The 10 Best Active Direct Boxes For Guitar (2023 reviews)

We consider a active direct box for guitar to be a worthy investment in the long run. We are here to help you choose the right one for your needs from all the best available products in market today.

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Our Top Picks:

Best overall: Buy: Yovus Active Direct Box For Guitar READ REVIEW

Best With feedback: Buy: Pyle Active Direct Box For Guitar READ REVIEW

Best With No AUDIBLE noise: Buy: Radial Engineering Active Direct Box For Guitar READ REVIEW

Best For removing buzz: Buy: Behringer Active Direct Box For Guitar READ REVIEW

Best For PRESENTATIONS: Buy: Hosa Active Direct Box For Guitar READ REVIEW

Best For home recording: Buy: Donner Active Direct Box For Guitar READ REVIEW

Best For price: Buy: Samson Active Direct Box For Guitar READ REVIEW

Best For Stereo sources: Buy: Mackie Active Direct Box For Guitar READ REVIEW

Best For Ipad: Buy: ART Active Direct Box For Guitar READ REVIEW

Best For microphone: Buy: SGPRO Active Direct Box For Guitar READ REVIEW

Best overall: Yovus Active Direct Box For Guitar

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If you want nothing short of the optimal box for your regular usage, this yovus active direct box for guitar is certainly a wise investment. This DI Box is a good value, well made and has great features. It is kind of like a gear box for mechanical things. It is great for keyboardists, acoustic & electric guitarists, bassists, and other instrumentalists needing to plug into the snake on stage. It has a desktop di into your computer for recording bass guitar and it does the job. It will get you a signal from your guitar into an interface to record the guitar. It’s quiet, it feels pretty tough, and the connections are solid.

It is a low cost chinese made passive di. It is perfect for hooking into a stage snake.

• Works great as a secondary di box
• Simple switched resistive attenuator to allow level correction
• One of the new comers and featured product

Best With feedback: Pyle Active Direct Box For Guitar

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The pyle active direct box for guitar is the best reliable box on the market today. The world over, the ot-2 provides superior signal isolation from local ac and rf hum, and the ultimate in impedance matching. It is great with any keyboard, guitars, or violin pickup. It allows you to easily connect keyboards, guitars & outboard signal processors. It reduces stage clutter, noise and signal loss from long instrument cable runs.

It's really just a pusher for the button which is internal, but in pushing it back on, it is now more recessed than the other one on that box. It has a wide and flat frequency response and good resistance to overload. The switch is really cheezy mechanically. It's great for any stereo or stereo pickup.

• A must tool for any working musician or audio tech
• Good, inexpensive and dual in and out
• Works great setting up two guitars, or a stereo keyboard

Best With No AUDIBLE noise: Radial Engineering Active Direct Box For Guitar

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If you often find yourself confused about appropriate and satisfactory box, radial engineering active direct box for guitar should be your first option for buying. Mic's and line-level devices (like keyboards & CD players) have low impedance. This preserves the sound quality very well when running with 300ft of cable. It lets you plug a guitar or bass into the mic input of a mixer without the tone being screwed up. The active pickups on your bass should be producing a line-level signal that can just pass through the di and be fine for shorter runs.

One thing that's great with this is being able to plug a guitar tuner into the THRU connection. It is good for longer runs from an instrument to the sound board as the 1/4" is only good for shorter runs. It is perfect for live or studio performances.

• Good investment for long term
• One of the new comers and featured product

Best For removing buzz: Behringer Active Direct Box For Guitar

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Next on the list, we've got yet another box that manages to win our hearts. It's the behringer active direct box for guitar and it's widely considered as box that has the most suitable features. It provides impedance and signal matching for the direct connection of instruments to mixers and amplifiers. It can be powered from the board or from the battery. It comes with the room empty, and opens up wide, you can hear a bit of hiss. It is great for general audio work. It is match for an electric violin or guitar when running.

It is configured to allow use of headphones, and it's providing enough current at a fairly low impedance to provide a usable stereo signal to the board. The attenuation reduction is great for removing buzz, and their stereo inputs.

• Great little unit to use with analog instruments
• Excellent direct box for recording and live performance
• Worked well for matching guitar with built in pre amp

Best For PRESENTATIONS: Hosa Active Direct Box For Guitar

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We know from years of feedback from readers, customers and amazon sellers, what most people want in a convenient and appropriate box. The hosa active direct box for guitar is exactly that - it's a simple box that hits all the right notes. It is a very well-made, heavy gauge, steel box with standard-sized holes for connectors/switches (like Neutrik), and is very nicely finished. It can be made to work for a mono instrument if coming out of the xlr jack. It even comes with a built in unbalanced XLR MALE microphone input as a bonus with it's own LINE switch.

