Skreddy pedals use the industry standard Boss/Roland style power supplies, which have a 5.5mm barrel (positive) and 2.1mm center (negative) coax plug, negative-ground.
Does not have a battery clip; adapter only.
It will not make use of phantom power but is not prone to damage from it either.

* The term "Hiwatt" is used for comparison and does not imply either equivalence to or endorsement of the fine people at Hiwatt, who of course own their trademarks.

Special thanks to Rod Elliot at

Elliot Sound Products
for all the helpful information, tips, and math you've provided over the years!