Essential Gear for a Reliable Live Stage Setup
One thing that often comes up in conversation with Radial Engineering users is how they leverage our products live to ensure they can cope with any situation, from minor speed bumps to potentially show-stopping meltdowns.
NAMM 2025 was no different and offered us a chance to speak with some seriously high-level players and engineers who dropped by our booth to discuss their experiences with Radial products and see what’s new. In every case, they cited Radial solutions as critical to having a rock-solid live rig.
That’s something Radial has always been passionate about. And it’s the through line in our ongoing efforts to expand and improve the technology we offer, so every musician’s sound comes across exactly as intended. No matter what gear the venue has – and regardless of what Murphy and his much-cursed law has in store for them at any given time.
Rock-solid live setups start with rock-solid sound – Choosing the right DI
You’ve crafted your signature tone and sounds as carefully as you’ve written and recorded your music and we’ve created a line of DIs to ensure whatever instrument you play is reproduced with clarity and precision.
For “ET’ Ettore Dedivitiis (FOH engineer and production manager for Jason Mraz), ensuring that’s the case on stage and in the studio means having several options to hand. But which Radial DI is best for you?
That depends…
JDI
Considered by many to be the world’s finest direct box, the JDI is a simple, passive, plug-and-play one-channel DI box featuring a premium Jensen transformer. Offering ruler flat frequency response, zero phase shift, and excellent low-end response, like all Radial DIs, our JDI is designed to provide accurate reproduction of any source – in a one-size-fits-all DI that can take all the signal level you can throw at it.
While designed to be completely transparent, players who push the JDI hard note an added benefit in some cases – rather than hard clipping, the saturation of the transformer can round off the edges of your sound, resulting in a warmer signal.
J48
Then there’s the Radial J48 – a top-of-the-line active DI ideal for instruments with passive pickups and easily handles extreme transients without distortion to deliver the natural sound of your instrument without compromise. The J48 offers all the sonic benefits of the JDI and more headroom than most active DIs on the market, making it extremely difficult to overload. The J48’s Thru output can also serve as a second input, allowing you to sum stereo sources down to mono when console real estate is limited.
PZ-DI
For acoustic players, our active PZ-DI was designed specifically with you in mind – a specialized active direct box with a variable load selector switch that allows you to set the input impedance of the direct box to optimize performance – a 1 meg ohm position (to warm up the tone of magnetic pickups and provide the same feel and tone you’d get when connected directly to an amp), a 220k ohm setting that delivers the impedance most common on active DIs, and an ultra-high 10 meg ohm impedance specifically designed for piezo transducers to compensate for any harshness resulting the connection of a piezo to a lower impedance input.
Beyond ensuring your instrument sounds entirely natural, the PZ-DI offers additional functionality: a fully variable low-cut filter you can easily adjust to match your instrument’s frequency response, eliminate unwanted resonance, and prevent feedback, and a high-cut filter that can soften high-end harshness and ensure a smooth tone – helpful for acoustic guitarists who use battery-powered pickups.
Whatever you choose, the long-term reliability and sound quality of Radial DIs have made them an industry-wide go-to for live performance.
Integrating Wireless Signals with the Right Gear
Maintaining signal integrity when interfacing with wireless systems is also crucial. For FOH engineer Joel Bird, that meant ‘re-purposing’ Radial’s JCR and ProRMP Reampers exclusively for guitars on Canadian Country artist Brett Kissel’s acoustic and electric shows.
Reampers provide endless possibilities in a studio setting. But they also maintain the consistency of your sound and signal integrity for wireless conversion and across long cable runs.
Adding a Reamper on stage may not be the first use case you consider. But the benefits are substantial, particularly when connecting to wireless gear with quarter-inch outs, which, typically, are less robust (physically) and more likely to negatively impact sound quality/signal integrity than an XLR.
Passive and plug and play – Radial Reampers like the JCR and ProRMP solve those issues handily, ensuring high-quality sound and eliminating interference and signal loss over long cable runs.
Some musicians have commented that using the ProRMP – instead of connecting directly between wireless systems and a pedalboard – is like ‘lifting a blanket off’ owing to better high-frequency reproduction. Others praise the JCR for its sound and the locking XLR input that keeps your plug-and-play solution firmly plugged in, regardless of any mayhem Murphy might have in store during changeovers and shows.
Which Reamper is best for you? Find out more here.
Reliable Redundancy and Seamless Switching
Arguably, there are only two hard, fast rules for live performance – ‘the show must go on’ and ‘never let them see you sweat.’
Gear failure can be a nightmare. It literally haunts many musicians in their sleep. But if you have a plan and the tools to implement it quickly and fluidly, chances are you’ll sleep better and perform with peace of mind.
That’s where Radial’s SW8 Auto-Switcher comes into play, allowing you to switch between multi-channel primary and backup systems (up to 8 channels in total) instantly, automatically, or manually.
If a test tone signal from your A rig drops below a certain threshold, even momentarily, the SW8’s adjustable gate detects it and switches to your B rig. If manual switching/control better suits your workflow, the SW8’s front panel A/B, Mute, and Standby buttons are there for you. For hands-free operation, our JR-2 passive Remote control footswitch also offers dedicated Mute and A/B latching switches for real-time control.
For larger systems, just link multiple SW8s (and add additional JR-2s if necessary), as Billy Joel and Rainbow keyboardist David Rosenthal explained at NAMM.
Playing with track? Looking for a simple solution for smaller setups? That’s where Radial’s Backtrack Stereo Backing Track Switcher comes in.
The Backtrack offers manual switching between two stereo sources via the front panel or a JR-2. It provides direct analogue connections for playback devices of any kind, including laptops, tablets, and smartphones. It’s also an ideal solution for any player running a main and backup rig on stage. For keyboards, pedalboards, and amp simulators, the Backtrack is a simple, seamless, and reliable solution that accepts both mic- and line-level sources. It also features a built-in headphone jack for discrete pre- or mid-show troubleshooting. So, if a problem does arise, you can address it without the audience hearing a thing.
Like our DIs, Radial switchers are equipped with high-quality transformers to break up ground loops and provide optimal signal integrity and peace of mind. So you can worry less about how your gear is performing and entirely on your own performance.
Pro tip: if you’re running two redundant laptop-based systems, check out the Radial SW8-USB. With all the switching power and functionality of the SW8, the SW8-USB provides two USB inputs, eliminating the need for additional audio interfaces and proprietary drivers – freeing up real estate in your rack. Keyboardists and multi-instrumentalists: if you’re wrangling multi-source setups on stage (or in the studio), you may want to corral them with our KL-8.
Whatever sound source(s) you can’t afford to lose on stage, Radial has your back.
Trusted by the Pros and True To Your Music
Every musician has a different live setup and needs. Radial Engineering is committed to creating solutions that ensure your true tone comes across whatever you play, wherever and whenever you perform.
Visit RadialEngineering.com for more information on how these and our many other products enable you to stay True To Your Music with tailor-made solutions – for your setup – for your show – and your sound.
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