"a non-expert asking what may appear a stupid question"

and a reply

"need to check the 'specs' to confirm if it'd work well enough with mic levels and if it'd be too noisy without balanced DI.."

You see, to the ignorant (and I'm being factual, not insulting) all is easy, to the experienced, there are concepts that the 'non-expert' may never have heard of, let alone understand, or better, understand the importance and necessity of.

To the experienced, there is no need to insult those of less experience, and it is also wrong to assume that all the experienced WANTS to do is spray insults around, but having just finished a short session giving a first experience of a Piano Accordion to a couple of 11-12 year olds, I have just been over all this ground again... :-)

One sister has a fair degree of training and experience of a few years with keyboard (the piano) and 'music theory' and will sit down of her own free will at the family's old battered and partly out of tune piano and play for ages by herself, her sister has more experience on other non-keyboard instruments, and only a little keyboard experience with less 'music theory'.

'Music theory' - scales and chords - on which technical basis the P/A is built, especially the bass side, the more you know about such things, the easier the instrument is to play.

Guess which sister took to it like a 'duck to water', actually playing tunes by ear/from memory and finding some of the bass chords - she had never heard of "I IV V" before, but picked it up quickly - and which sister struggled? :-)

I think perhaps the "VPL-1 Artec Volume Pedal" is the concept that Herge wanted, but as the 'more experienced/experts' mentioned, whether it will actually 'do the job' because of the physical tecnhicalites, plug types, signal levels, noise levels, etc, etc, etc, is beyond even the guesses of the 'experts' who have never had their hands on the ACTUAL gadget...