I'll be the Thread Necromancer, How good does the Behringer Bass DI sound? I'm bidding on one on the 'Bay, so I'd like to know. I'm also planning on getting a Behringer mixer and a USB audio interface with it soon.
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Behringer effects - my experience
- Thread starter dan_doh
- Start date
No idea about the DI, but have Behr mixers and USB interfaces. My experience is that the mixers are great (for the money) and the interfaces are not too sturdy, a bit noisy, but still usable.
Okay lets cut through all the BS and be honest. Behringer takes well known equipment and reverse engineers it...they take it apart and copy it. Then they build their slightly modified design. I have seen some of their products where it was a blatant rip off of some other company's design.
Why is their gear so cheap? Because Behringer uses the absolute cheapest components that they can find. Their gear probably sounds okay but is disposable and not intended to last. It is probably acceptable for the budget conscious bedroom player but certainly rarely used by the professional world touring musician. Most of Behringer's gear is not worth repairing since you would spend more to repair it than you can buy brand new.
Flame away! ;-)
Why is their gear so cheap? Because Behringer uses the absolute cheapest components that they can find. Their gear probably sounds okay but is disposable and not intended to last. It is probably acceptable for the budget conscious bedroom player but certainly rarely used by the professional world touring musician. Most of Behringer's gear is not worth repairing since you would spend more to repair it than you can buy brand new.
Flame away! ;-)
nope. i think that post is flame retardant. and more generous then i usually feel towards Beh****er stuff.
well summed up.
well summed up.
I have no problem with anything you wrote and would agree with it all, but let me at least just say to the bumper that while the build quality is flimsy, I have gigged with a couple behringer pedals a decent amount and never had one break on me. Maybe I'm more gentle than most (I don't jump around the stage, spill beer on my pedalboard, throw my bass around, etc etc etc), but that's my experience anyways. I do have a Behringer on my board right now (the BSY-600) and gigged with it just this past weekend.
Since the Behringers are all more or less clones of other pedals, the tone is actually pretty consistently decent and close to the original pedal.
The Behringer bass DI is actually a pretty darned decent clone of the Sansamp BDDI. I've used it recording before, and have one that I keep in one of my bass cases just in case my amp blows up during a gig. Can't argue with a 30 dollar safety net.
I've gigged with BDI21s for a few years now, a couple hundred gigs, and have had to replace the $30 pedal once. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
I bought a Behringer 60W amp as a practice amp and for small gigs abour 5 or so years ago. It's now so shite I just leave it in the bandroom and make a point of always bringing my Markbass gear in if I've got it in the car.
The big companies use the cheapest components they can find as well. It doesn't actually make a difference. 90% of the time the "boutique" components are components rated for very high voltages, and we're talking about a device that runs on a 9V battery.
Even boutique companies, if you open up the boxes you'll find cheap carbon film resistors and "greenie" capacitors-- which are basically the cheapest you can get. And they're just fine.
Switches and pots are a bit of a different story, though. Most builders won't go out of their way to get cheaper pots than the typical Alpha 16mm (which are not exactly the "good stuff"), but if they did... it still wouldn't matter.
It's a $30 pedal. Sometimes less. And, before you get all high and mighty about clones, you should probably realise that most overdrive are tubescreamer based, anything with "blues" in the name is a Bluesbreaker clone, which itself is a modified tubescreamer, the most metal distortions are based on the MT-2, and the MT-2 is just a higher gain DS-1, which itself is just a higher gain Distortion+.
Then we get into all the flangers that are basically the same circuit. And phasers. How many phase 90s are out there?
And nobody cares when someone takes someone else's design and makes it more expensive. What's so wrong with going the other way and making it more affordable?
I don't own a single Behringer pedal, but I really don't get how Boss, Digitech, MXR, etc are somehow holier. They all make clones... they just put them in metal boxes and charge twice the price.
i've never cared about the cloning aspect, i've only cared about the cloning it into a Untrustworthy Box of Infinite Breakiness.
i know Bee Gee Chief has had better luck then me with Beh****er effects, and i'm happy for him. i don't trust EHX stuff live either because i've had too much breakage with them. but i know LOT'S of peoples that have entire boards full of their stuff and no problems. it's all IME and YMMV. but from my experience, i would never buy a Beh****er product to use live.
if they made something that was an effect i wanted to try for cheap? might give that a go. although if i liked it i'd probably picke up another manufacturer's version of it and give the cheapie to a friend.
i know Bee Gee Chief has had better luck then me with Beh****er effects, and i'm happy for him. i don't trust EHX stuff live either because i've had too much breakage with them. but i know LOT'S of peoples that have entire boards full of their stuff and no problems. it's all IME and YMMV. but from my experience, i would never buy a Beh****er product to use live.
if they made something that was an effect i wanted to try for cheap? might give that a go. although if i liked it i'd probably picke up another manufacturer's version of it and give the cheapie to a friend.
Buy cheap buy twice....
I will NEVER buy anything with the B word on it or the S word (stagg...)
I will NEVER buy anything with the B word on it or the S word (stagg...)
In my experience (pedals used for guitar not bass however) the behringer pedals have served well, im not particularly rough on them like some people, and i can afford to buy 2 or 3 different pedals to try out the effect or to use as a stage back up for the price of 1 really good pedal of one effect, i personally play a Behringer 4x10 1000W @ 4 ohm cab, coupled with a 500W Hartke Head, the Beheringer cab is the same model etc as the hartke version, in my opinion its like comparing a Camaro to a Firebird, same thing with different name. I have yet to run into problems with Behringer products.
Maybe I'm just lucky? i dont know? but like i said I'm REALLY gentle on my gear too. maybe too gentle haha
Maybe I'm just lucky? i dont know? but like i said I'm REALLY gentle on my gear too. maybe too gentle haha
So. How is this even important to the conversation? Is Behringer the only company to copy a popular product?
If you don't like or buy their products...why are you in on this topic?
I have a Behringer head unit and BDI21. They both are working great for me. Until, I can afford to have All-American equipment, which is my goal...I am very satisfied with what I have.
There's a lot of it about. I've even been to bars where musicians were getting paid money for playing blatant rip-offs of other people's songs...
edit: They weren't as good as the originals, but they cost the bar a lot less...
I have mixed feelings about Behringer. On the one hand, even the pedals the Behringer pedals are based on don't inspire me, let alone the Behringers themselves, so I won't be buying any of those. Fine for a bedroom pedal? Well I don't know, but when I play at home, if my tone isn't balls out and inspiring it doesn't exactly make me want to play. Actually it kind of makes me not want to play because it's so disappointing.
On the other hand, some cheapo little Behringer combo I played had a much better tone than a much, much more expensive full stack from a more "reputable" (for awful tone maybe) company *coughCarvincough*. So in my experience, Behringer is not my least favorite amp manufacturer. I will say that about them. Honestly, if I was in a bind and had to buy an amp I'd pay the Behringer price for the cheapo little Behringer combo, but I wouldn't even pay the Behringer price for the Carvin full stack.
On the other hand, some cheapo little Behringer combo I played had a much better tone than a much, much more expensive full stack from a more "reputable" (for awful tone maybe) company *coughCarvincough*. So in my experience, Behringer is not my least favorite amp manufacturer. I will say that about them. Honestly, if I was in a bind and had to buy an amp I'd pay the Behringer price for the cheapo little Behringer combo, but I wouldn't even pay the Behringer price for the Carvin full stack.
