Got it! Thank you for clarifying.
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Actually, now that I think about this more, it is really strange to have Cabsim without DI. It makes sense for the headphone jack, but not really as much for the pedal chain.
I hadn’t really thought through it all the way. I only bought it because it has a fully parametric EQ. I don’t plan to use the cab sim at all. I like the fully sweepable mid frequency control in the tone hammer and the DG doesn’t have it. So I added my own with the Radar.
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@DaveT you have a Tone Hammer and a Darkglass preamp? If so, could you write about what you hear as the difference in sound between the two?
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The VT Bass DI arrived and is stellar. Definitely keeping it regardless of what I do with the ValveDrive.
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Will you keep the Behringer now that you have the actual SansAmp on your board? I know there is a little difference, but?
If this would actually replace the Behringer, I would consider one, but I don’t really have room for both with my DG AOU
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I’ll maybe keep the BDI-21 as a backup, but it’s off my board - pretty redundant at this point…
This sounds significantly different than the BDI-21 though. The BDI-21 is a clone of the Tech21 SansAmp BDDI and is dead on. The Tech21 VT Bass DI sounds a lot different from that.
Comparison:
I’ve already made the VT Bass DI sound kind of like an Ampeg (more B15 than SVT, though, so far) and a little like a more modern aggressive amp - not like a G-K, exactly, but I could kind of see it from where I was at. Nice preamp. Definitely a keeper.
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Yeah, I know the BDI-21 is a clone of the sansamp, and I like it.
But I thought the SVT was a SANSAMP SVT, this is what I was confused about, I thought it was just based on the sansamp and had a little extra to it.
But I keep hearing such great things about the SVT, and it if it totally different, then I may get one instead of the BDI-21.
I was not really considering it because it thought it was just a little bit extra added on to the sans amp itself.
So I will probably be keeping my eye out for one.
I was not really considering it, thinking, eh… I have the base model, I will just leave it at that, but I will seriously considering changing if it is more then that.
The BDI-21 will always be kept around as a back up 1 - it is not worth much so selling it won’t really help to offset much costs, and 2, who knows when a spare pre-amp / di will come in handy, and 3, maybe can be used to sweeten a trade deal sometime
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Yeah, just so the terms don’t keep getting jumbled:
SVT - classic Ampeg amp line, not related to these things at all
Tech21 - a company
SansAmp - a product line made by Tech21
SansAmp Bass Driver DI (BDDI) - a specific product in the SansAmp line
VT Bass DI - another specific product in the SansAmp line
and the BDI-21 is specifically a clone of the original SansAmp BDDI v1. The current BDDI v2 sounds a little different and adds a mid control that neither the original nor the BDI-21 have*.
*Unless you’re @terb, who modded his to have one 
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All that i get, my confusion was that I thought this VT Bass DI was JUST the SANSAMP by Tech 21 with added character of SVT.
maybe that is not even possible, but this was how I understood it, incorrectly.
I must have misunderstood something you said in the past that led me to think this, I thought when I showed this one time you said, yeah, that is a different version of the SansAmp, which I took to mean that it was the base of a SansAmp with some added features.
Oh well, but now I want one, I just figured I had most of it in the BDI-21 and was just missing some ad ons to it.
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How does it compare to what you remember about the Ampeg SCR-DI?
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It adds much more character than the SCR-DI, and also has nice sounding, usable overdrive, which the SCR-DI did not (IMO anyway). It’s also much smaller. However it does not have that awesome amethyst-colored LED
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Ahh I see why you were confused. Nah, SansAmp is not a specific product, it’s a product line by Tech21 with a bunch of products in it:
In fact you might want to check out their Steve Harris thing.
A lot of people also like their Para Driver DI because of the parametric mid control.
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Yes, this was the confusion, I thought that VT DI was part of the SansAmp line, this is why I thought it was one of their like “New” sans amp products. That is the key of the confusion. And I see how it would have further confused you when I kept calling it SVT instead of VT/DI, but I got it clear now, I am familiar with SansAmp line, now more than ever since I now know this is not in that line.
I will prob get one if a deal shows up.
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They’ve also got a Geddy Lee… just saying (and that’s about all I can contribute!)
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The VT Bass DI is in the SansAmp line. But a lot of those products are very, very different.
like, this thing:
is also in the SansAmp line. There’s a lot of different stuff in there, including Geddy Lee rack units.
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Ok, just another mis-read, got it now
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Another case of product marketing confusing things
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To come full circle, today after swapping pedals and PSUs around to play with the new ones, amusingly my ground loop is gone 
But I guess “swapping pedals and PSUs around” is pretty much the definition of how you track down and fix ground loops anyway, so at least I have that.
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ground loops are super common in stereo systems, and a million audiophile get one and usually wind up blaming the manufacturer of their equipment for “bad wiring” which has almost nothing to do with ground loops at all. but a million things are now made with “star grounding” which audiophiles believe is the cure for it (it isn’t). probably the leaders in the field is jensen transformers which actually published a bunch of white papers that you can get on their site that describes what causes ground loops, and how to diagnose and fix them. the funny thing is on stereo forums everytime i would point people in that direction they would promptly ignore it and go right on with talking about star grounding bla bla bla. for me, the simplest thing is to make sure all your equipment goes into the same wall outlet, this usually helps.
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Yeah, I have them all going on to the same power strip, even. Well there are two power strips, but one is plugged in to the other one.
Japan is weird in that they don’t believe in a separate gound wire here except for high voltage things. Almost all wall plugs are two prong (with fault interruptors for safety).
Don’t get me started, this is no end of frustration. I’ve actually run my own ground wiring down from my air conditioner just to get a common ground.
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