Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Streamliner by Bugera?
- Thread starter CharlieC
- Start date
Mr. Foxen
Commercial User
Is the preamp section on a separate board inside, and is it surface mount or full sized components on PCB? Lots of the appeal of Bugera stuff for me is being able to tweak them, and I dunno if mini stuff is gonna be the same. I want stuff like the Epi valve Junior that people were modding all over, because that is interesting.
Having just been messed about trying to get a valve pre lightweight that wasn't the Orange Bass terror, this is pretty appealing, but, I gotta make stuff my own with tweaking.
Having just been messed about trying to get a valve pre lightweight that wasn't the Orange Bass terror, this is pretty appealing, but, I gotta make stuff my own with tweaking.
Dear Bass-4-God,
I haven't yet been given a target date for these to be in stores and I don't want to speculate and get it wrong, so I will ask for that info and report back when I have it.
Mr. Foxen, I am emailing R&D right now with your questions and will post back here with what I learn. I understand the desire to tweak - I like to make gear "my own" as well with little customizations.
I haven't yet been given a target date for these to be in stores and I don't want to speculate and get it wrong, so I will ask for that info and report back when I have it.
Mr. Foxen, I am emailing R&D right now with your questions and will post back here with what I learn. I understand the desire to tweak - I like to make gear "my own" as well with little customizations.
Hi Sean,
Good to see Bugera in the lightweight head market. Behringer too. Good value and opportunities for many.
A question on the Turbosound driver warranty? Your sites all publish 3-year warrenty of registered in 90-days, but in the warranty docs it states
Is this true of even the Turbosound equipped cabinets? Only a 1yr warranty?
For detailed specs, are you waiting on Bass Gear Magazine to publish Measurements on the Cabinets or will Bugera publish their own charts also?
I expect Turbosound has all the gear needed to do the measurements?
Good to see Bugera in the lightweight head market. Behringer too. Good value and opportunities for many.
A question on the Turbosound driver warranty? Your sites all publish 3-year warrenty of registered in 90-days, but in the warranty docs it states
4.3 Where applicable, MUSIC Group warrants the following items contained in or with the product to be free from defects in material and workmanship for a period of one (1) year from date of purchase:
...
Loudspeaker drivers or diaphragm assemblies
...
Loudspeaker drivers or diaphragm assemblies
Is this true of even the Turbosound equipped cabinets? Only a 1yr warranty?
For detailed specs, are you waiting on Bass Gear Magazine to publish Measurements on the Cabinets or will Bugera publish their own charts also?
I expect Turbosound has all the gear needed to do the measurements?
Mr. Foxen - update for you!
R&D says:
"The majority of the PCB components are surface mounted. But there are also insertion components in specific positions, such as capacitors for coupling audio.
There are PCBs for the preamp and front panel controls, rear connectivity, the SMPS and the class-D module."
Thanks, and let me know if you'd like any more info on this.
All others, more info is forthcoming - thanks for your patience.
R&D says:
"The majority of the PCB components are surface mounted. But there are also insertion components in specific positions, such as capacitors for coupling audio.
There are PCBs for the preamp and front panel controls, rear connectivity, the SMPS and the class-D module."
Thanks, and let me know if you'd like any more info on this.
All others, more info is forthcoming - thanks for your patience.
Mr. Foxen
Commercial User
If caps are proper sized, can shift eq centres about, or change the bandpassing. Did notice an error in the description. Baxandall tone stack is active, James is the passive one, so its either a James or an active stack.
Actually, the there are two different EQ sections going on. The tube version of the head (BV1001T) has passive Baxandall controls, whereas the mosfet version (BV1001M) utilizes a Gyrator EQ section with an active mid.
Mr. Foxen
Commercial User
Is the problem, Baxandall is active, the passive version is the James stack.
Mr. Foxen,
Thanks for your clarification. I'm told that both EQ sections are actually passive, and I wrote too fast earlier - it's the T (tube) version that has the active mid control, not the mosfet. But the EQ section of the BV1001T is described as both passive and Baxandall, so there may be a correction needed. Thank you for pointing this out - I will forward this info on to the right folks on my end.
Thanks for your clarification. I'm told that both EQ sections are actually passive, and I wrote too fast earlier - it's the T (tube) version that has the active mid control, not the mosfet. But the EQ section of the BV1001T is described as both passive and Baxandall, so there may be a correction needed. Thank you for pointing this out - I will forward this info on to the right folks on my end.
