Hi all. Question for the electronics people here...

My question revolves around going DI into the sound board and the resulting levels.

I've tried going guitar -> pedal -> DI box -> FOH a couple of times at church, and the result is usually wicked-low input levels. From my understanding, all the DI box does is drop the impedance to line level (or other levels if you have the attenuation pad) and give you a balanced output. However, you still need to get the right signal level, correct?

Is this low-signal issue really a matter of voltage? If so, how do you correct it? Wouldn't you need some sort of transformer to get it to the right voltage? Would a headphone amp in between the pedal and DI box help to bring it up to the right level? That's my current idea, but I'd like to know what I'm doing wrong.