Can I plug my bass or guitar directly into my dbx compressor?
The output of an electric guitar, bass or acoustic-electric guitar is sometimes not hot enough to drive the input stage of a line level device (such as a dbx EQ or compressor). When this is the case, switch the rear panel +4/-10 switch in (if your product has this switch), which will boost the level by approximately 12 dB. If this is still not enough boost then you should use the “PREAMP OUT” of your guitar amp (if so equipped), or the output stage of some other device that is designed to accept low-level instrument inputs (including various foot pedal effects, acoustic pickup preamps, and some rack mount audio products). Such sources can be balanced or unbalanced – this is no problem for the dbx product. Most of these types of setups will require a signal boost to drive a line level input. For example, when recording voice directly to a portable tape deck, a mic preamp placed between the mic and the compressor or EQ (which is then fed to one of the recorder’s inputs) can boost the sig
