Radial Engineering StageBug SB-6 Isolator DI

This thing is a lifesaver, I live in an older house that has an interesting wiring job. I've got a nice little basement studio that like most home studios, does not have ideal wiring, acoustic treatment, etc. I bought this for my cheap (but fun!) Yamaha electric bass. The bass has is a P&J setup, so a split single-coil "P" pickup in the neck and a standard single-coil "J" pickup on the bridge. Being a cheaper bass, the pickup pots and control cavities are not shielded, so are prone to picking up RFI noise from the fluorescent lights. I was getting so much noise that it was no longer enjoyable to play my bass, let alone record it.After a lot of experimentation with di boxes, ground lifts, and other various bits of gear that I have lying around to address the noise issue, I discovered and resolved some of the ground loops (though the pictures look like cable salad, it is a fairly straightforward signal chain, at least from the bass to the mixer) using headphones directly plugged into the mixer to ensure the noise was coming from the bass signal chain as opposed to the mixer or other factors. Once I eliminated other sources of noise and resolved the ground loops, I still had terrible RFI from the bass. The pedals added no noise, the cables functioned, etc. I didn't want to pull out the bass pickups and shield it, and in various live situations it hasn't had noise issues, so I needed something quick, easy, and relatively affordable to reduce the noise.Enter the StageBug. A dead-simple passive isolated transformer in a convenient package. Though the manual recommended adding the StageBug to the end of the signal chain, since I knew the main source of the noise was the bass itself, not the pedals, I opted to use it at the beginning to clean up the signal from the source. my signal chain now looks like this (from left to right)Bass-StageBug-Tuner-Compresser-Preamp/di box-MixerPut it in at the beginning, and the noise was dramatically reduced! It didn’t eliminate all of it, but it made the signal so much cleaner that it feels like I have my bass back! It did reduce the overall output level just a little (easily compensated for later in the chain), but it did not color my signal in any discernable way, no dreaded "tone suck".As always with odd wiring scenarios your mileage may vary, but it worked great for me! A wonderful tool that is dead simple, small, passive, and a great problem solver to keep in a gig bag.

Did not fix the signal chain issues but was trying to use it for something it wasn't designed to do. Item was shipped fast and arrived 6 days ahead of schedule. In perfect condition , I could not be happier with this purchase ! Thank you very much !

I run a guitar rack rig using 4CM, a pedal loop switcher and an amp switcher with FX loops for each amp.Given the situation I had a ground loop noise in my rig, an ugly noise much different from the noise you get from single coil pickups or a 50-100 watt amp with high gains natural noise floor.I tried making ground lifted cables, humbuster cables, and while some helped slightly reduce the noise it didn't solve what I was after. I spent the $150 on this product which I wasn't thrilled about since nothing else was working, I was worried this may not work. Thankfully it did work and does not appear to impact my tone in any way I can hear. And I am loving that ground loop noise being gone and my rig sounding as intended.For my setup it took awhile to figure out where it needed to go in the signal chain to work it's best.You can't throw it anywhere in line, isolate the ground and call it a day. You need to figure out which specific cable in the path getting ground isolated will best take care of the ground loop noise. I recommend having some extra good length cables on hand if you have a setup like mine so you can easily patch it in and out of different spots. Otherwise if you made custom cables perfectly to length for all your gear it can be quite a pain trying to patch this in and out of the signal chain to see where it will do it's thing.It's important to know what noise you're dealing with to know if this product will work. I think some people try this product, say it doesn't work but are needing something else. This doesn't get rid of an amps natural base line noise, or magically make your guitar pickups quiet, or magically shield your instrument. It solves other noise issues like ground loops via ground isolation. It does other things too, but that's the focus of my review and what I can speak on this product doing successfully for me.I took off 1 star because the product comes with a rubber pad fixed to it already on the bottom. While I like the option, it should be an option in the box to attach yourself.Since it's already attached. If I wanted to velcro this into a 1U space, I'll need to remove the rubber pad and then it might barely fit. But with the pad + velcro on opposite side it won't fit in a 1U.

I paid tones of money and they don’t have proper tech support . Don’t buy this

Will buy again work like it supposed to.

I got this to use between my last stereo guitar pedal and my two amplifiers. It is just what the doctor ordered. Gets rid of the annoying ground hum and keeps everything sounding great. It doesn't require power, and the box is tiny but very solid, so you can stash it just about anywhere.

If you use the 4 cable method to connect your effects you need this, drop it in the effects loop between the amp and your effects, ground loop hum will be gone. Also handy to have around the studio and stage. No noticeable impact on tone quality.

Instantly removed my pedalboard hum problem with integrating my Roland GR-55. Well worth it.