Many musicians and engineers take the lowly direct box for granted and settle for the cheapest one they can find. That can work okay on some instruments, but if you really need some real low end, you have to spring for something more expensive.

For years now Radial Engineering has been the king of the direct box hill with their fabulous JDI, and now they have something for the people who want the warmth of a tube with their new Firefly tube direct box.

The Firefly differs from other direct boxes (tube or passive) in that it has two inputs, each with it’s own gain control. These can be selected from a footswitch so you can have two separate setups for a guitar and bass, for example. There’s also a variable high pass filter, and unique parameter called Drag that’s basically a load corrector so the “feel” of the DI is more like a tube amplifier.

The Radial Firefly retails for $599.