Recording acoustic instruments in the home studio is hard. Most can’t afford to have an acoustically isolated and controlled room at home. Room noise becomes a real problem and noise gates are not a silver bullet.

My current approach is to use a Godin Nylon which has a piezo pickup. The Godin Nylon has an acoustic chamber but its not the full size body that standard classical guitars are spec-ed to. The Godin Nylon actually sounds great when amplified and it sounds reasoanble when recorded directly i.e. given some good sound engineering. However, its not quite there to my ears. So part of my recording strategy is to employ the services of a little red magic box called the Reddi.

The Reddi is a tube based direct box that goes a long ways to provide that more personal , real warmth that one can get from a tube mic but of course without the room noise.

A blurb from their site:

A bold statement, yes, but one of many just like it said of The A-Design’s Audio REDDI all-tube DI by an ever increasing number of professional bassists and recording professionals (see below). Designed and built by former career studio bassists, the REDDI has been hailed by engineer and bassist alike as the best-sounding DI around. Inspired by the glorious sound of the Ampeg B-15 tube bass amp, its 6N1-P tube-driven amplifier feeds signal directly into a hefty custom output transformer, which is key to providing a harmonically rich tone. Its wide-bandwidth design from 20Hz to 60kHz reduces in-band phase shift, which results in greater detail and realism in the audible spectrum. Another big plus of its wide-bandwidth design is the prevention of LF phase shifts by maintaining a linear response extending below the audible bass range, which is the secret to achieving a big, full sound.

Read more here.