Re-amping is an old technique that allows the producer to keep his or her options open in regard to electric guitar or bass sounds until the last minute. The idea is that you record the dry feed from the guitar, even though the player may be monitoring the sound of an amp. Then, when you come to mix, you feed this dry signal back through the amp of your choice, stick a mic in front of it and add the miked signal back into your mix.

It sounds simple, so why would you need to buy hardware to achieve it? Well, if you already have a suitable high-impedance DI box, you can have a stab at it without using more hardware, but the results may be less than optimal for a number of reasons — not least that the output of an audio interface or soundcard doesn't 'look' the same as the output from a guitar pickup as far as a guitar amp is concerned. It's all a matter of signal levels and source impedance.

Radial take their usual thorough approach by using two pieces of hardware to solve the problem — a high-quality DI box for recording and a specially developed amp driver for feeding the recording back into the amplifier. In fact, there are several Radial DI boxes suitable for recording, specifically the JDI, J48 (reviewed in SOS October 2007) and JDV models, as all that is needed is a high-impedance input, a link through to the amp being used for monitoring and a balanced line-level output for connecting to the recording system.

Radial's X-Amp amp driver looks after the other half of the process and is available on its own (£147 including VAT) or as part of a re-amping kit (£294), which also includes a J48 (£147) and a carry-case. Built with a similar form factor to the DI boxes, the X-Amp runs from an included power adaptor. The power inlet and balanced XLR input are on the rear panel, along with a ground-lift...