LR Baggs Stadium Electric Bass DI Review

The introduction of the new LR Baggs Stadium Electric Bass DI is not your conventional DI that everyone is used to. The LR Baggs Stadium Electric Bass DI is a result of many years of research studying some of the top musicians in both the studio and live and listening to their needs.

The DI has five main controls, volume, gain, attack, growl, and comp eq. The volume controls the overall output of the DI, and gain controls the bass input. Right next to the volume control is a fat switch complete with three settings to get the low-end tone you are looking for. There is a VU meter right next to the gain control that monitors the amount of gain input. The VU meter also doubles as a battery check light. That’s one more item that makes this an unconventional DI, or pedal any for that matter. A fresh battery will last pretty close to a hundred hours and I have never seen and DI or pedal go for that period of time on one battery.

Next up is the attack control. The attack, for me, cleaned up the signal. One thing that most bassists despise is fret noise, especially when recording. Attack helps eliminate a lot of this. It really seemed to take away a lot of the bright tone that seems to contribute to fret noise and it did clean up some of the darker tone that I like to use live, making it less muddy. The growl is just what you would expect it to be, yet, still in an unconventional sense. Growl really focuses on saturating the low end. If you want to get all-out overdrive with the LR Baggs Stadium Electric Bass DI, there is a drive button that can be engaged to achieve just that. One of the most impressive controls for me was the comp eq. The comp eq has three bands of compression and still lets you get the dynamics that most compressor seem to kill. The three bands of compression are low, mid, and high. As with most compressors, the harder you play, the more compression you get, however, the Stadium Electric Bass DI comp eq gives you the smoothness of a compressor while still being able to express yourself.

The connections on the LR Baggs DI are 1/4” input and output, and XLR out. It is a great DI all by itself; however, it also works great with other DI’s. Testing by itself and with other DI’s really seemed to add a needed warmth to the other DI’s that didn’t seem present before. My preferred placement with other DI’s was to place the LR Baggs DI before any of my other DI’s. What really stands out with this is that it doesn’t have any of the conventional controls that the other DI’s have, and that is a plus, especially if you are in the market for something different. It works great both live and in the studio and the years of research have paid off.

Check out the LR Baggs Stadium Electric Bass DI at a music retailer near you or online at lrbaggs.com