We had the pleasure of auditioning a Headway EDB1 Direct box/equalizer this last weekend, and have to say are pretty impressed. Longtime mando-chum, Gordon Roberts who is also good friends with innovator John Littler from Oxfordshire, England (home of Headway Music Audio) is largely responsible for bringing the acoustic engineer genius's products to this side of the pond, was kind enough to get this into our studio (and later, stage) for some live, hands-on experience.

First, you can't let this weighty gadget's small profile distract you from thinking this is anything but a world-class piece of high tech electronics with enough switches and knobs to give you full intuitive control over studio or a live sound. What we found even more impressive was how little tweaking we needed. One might expect to really go to town on the five bands of EQ, and it almost confounded us that we could just plug this in flat and the initial sound needed virtually no knob adjustments. If you were in a acoustically gnarly hall or had a particularly frequency-fussy acoustic instrument, these may come into play, as well as the tunable notch filter, but we didn't even have a chance to push it in our audition. Almost disappointing simply having all those knobs flying at 12 o'clock...

It's an especially versatile piece; there is already rabid internet chatter amongst bass players, and it's already created a stir amongst touring UK string musicians faced with the challenge of acoustic purity in an amplified environment. It comes equipped with a three-way switch allowing use for violin, bass, and instruments in between such as guitar or zouk. There are two channels making it perfect for the mandolinist who might have a stereo blend of piezo and magnetic pick-up. We would have loved to try it on a Phoenix Jazz mandolin, for example. Speaking of pick-ups, there is also a switch for adapting and optimizing pickup various impedances, too.

Powering, it can run on batteries or an AC adapter wall-wart (included). It has Phantom power but it doesn't run on Phantom power, meaning it will power a mike that needs Phantom but you can't run the box using phantom from the PA. We are told the batteries last close to 50 hours (200 hours if you spring for lithiums if you can find them), and it has a low battery light that comes on when you are down to 5 hours or so of use giving plenty of warning, (a couple of gigs worth of power) before it completely dies on you.

The unit can be attached to a mic stand, mounted flat with the rubber feet, or clipped to a belt (although it might be a tad heavy for that). For advanced electronics, a balanced XLR direct out or stereo 1/4" outs, and a ground lift switch is included to eliminate potential ground hum. We also discovered to our embarrassment, the on/off power switch when our sound man was trying to identify a hum in the system; we can attest that the unit works much cleaner in the power "on" position!

So what are the plusses and minuses? We matched this up to the LR Baggs Venue which is comparable in price, and both put out incredibly clean, authentically acoustic sound. We like the built-in tuner feature of the Venue, but the EDB1 scores as far as the phantom power, absent in the Baggs, much to our chagrin. We do like the no-slip, lower profile of the Bags for stomping, but since you aren't going to position the EDB1 on the floor as your tuner, this becomes moot. Though we only tried this on one instrument we suspect the Headway also scores in versatility, with the ability to be used by a wide range of frequencies.

The Headway EDB1 is still gaining notoriety on American soil, but we suspect more are going to be won over by this British invasion, following on the heels of other popular headway products like the violin "Band" pick-up and a line of Shire King premier amplifiers. We were also pretty blown away by the mandolin pick-up John showed us at the 2010 Winter NAMM show, in our opinion the penultimate eltite mandolin pick-up for any persnickety string musician willing to put up with a fixed bridge.

We expect to see lot of discriminating domestic touring companies start to use the EDB1 once the word gets out!

Retail $349.50 US, Street price around $299.

Website: Headway EDB-1

Posted by Ted at February 3, 2010 5:27 AM