They say there are no “magic bullets” in sound – there are specific tools for specific purposes. And until now, they've been right. 
 
​The Useful Arts 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. 
 
​The BF-1 was built for musicians who care about the sound of their instruments. It’s a no fuss piece of equipment perfect for any environment. Just plug your instrument in, plug the BF-1 into the amp, and be amazed.
 
DIs can sometimes be thought of as somewhat boring utility boxes designed to get an XLR-compatible signal out an instrument. Necessary, perhaps — but still sometimes 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 goal in getting the best sound out of an instrument is to observe the sound while avoiding unintentional alteration of it. And that boils down to input impedance.  The higher the input impedance, the less work the signal has to do before it is safely amplified. Guitar and bass amps have an input impedance of several hundred thousand ohms. Instruments need to sound bigger, fuller and more detailed.
This is why the traditional approach for recording or live gigs has been to run the instrument into a DI for the console and back out to the amp. What if instead of a few hundred thousand ohms there was an interface with 20 million ohms input impedance? Well, now there is.
 
There’s no reason to plug an instrument into anything else.  The BF-1 can simultaneously drive an amp through its 1/4 ing output jack and a pro audio device via XLR.  Everything sounds better.
 
It turns out that tubes inherently capable of creating ridiculously high input impedances. The BF-1 uses its input tube the same way a tube microphone does – converting impedances without the high gain.
 
The BF-1 also offers a Class A tube preamp, a two-band EQ and dual outputs that can be used simultaneously for your amp and console.  But it doesn't stop there. Bypass the EQ, and you have a choice of low gain (much like a traditional DI) or high gain, which gives you the ability to go straight to the converters for pure high-fidelity line level recording with no other amplification needed.  
 
For bass players, the BF-1 can actually eliminate the need for an amp altogether.  Feed a console with the tubes in the BF-1 and it will sound better than any bass amp output you’ve ever heard.