Smart Research MDI Smart Guitar DI System

The Smart Guitar System is designed to solve many instrument recording and DI problems. For instance, one guitar feeding down long cables to 3 amps in a different area, without hums or change of tone.

The system has a balanced line driver for long cables, a speaker level DI input, and a unity gain DI box/splitter for two DI or amp feeds.

The system includes a TRANSMIT box and a RECEIVE box. The TRANSMIT box has a high impedance input and line driver, which will drive long cables to the RECEIVE box input, which feeds the DI/splitter giving two isolated outputs. In addition, the RECEIVE unit has a speaker simulator input, so you can plug the speaker output of an amp in for 'dirty' DI sounds with or without a speaker connected. All the DI/splitters on both boxes have break jack inputs and can be used as separate DIs if desired, as well as earth/ground lift switches to stop hum problems.

Conceived at Real World Studios, to solve the problem of a guitarist wanting to play in the control room and have amplifiers set up in a live room sometimes several hundred feet away. Prototypes were also used at Virgin/EMI Townhouse and Manor Studios. Since then producers and artists such as Tom Lord Alge, Peter Gabriel, Paul Weller, and Tears for Fears have bought systems. Four systems were used to cure problems for Peter Gabriel's live show, where two stages had to be inter-connected with 300 feet of cable carrying guitar signals from radios to effects pedals on both stages and back to amps on the main stage without degradation, (allowing each stage to be patched independently).