It has the parallel 1/4" and xlr out and the line/instrument selection which is nice. It's "adequate" if connected just right and you don't need a 1/4" output. This almost makes it sound like a person could run a speaker cable from a power amp to this box. The metal case is connected to the ground on the input, so the ground lift is needed if the equipment is grounded or if you have a guitar that is not grounded.

• Solid construction, great sound quality in an affordable package
• Low noise, durable, and reasonably priced
• Absolutely clean and silent operation, no hissing or buzzing
• Inexpensive impedance match box that does the job

Best For home recording: Donner Active Direct Box For Guitar

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Compared with other box in this category, the donner active direct box for guitar has a convenient design. It is the magic of electromagnetic induction. It is augmented with a ground lift switch that lifts pin-1 on the xlr for quiet, professional results. It's easy to use and sounds great for any type of recording session. The output impedance of the di box is directly correlated to the number of windings in the output coils, but only slightly correlated to the impedance of the input coil, so there is no need for a switch or a separate coil to accept different inputs.

This direct box does NOT have noise suppression built in. The sound quality is really good. It is magical in its ability to handle extreme signal levels with a natural compression that is pleasing to the ears. It's a great passive DI for any home studio or live application.

• Good construction well built, easy to install, good job
• Well made and built pretty solidly
• Good brand reputation

Best For price: Samson Active Direct Box For Guitar

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The samson active direct box for guitar's high-end materials makes sure that it ages well with use. The MDA1 is a budget friendly direct box. It's perfect for tracking with a computer. It's straight forward and easy to use. It's a DI box with a bit of a kick. The quality of the sound does not diminish.

If you want to record a clean signal and the amplified signal at the same time, this is what you need. There is also a pad, which can be very handy. The box itself is durable and certainly roadworthy.

• Rock solid, transparent and ultra boost
• Looks to be very well made, heavy construction
• Solid weight and construction, db pad switch is a must have
• Solid construction, excellent dynamic range and very low noise

Best For Stereo sources: Mackie Active Direct Box For Guitar

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If you are currently in the market looking for a suitable box for your daily usage, mackie active direct box for guitar is the natural choice. It comes with the bus-powered mdb-usb stereo di, the days of relying on your headphone jack to get audio from a computer into analog gear are over. It can use as stereo, two inputs with separate xlr outs, or one input with two separate xlrs out. This is a line-level signal converter to an XLR output. It allows the connection of stereo sources which are then summed to mono at the output.

This is an “active” DI box, meaning that it needs a battery or phantom power from the mixer. The signal passing through from your instrument is all the power needed. This device only balances an unbalanced mic-level signal. They make it easy to get clean, low-noise audio to a mixer no matter what instrument you are using.

• Tons of flexibility, small enough to fit on a pedal board, and quiet
• Very solidly built, quiet, with many useful features
• Solid, flexible, affordable active direct box

Best For Ipad: ART Active Direct Box For Guitar

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The art active direct box for guitar is specially designed for your regular usage and has all useful features. When you connect the DI Box to a PA amplifier that provides phantom power for mics, the DI box can be powered by that phantom power. It converts various high impedance balanced and unbalanced inputs (microphone xlr connections, 1/4" line level phono plugs like a guitar, etc) to a standard balanced low impedance signal output. It has two completely independent channels.

It is running off of phantom power, and is off when the unit is inactive. The ground lift switches let you totally separate the input and output signal grounds, when appropriate, to isolate two systems, thereby reducing hum and ground-loop noise. The dual Thru jacks also are helpful.

• Well built and runs great off of the phantom power from the mixer
• Very quite and lean sounding direct box
• Works on 9v battery or phantom power

Best For microphone: SGPRO Active Direct Box For Guitar

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The sgpro active direct box for guitar's material feels more premium than its price would suggest. This di box enables the connection of an unbalanced audio signal. It is great way to get a direct line level signal into a mixer and split it. The direct box turns the high impedance signal into a low impedance signal for live performance, recording, or broadcasting. It's that easy, and the sound/signal is both strong and clean, so it's wonderful.

The active di box is 48V phantom powered, which provides an additional gain to boost the weak output of some passive, single. There's a pad on the input to prevent clipping if you are using higher gain inputs. For problematic venues, the ground lift can greatly reduce noise and it's recessed in one side so it doesn't get accidentally pressed. It is recommended for live sound and permanent installation.

• Works great, lots of useful features
• Coil pickups and extend long driving cable runs
• Microphone cable for open mics, with no added noise
• Level equipment such as keyboards and electronic instruments