direct input was first used by the beatles on 1 february 1967 to record mccartney's bass on "sgt. pepper's lonely hearts club band". with direct input the guitar pick-up is connected to the recording console via an impedance matching di box. ken townsend claimed this as the first use anywhere in the world, although joe meek, an independent producer from london, is known to have done it earlier (early 1960s) and in america, motown's engineers had been using direct input since the early 1960s for guitars and bass guitars, primarily due to restrictions of space in their small 'snakepit' recording studio.