Useful Arts BF-1 Tube Instrument Preamp/DI

Excellent condition and fully functional Useful Arts BF-1. Actual unit shown on the top left of mt rack. The BF-1 is the only item included in this sale.

From the manufacturer:

The BF-1 is an all-purpose interface for any instrument with a pickup that enhances clarity, detail, audibility and dynamics whether used between the instrument and amp, the instrument and a PA or recording device or all of these at the same time.  Whatever you plug into it just sounds better.  This isn’t because the BF-1 changes the sound of the instrument – it’s because it preserves it in a way that the input stage of an amplifier or a console simply can’t.  Once you feed your amp, console or converters a strong representation of what’s actually coming out of your instrument, you’ll be amazed at how good it really sounds.  (It’s been sounding this good all along, but now you can finally hear it!)

​So let’s get nerdy.  The BF-1 was built for musicians who care about the sound of their instruments.  It’s meant to be used by musicians with a minimum of fuss in any environment.  Just plug the instrument in, plug the BF-1 into the amp, and be amazed.

We usually think of DIs as utility boxes designed to get an XLR-compatible signal out an instrument.  Necessary, perhaps — but boring.  The last thing anyone wants to spend money on.  So what if we took the interface out of the realm of the boring and made it an indispensable part of the original sound?  The BF-1 does just that.

​The signal generated by magnetic pickups is beautiful, nuanced, detailed and incredibly weak.  That’s even more true of piezoelectric pickups.  It’s not just a question of the level  of the signal (a voltage concept), it’s a question of the power of the signal (a current concept).  All amplifiers make the signal do actual work to drive the input stage.  The problem is that the most delicate parts of the signal aren’t capable of doing that work, and are forever lost.  It’s a form of Heisenberg’s “observer principle” – when we observe a phenomenon, we necessarily alter it.  The goal in getting the best sound out of an instrument is to observe the sound while avoiding unintentional alteration of it.