In this video I’m demoing and reviewing the LR Baggs Venue DI, which I’d honestly call an industry standard for acoustic utility and tone sculpting. A good DI just makes everything sound more natural and “more right”—it takes that unbalanced, high-impedance pickup signal and translates it into something a mixer can read cleanly. On the Venue you’ve got XLR out, 1/4" out, a built-in tuner, gain, phase, a boost, and a really usable EQ section that’s designed for real-world acoustic problems. The big takeaway for me is how powerful the mid controls and notch filter are. With acoustic pickups there are usually one, two, sometimes three frequencies that are absolutely killing your tone, and this pedal lets you “seek and destroy” them. I frequently like pulling out around 1k because that’s where things can get metallic and not sound like your guitar, then I’ll sometimes add a little 500Hz back in so it doesn’t feel hollow. And if you’ve ever had that boomy low frequency that makes you want to stop strumming because you’re overpowering the PA, the notch filter is how you find it (I’ve often landed around 180Hz, but it depends). For the demo I recorded direct via the XLR out and monitored through a Bose PA using the 1/4" out. You’ll hear it with a Martin D-15M loaded with an LR Baggs Anthem, and a Martin 000-15 with an LR Baggs M80 active soundhole pickup, plus I’m running an Align Reverb in the Venue’s effects loop so I’m EQ’ing the guitar—not the reverb.