This is a strange one!
I had a different bassist for a band last night. I plugged his DI out into the same socket I normally use for bass with this band and couldn’t get a decent level.
Normally it has a pad on as the output from the regular guy’s DI (Mark bass amp) is really hot. The new guy was going through a Radial JDI so I turned off the pad and put in about 30dB of gain in, which is normally about right for that DI. The PFL signal was really low so I increased the gain. At 45dB I was getting a better signal on the meters but still low. As I increased the gain I got no more level but it did start to distort.
I figured there might be a problem with the channel/socket so I changed both (but still on the DX) and it was perfect at +30dB. I then double patched that socket back to the original channel and it was fine, so I switched the original channel back to the original socket, plugged the bass back in there and it was perfect.
I wonder if there is a bug with the pad where it didn’t actually disengage and trying to apply the additional gain then caused distortion without level increase – fixed by patching the channel to different socket and then back again?