PDI-09 : Palmer changed the way I reinforce sound

I work as a sound engineer at a 800 capacity club. When a band came in a few months ago with a couple of old vox guitar amps and their engineer asked me to DI the amps with the Radial JDX Reactors they had with them, I was very sceptical.

When they played the first cord in sound check I was converted, the sound was great, but it was exciting from a tech perspective too: no bleed in the guitar channel, no need for the amp to be loud, stage space in front of amp saved, no possibility of knocking the mike, no need to filter all the sub/bass unless for the mix. All of this means a better monitor and FOH mix for everyone, with more gain before feedback. This band kept the guitars on stage quiet and had in-ear monitoring too, which makes the sound amazing... I wish some other nameless bands would understand this too.

I saw that palmer made a similar product and it was nearly half the price (and doesn't need a power supply) I thought I would try it out.

As a test I recorded my dad's Duesenberg Starplayer TV Custom plugged straight into a Musicman 110 RD fifty combo along side a 57 close and to the center of the speaker. I felt the mellow setting sounded more like the amp in the room so I set that.

There were slight character differences, such as the 57 had more 3-6KHz, because of the Palmer EQ setting, but Palmer picked up all the details well and gave a great rendering of the vintage valve amp, the slight 100-500Hz bump in the mellow setting was very pleasant. The DI also required ~20dB less gain

The attenuator set at -15dB kept the level in the green (does not act like a power soak though). The tone switch was useful for tone shaping, should be noted there is no flat, you have to pick one of the 3 EQ curves as shown here:

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I will definitely get more of these to use on the bands that I mix, it will make mixing random bands much easier, and for those odd cafe/bar jobs it will be very useful, if only it could silence the amps too... oh well you can't force that on all guitarists!

I want a Radial too so I have different sounds to offer.

4 stars for features because I would like an EQ bypass to put my own cab emulations on. Also I would like it to attenuate the amp, but I know why at this price point.