A Designs REDDI Tube Direct Box

Pretty much every review of this box is dead on. It is very good, and sounds vintage. If you are only a bass player, and love the old ampeg sound, this is for you. I also love that tone, and owned this box, but sold it when I got the radial firefly. Why? Because the radial is more versatile and adds less harmonic color, allowing me to use it on guitar as well, while still noticeably improving the tone of everything I put through it. I play a lot of different styles of guitar and bass, plus upright. The REDDI just didn't get used any more after I got the Radial, partly because the Radial does more things better than the REDDI, but also, because I'm lazy and didn't feel like wrangling it just for a vintage bass tone every once in a while. The radial is pretty big physically, but the REDDI is HUGE by single channel DI standards (and has no handle), and didn't fit nicely on my desk (the cables going in the front and AC power cord out the back was honestly a pain in the a to deal with in my limited space, if the box was facing me the power cord was getting in the way of everything else on my desk), whereas the Firefly has a permanent home sitting on top of my interface, always ready to plug in when the mood strikes (the REDDI wasn't always reddi. Yikes). So- if you want a great DI for a thick, vintage bass tone and very little control over anything else, get the REDDI box, it's way more reliable than an old B15. If you're a multi instrumentalist, I recommend taking a look and if possible a listen to the Firefly, I haven't recorded a guitar or bass without it in the 2 or 3 years I've had it.

When I took over as church music director we already had two REDDI DIs. One had a hum so I asked REDDI about sending it in for service. Pricing was given to me as "It’s 100.00 bench fee plus parts (if any) and labor AND return shipping" and they recommended I find a local tech. My local tech said REDDI wouldn't play nice when he called them so he gave it back. I emailed REDDI again and they recommended I find a better tech that would be willing to follow their testing protocols. Since there isn't another tech in my area, I'd have to drive to Nashville to find another tech. So my choice is 8 hrs total in the car, gas, and a day off work or send it in w/o knowing what the bench rate is or if they'd even give me an estimate before working on it.I can buy a new DI that's 95% of the REDDI for a known price and without losing a day of work.So I now have an ~$1000 paper weight on my desk.

This sounds like the bass tone in your head. It distorts the low-end just a touch like all the old records we have listened to forever. It is based on an old Ampeg B-15 and I think it does an amazing job at that. Nice fat round bass tone in a box. I want to run other things through it because it has more gain than I thought it would but haven't done that yet...the bass tone is all there though so I'm very happy.

I recently used the RedDi at one venue. I plugged my active 5 string bass through the RedDi box. The output went directly to the sound board and to the subwoofer. When the bass was played every head turned around to see who was playing the bass.If you are lucky you sometimes will find one on ebay for 500.