RE: Guitar rig advice wanted

[Mark@asisoftware.com (Mark Kata)]

I have two opposing opinions about DI'ing an electric guitar into a PA 
board:

1.  You may want to try one of those sealed speaker enclosures that 
contains 1 or 2 speakers and a microphone for connecting to the board.  
Hook it up to your amp and crank it as loud as you want.  Then connect the 
mic to your PA board.  Little or no sound comes out of the enclosure.

2.  The guitar to amp configuration has its advantages, disadvantages and 
idiosyncrasies.  So does the guitar to processor to PA board 
configuration.  Perhaps there are interesting sonic qualities in this 
configuration that are just as beautiful, but different than the 
traditional guitar to amp configuration.  They may be worth exploring.

The first time I played a SansAmp PSA-1 through a mixer, power amp and 
studio reference monitors, I thought it sounded horrible.  Then the 
salesman popped in and added a touch of digital reverb.  It still sounded 
horrible.

Then several months later, a little voice in the back of my head kept 
saying, "All those knobs and different types of outputs.  There must be 
something to this thing."  So I tried it with a Marshall Valvestate 8004 
power amp and two speakers (an EV12L and a Celestion).  It sounded 
fantastic.

Then I patched a JamMan into its effects loop and DI'ed the PSA-1 into a 
multitrack tape deck.  Again, it sounded fantastic.

The moral:  Look for equipment that compliments each other.

Mark Kata
Mark@asisoftware.com