Dear seamonkey,
I wanted to get back to you in regards to the warranty point you requested clarification on. It is correct that the TURBOSOUND drivers within BUGERA cabs are covered for 1 year, whereas other components of the cabinet are covered for 3 years as described in the Warranty Policy you quoted - so long as the product is registered within 90 days of purchase, of course.
As far as specifications are concerned, what are you looking for specifically? We include spec sheets with all product manuals, which will be available as we get closer to shipping.
Thank you,
Sean Fairchild
Specialist, Channel Marketing Prosumer Division
MUSIC Group
BUGERA
I wanted to get back to you in regards to the warranty point you requested clarification on. It is correct that the TURBOSOUND drivers within BUGERA cabs are covered for 1 year, whereas other components of the cabinet are covered for 3 years as described in the Warranty Policy you quoted - so long as the product is registered within 90 days of purchase, of course.
As far as specifications are concerned, what are you looking for specifically? We include spec sheets with all product manuals, which will be available as we get closer to shipping.
Thank you,
Sean Fairchild
Specialist, Channel Marketing Prosumer Division
MUSIC Group
BUGERA
Can someone please answer a question for me.
I've been told by a number of friends on the manufacturing side of the music industry that many of the Bugera/Beringer products (especially amps) are pretty much direct ripoffs of popular American products that have been reverse engineered
and made with cheaper parts.
Again, what I've been told is that China has no respect for American patents or ownership of intellectual properties. They simply take and use whatever they want.
I saw this amp at NAMM and was excited about getting one until I got these explanations. Can someone please clarify all of this for me.
I've been told by a number of friends on the manufacturing side of the music industry that many of the Bugera/Beringer products (especially amps) are pretty much direct ripoffs of popular American products that have been reverse engineered
and made with cheaper parts.
Again, what I've been told is that China has no respect for American patents or ownership of intellectual properties. They simply take and use whatever they want.
I saw this amp at NAMM and was excited about getting one until I got these explanations. Can someone please clarify all of this for me.
Indeed, "passive Baxandall" is an oxymoron. Although the term is also used in the Genz's blurb for the Streamliner, so perhaps I can see why Bugera used that phrase!
(Edit; I'm not saying that to accuse Bugera of plagiarism, more to observe that they clearly have an eye on the market!)
Sean, looks like you're having a rough day. Please don't take it personal. Folks around here are very serious about ethics, myself included.
Chef, as always, thanks for keeping it civil. It could get real ugly real qucik without ya.
Chef, as always, thanks for keeping it civil. It could get real ugly real qucik without ya.
Mr. Foxen
Commercial User
Thinks its more a case of the consumer has no clue about how the laws of IP apply to circuit designs. Or how most amps are made out of combinations of the same few circuits/principles in different combinations.
Dear B String,
I'd be happy to offer more information on this subject. While based in Germany, MUSIC Group owns its own very impressive manufacturing facility in China that employs more than 3,500 workers, and it's really quite a wonder of factory modernization. They literally have raw materials being delivered to one area of MUSIC Group City, and finished product coming out of another. While our production is based at this facility, our products are developed by the R&D team in Willich, Germany.
Regarding the alleged copying of other products, I would like to share with you the thoughts of our Founder and CEO, Uli Behringer, who has addressed this on other forums in the past.
The simple answer is that we have for many years considered our products to be followers of market trends and have designed them accordingly. Our product strategy has been to introduce products into categories where there is proven market demand and win based on our value proposition. That strategy has spawned many products whose visual appearance mimics that of the market leaders in many segments.
Also we do listen to our customers as this has been and will always be a huge part of our philosophy. In fact it has formed our company motto: "We hear you". We listen when customers tell us what they want and they do this often to a very detailed extent: "We'd like you to make an amp like this brand, but with these features and this look but can you make it at this price?" And we do listen to our customers.
Using ideas from other competitors is perfectly legal as long as you don't infringe on patents, trademarks, etc. and again what the law permits and what the public deem acceptable often differs greatly.
How many guitars look like Fender Strats? How many cars or phones look alike?
Frankly every manufacturer becomes inspired by other competitors and this is how the world works. When we attend trade shows we often see other manufacturers "borrow" our designs, and where legal we have no issue with it.
