Man, I can't believe all the Behringer haters out there. When I was looking to upgrade from my small 120 watt bass amp, I was mostly interested in Ampeg stacks. But then I watched a band performing locally and the bass player smoked his Ampeg in the 4th set and he played air guitar the rest of the night. I never heard of an Ampeg blowing smoke, but I saw it first hand. I wonder how many guys would be hating on those $3000 Ampeg rigs?
I'm still in the beginner stage of bass playing, with about 4 years and 100 gigs under my belt. My current setup is a small 120 watt Rogue bass amp which is used only as my stage monitor. I have it turned up only enough to hear myself. My main sound comes from my XLR output from my GNX4 pedal which goes directly to the FOH mixer. Almost all my sound comes from the FOH subs/speakers.
The sound I get from the GNX4 bass presets and amp sims is better than anything I could ever afford. I let the soundguy out front tweak my tone in the FOH speakers to make it sound the way he wants out front. That's what we pay him for. But honestly, I am not a tone snob. I just want the soundguy to eq my sound in the FOH speakers to sound good for the band.
We have used Behringer mixers from the start of my band 3+ years ago. We went from an 800 watt all-in-one 10 channel powered mixer to our current 32 channel Eurodesk SX3242FX mixer. We have Peavey subs and mains. Our amps are from QSC and Crown. It's a mix match of different equipment I was able to buy on sale over the years. Point I want to make is, my Behringer gear has never failed me, ever, in about 100 live gigs.
So, I'm not going to join the choir hating on Behringer gear. My band made about $12,000 gigging off a $300 Behringer all-in-one power amp before we upgraded. And then we just got a better Behringer mixer. For the price, I don't know how you can beat Behringer. Also, most bands around here don't last more than 6 months - and that includes 5 months of practicing before the gig! So how much are you willing to invest upfront in a "potential" band?
I did buy a Behringer BX4500H and the BB410 cab this summer on a special sale for less than $500.00 shipped. The first head I got blew out on me in about 15 minutes. That was replaced with another head and this one is still working fine after 4 months. Probably will last a long time. Have I built up much confidence in the rig yet? No. But as I already mentioned, my main sound comes from my GNX4 XLR direct output. So if my bass amp blows smoke on stage, I'm still playing out front in the FOH speakers and just need to add some bass to my vocal monitor. If my GNX4 should die, I can take the direct output from my BX4500H to the FOH mixer. Either way, I'm still gigging. That's better than the bass player I saw this summer playing air bass in front of his smoked $3000.00 Ampeg stack.
