Brick

The Brick DI box and instrument preamp is designed for both stage and studio. Perhaps the most fully featured piece of studio or stage gear, The Brick does a quite a lot in a single package. The preamp allows for isolated balanced low impedance output for all instruments and provides either unity gain or use the variable output level control for up to 55dB of all tube gain. The Brick preamp offers perfect tube tone and isolation for vintage keyboards, electric bass and acoustic-electric guitars with internal transducer type pickups. Onboard phantom power allows the use of high quality condenser mics on stage.

The Brick preamp will noticeably improve the tone of all common stage mics, either dynamic, condenser or wireless. The Brick's 3 internal tubes and massive custom output transformer can drive a signal 100s of feet with no loss and improve any performance. Now you can get studio grade tone and performance on any stage. You will find this especially helpful for those instrument wireless systems that can sound thin. The Brick preamp shrugs off that thin wireless tone and replaces it with Fat.

In the studio.

With phantom power and true transformer output, plus an available gain of +55db, The Brick will handle dynamic mics, condenser mics, and ribbon mics.

On the stage

With onboard phantom power, you can now use higher grade large diaphragm mics on stage. Forget about those long cable runs back to the "house system" or house console, The Brick can run 1000 feet and more without the losses of simple direct boxes.

Some uses for the Brick


•A tube mic pre for the stage - with onboard phantom power, you can now use higher grade large diaphragm mics on stage.
•A tube line driver
•A tube instrument preamp for the studio - based on Groove Tubes' exclusive ViPRE technology
•A tube instrument preamp for the stage

Some other uses for The Brick:

1. Direct to console - Use acoustic-electric guitar - input directly to a recording console for warmth and proper matching.

2. Live to sound reinforcement console - In a live performance, long unbalanced cable runs can compromise your tone. When using with keyboards or rack systems, you can now set your equipment levels to the settings for best signal to noise ratio. Bring up or down the overall signal for those long cable runs with an improvement in sound.

3. A must for guitar players with pedal boards - You have a large investment in a pedal board. These are versatile devices out on stage with the player. Unfortunately, the long cable run (over 25' in many cases) back to your amp, does little for sound quality. Let "The Brick" handle the task of proper balancing and drive of the signal with ease. Once again, set the effects for the proper level for the best sound, rather than using the last effect in the chain to handle this task with its own internal little op-amp that is not the best designed component for this task.

4. POD 2.0 and POD XT users - whether direct recording or in live performances, placing The Brick between the POD and the amp, recorder, console, or house system will give a warmth to your signal and tube feel, sound, and playing dynamics. Proper output level can now be set on the POD output control so signal to noise ratio is optimized, rather than trying to have the POD generate the desired gain. In the high gain POD models, this can really help the background noise to the amp, console, or recorder for a cleaner and quieter signal.

5. Make your guitar, bass, keyboard, or less expensive dynamic microphone sound better - the transformer balanced tube circuitry are the keys for proper matching to your instrument.

Some other Brick Tricks:

The Brick makes a great preamp for use with amps that have effects loops. For example, amplifiers such as a Marshall or Mesa have their own signature tone, which comes from their preamp design. For a very clean output, run your guitar into The Brick and take the XLR Brick output with an XLR to 1/4" cable. Then, run the 1/4" end of the cable to the amp's effects return. You have now bypassed the amplifier's preamp. This is great for clean sounds, and many musicians love this for acoustic guitar work. This effectively makes amps more versatile by allowing them to serve double duty with your choice of colored or clean tone.

Use The Brick in live applications with the guitar plugged into the 1/4" input, and then run a cable from the second 1/4" input to your amp. There will be no processing on your signal to the amp. Then take the XLR output to the house system. This allows a mix of your amps output and also allows you to control what level goes to the house system from the stage.