One may legitimately ask, How close is too close? when it comes to appearance. Everyone may have a different personal opinion on the topic but there are rules in law and trade practice that govern what is referred to as trade dress. A products form, shape and control placement can be protected by a Design Patent if the manufacturer believes that these are defining features that are unique. In that case other manufacturers cannot make a product that shares the same features.
However if these are not unique or protected features, then everyone is free to use those ideas.
Our intent is to make great products that are affordable and intuitive to use. Sometimes that means that the industrial design will follow the well-established protocol for that type of product. Other times it means we must start with a clean sheet of paper and do things differently.
Examples of the latter are our Eurocom line of installed products, the iNuke power amps series, our new Q series mixers and of course our new X32 digital mixer. I have been largely involved in the design of those products and all have been designed to be unique to the extent that they are even covered by multiple design patent applications in my own name.
As a fan of great industrial design, it has always been my dream to build products that set us apart from others. This dream is about to be realized with the opening of our new Design Center of Excellence in Manchester, UK last year.
Here is what Mr. Behringer had to say regarding manufacturing in China:
20 years ago we moved our manufacturing to Asia in pursuit of lower cost and frankly, better yields. As our volume grew dramatically we discovered that the batch manufacturing we were doing in Germany was no longer able to keep up with demand. So we moved our exact same designs, the exact same parts and the exact same processes to the lower-cost and higher-volume of a contract manufacturer in China.
Obviously there were growing pains as 20 years ago, we were the first audio company to move production to China and no experienced audio manufacturer existed. In order to oversee production I relocated to HK and China and taught those manufacturers how to produce audio products. Ironically today these are the exact same manufacturers who make products for our competitors.
The reality of manufacturing in China is that you must control it or it can wipe you out. We learned that quickly, but those early missteps still haunt us today. In the early years we used 3rd party manufacturers such as Kwanasia and others who had little experience with audio products. Also it is common knowledge that those manufacturers substitute parts behind your back in order to maximize profit and your work instructions only last for the time that you are in the factory and are reversed when you leave. Interesting is that Kwanasia whom we abandoned for quality reasons now manufactures for brands such as Avid, Soundcraft, Peavey etc.
Frankly it is a losing battle and this made us decide to open our own manufacturing plant over 10 years ago. Today we are one of the very few companies who own the manufacturing plant and we are proud of our dedicated people and the quality systems. Was it easy? Absolutely not, but it was worth the pain as today it is a huge competitive advantage.
When we acquired Midas, their people made it very clear to me that they would only agree to move manufacturing to China if we would invest in the most sophisticated equipment and they came up with a list that made us spend US$ 20 million last year. We built one of the most high-tech and automated plants in the world with high-precision SMT machines, in-circuit testers, optical inspection systems that automatically check every solder joint and x-ray equipment that can see through multilayer boards with fine-pitch and ball-grid parts.
In return however I requested Midas to send their best engineers to be based in China and run the plant. This was the deal and today we have achieved amazing quality and a great teamwork. All our Behringer and Bugera products are now also made on the same equipment and as a result quality is among the best in the business; which is well documented.
Our quality has increased so much that we also introduced a 3-Year Warranty program at the beginning of this year. To be perfectly clear, we do not make disposable products and there is no planned obsolescence. We make great product and because of our scale, in-house manufacturing and purchasing power we can make it at a lower cost. Since the very first day I started the Company, it is our philosophy to share those benefits with our customers and thats how we achieve great loyalty and a production volume of around 5 million products per year.
I know that was a long one, but thank you to those who stuck with me through it! I hope this provides some insight on these subjects. Thanks again for your question, and please let me know if I can answer any others - trying to stay on the subject of these amps in this thread, if possible.
I'd be happy to offer more information on this subject. While based in Germany, MUSIC Group owns its own very impressive manufacturing facility in China that employs more than 3,500 workers, and it's really quite a wonder of factory modernization. They literally have raw materials being delivered to one area of MUSIC Group City, and finished product coming out of another. While our production is based at this facility, our products are developed by the R&D team in Willich, Germany.
Regarding the alleged copying of other products, I would like to share with you the thoughts of our Founder and CEO, Uli Behringer, who has addressed this on other forums in the past.
The simple answer is that we have for many years considered our products to be followers of market trends and have designed them accordingly. Our product strategy has been to introduce products into categories where there is proven market demand and win based on our value proposition. That strategy has spawned many products whose visual appearance mimics that of the market leaders in many segments.
