ULTRA-G GI100 Professional Battery/Phantom Powered DI-Box with Guitar Speaker Emulation

What do you do if you have a tube guitar amp that sounds great and you want to get that sound onto your home studio recordings? The pros use expensive microphones and a sound-proofed room in a studio, but you're probably working in a small room with no sound treatment, noisy air-conditioning, traffic sounds outside, and so on. The answer is this magic little red box. I run the speaker out from my Super Champ XD guitar amp into the Behringer DI box, then plug the guitar speaker into the DI box to provide a load for the amp. The other end of the GI-100 puts out a clean, noise-free signal into a microphone (XLR) cable that runs to my recording equipment. No expensive microphone, no worries about ambient noise or a bad-sounding room, and lovely tube-amp tone on the track (or in the P.A.). The speaker cabinet emulation in the GI-100 is a bonus, try recording both with and without it and see which you like better. There are other uses for this little box, of course. For those who don't know, electric guitars and basses need what is called a high impedance or high Z input, while most mixers and P.A.'s and recording hardware have low impedance input jacks. Plug an electric guitar or electric bass straight into a mixer for recording and you'll get a very dull, unattractive tone. Put this Behringer DI box in between, and you'll get the clean tone from your guitar on the track, ready for later re-amping or processing through your software guitar amp model. Instead of a mixer or multi-track recorder, you can also use the GI-100 to feed a P.A. system for gigs. Once again you avoid the hassles of micing your amp, and you'll get a cleaner signal into the P.A., free from ambient noise that a mic would pick up. Finally, this GI-100 can convert an unbalanced signal (such as from your electronic keyboard) to a balanced signal to feed your P.A. system. This can reduce hum and electrical interference issues. Likes: The Behringer Ultra G GI-100 does what it's supposed to do, and does it well. And it's so inexpensive that it's an absolute bargain. Dislikes: No on-off switch, so you have to pull the cables after each use (or remove the battery and power it with phantom power from the mixer). The GI-100 has no signal strength meters of any kind, so you have to guess at the signal level coming out of it. Rather than two -20 dB pads, I would have preferred one -20 dB pad and one -10 dB pad for more versatility. Summary: The Behringer Ultra G GI-100 is a very useful little tool that solves several problems in the home studio and for live performance, and does so very inexpensively. -Gnobuddy

Our lead guitar output was so low I had crank up the gain very high using a passive DI. Perhaps it was his pedals causing the losss but, and as sound guys/gals know the artists are alway right ;-) and not his rig. But adding the active DI added about 20 dB boost and was nice and clean. I got it on sale at Amazon for about 36 bucks for a Behringer brand well worth it. Recommend if you need a bit more juice. BTW, this unit includes the option for a 9VDC battery which may be handy if you do not have an open phantom power channel.

I just received this and tested it but felt the need to review to clear up the buzzing/hum issue. First off, this thing feels solidly build. Nothing cheap feeling about it. It mounts in the rear of my rack with velcro tape nicely. The cab sim sounds very good - better than the pod HD cab sims to my ears, which is what I plan to use this box in place of (the lousy pod cab sims) if my power amp dies during a gig.- so this is a backup (for now- more on that later.). Also with this box, i can use my usual pod patches that have no cab sims and just plug into this, using the same patches without having to add cabs to the patches if my power amp were to die at a gig, since i'll then need to go direct to PA - this box will provide the cab model for all my patches. Again the cab sim sounds plenty good on this box.. I plugged my Pod HD unbalanced out into this, and then the bypass on to my power amp, so i am sending this box a line level signal - when used in this manner, it's dead quiet - NO hum. Only when used as a load box, from a power amp speaker out (the manual says this is designed for it if desired) does the box produce hum. If i needed a true load box, i would not expect a $40 box to pull this off, but as a true DI box using a line level signal, it works great, no hum, and the cab sim is excellent. It is promising enough that at my next gig i'm going to try running direct for a set, and compare this setup (pod -> G100 -> PA) to my usual (Pod -> Tube power amp --> V30 loaded guitar cab miced up) for another set and see which sounds better to the sound guy. If this box sounds better, i've got some changes to make on my rig!

This thing is great for recording rock guitar. You can plug the output of a guitar amp into it and get a decent mic'd tone. Keep in mind you still need a load on your amp which could be a speaker cabinet plugged into the thru jack on this direct box or a load or speaker plugged into another output jack on your amp. This DI box does not have a load in it like the Mesa Cab Clone does but I like the sound of the conditioned output better on this DI box so I loop through this DI box and then into the Cab Clone to load my amplifier properly. You can also use this box to get a good mic'd sound from a slave amp output on a Mesa tube guitar amplifier. Most Mesa slave outputs are not conditioned and sound overly bright if you connect it to a DI box. Not so with this DI when you engage the signal conditioning, you can get a very respectable direct sound using this DI box. I'm thinking about buying another one of these, it sounds great and is priced very right. Good music to all!

I am using the Ultra-G GI100 with my Fender Twin Reverb (Siverface, '73) giving me the capability of recording my guitar through the Twin as if it were a preamp. This DI is perfect as I take the speaker out from the Twin into the input on the Ultra-G, pad it -20db, then plug the speaker cable into the Direct link out of the Ultra-G (which gives me the opportunity for some controlled feedback), then I take the balanced out from the Ultra-G into my mixing console for recording. By using the Ultra-G's virtual cabinet simulation I'm getting a very nice sound from the Fender that is clean. The sound is bright and clean with the simulation disengaged, and for some songs, its quite nice. But normally I'm using the simulation. I'm quite happy with the Ultra-G and recommend it if you want to record your tube amp without using a mic.

Built like a tank. The cab sim feature is great. I use it for my bass player and sounds awesome. The only thing I would change is adding a light indicator when receiving phantom power.

I bought this to 'push' my passive bass, uke, and mandolin. No issues. The amp sim is not worth buying it for however... it doesn't do much, but for my needs it is a great price and works for me.

I wasn't expecting much due to the brand and price, although I've never had issues with Behringer products. I find them to be a good value for the price and actually pretty reliable. Anyway, the sound of the cab emulation is very usable. It's a little dark but can be fixed easily by bumping the mids a little with EQ. Better that than ice picky and terrible. It's similar to a Marshall cab with stock G12-75 speakers--darker and slightly scooped mids. If you aren't into that just disable it and use cab emulation software. Going that route you have infinite possibilities. But it works very well for what I need it for. I use it in conjunction with a Dr. Z Air Brake to reduce the volume of the cabinet. For the price it's very good.