SansAmp Character VT Bass DI : Absolutely essential.

I was weighing up whether to buy this or just the standard BDDI and I went for this given the idea of "tube emulation"..

.. and what a good call it was. You'll never get a 100% perfect recreation of a full Ampeg stack as that's literally impossible in a little box but this is unbelievably close. I play mainly grunge/stoner rock stuff and this has all those Nick Oliveri-esque tones on tap, whenever you need them. I too bought this because I was sick of lumbering bass cabs and heads around the place for some sound engineer guy to pop a DI box on top of my amp and completely bypass my whole rig. Like, seriously? Anyway, I bought this because of the DI capability and it works perfectly. It even has a -20b button on the XLR out for the soundboard if you play a little bit loud and their systems can't cope with it.

Overall it's perfect, it comes with a little booklet that has loads of presets, my favourite being the Chris Squier "Roundabout" type preset, and the speaker emulation is incredible for recording out of the box. 10/10, wouldn't leave the house without it.