Also we do listen to our customers as this has been and will always be a huge part of our philosophy. In fact it has formed our company motto: "We hear you". We listen when customers tell us what they want and they do this often to a very detailed extent: "We'd like you to make an amp like this brand, but with these features and this look but can you make it at this price?" And we do listen to our customers.
Using ideas from other competitors is perfectly legal as long as you don't infringe on patents, trademarks, etc. and again what the law permits and what the public deem acceptable often differs greatly.
How many guitars look like Fender Strats? How many cars or phones look alike?
Frankly every manufacturer becomes inspired by other competitors and this is how the world works. When we attend trade shows we often see other manufacturers "borrow" our designs, and where legal we have no issue with it.
One may legitimately ask, How close is too close? when it comes to appearance. Everyone may have a different personal opinion on the topic but there are rules in law and trade practice that govern what is referred to as trade dress. A products form, shape and control placement can be protected by a Design Patent if the manufacturer believes that these are defining features that are unique. In that case other manufacturers cannot make a product that shares the same features.
However if these are not unique or protected features, then everyone is free to use those ideas.
Our intent is to make great products that are affordable and intuitive to use. Sometimes that means that the industrial design will follow the well-established protocol for that type of product. Other times it means we must start with a clean sheet of paper and do things differently.
Examples of the latter are our Eurocom line of installed products, the iNuke power amps series, our new Q series mixers and of course our new X32 digital mixer. I have been largely involved in the design of those products and all have been designed to be unique to the extent that they are even covered by multiple design patent applications in my own name.
As a fan of great industrial design, it has always been my dream to build products that set us apart from others. This dream is about to be realized with the opening of our new Design Center of Excellence in Manchester, UK last year.
Here is what Mr. Behringer had to say regarding manufacturing in China:
20 years ago we moved our manufacturing to Asia in pursuit of lower cost and frankly, better yields. As our volume grew dramatically we discovered that the batch manufacturing we were doing in Germany was no longer able to keep up with demand. So we moved our exact same designs, the exact same parts and the exact same processes to the lower-cost and higher-volume of a contract manufacturer in China.
Obviously there were growing pains as 20 years ago, we were the first audio company to move production to China and no experienced audio manufacturer existed. In order to oversee production I relocated to HK and China and taught those manufacturers how to produce audio products. Ironically today these are the exact same manufacturers who make products for our competitors.
The reality of manufacturing in China is that you must control it or it can wipe you out. We learned that quickly, but those early missteps still haunt us today. In the early years we used 3rd party manufacturers such as Kwanasia and others who had little experience with audio products. Also it is common knowledge that those manufacturers substitute parts behind your back in order to maximize profit and your work instructions only last for the time that you are in the factory and are reversed when you leave. Interesting is that Kwanasia whom we abandoned for quality reasons now manufactures for brands such as Avid, Soundcraft, Peavey etc.
Frankly it is a losing battle and this made us decide to open our own manufacturing plant over 10 years ago. Today we are one of the very few companies who own the manufacturing plant and we are proud of our dedicated people and the quality systems. Was it easy? Absolutely not, but it was worth the pain as today it is a huge competitive advantage.
When we acquired Midas, their people made it very clear to me that they would only agree to move manufacturing to China if we would invest in the most sophisticated equipment and they came up with a list that made us spend US$ 20 million last year. We built one of the most high-tech and automated plants in the world with high-precision SMT machines, in-circuit testers, optical inspection systems that automatically check every solder joint and x-ray equipment that can see through multilayer boards with fine-pitch and ball-grid parts.
In return however I requested Midas to send their best engineers to be based in China and run the plant. This was the deal and today we have achieved amazing quality and a great teamwork. All our Behringer and Bugera products are now also made on the same equipment and as a result quality is among the best in the business; which is well documented.
Our quality has increased so much that we also introduced a 3-Year Warranty program at the beginning of this year. To be perfectly clear, we do not make disposable products and there is no planned obsolescence. We make great product and because of our scale, in-house manufacturing and purchasing power we can make it at a lower cost. Since the very first day I started the Company, it is our philosophy to share those benefits with our customers and thats how we achieve great loyalty and a production volume of around 5 million products per year.
I know that was a long one, but thank you to those who stuck with me through it! I hope this provides some insight on these subjects. Thanks again for your question, and please let me know if I can answer any others - trying to stay on the subject of these amps in this thread, if possible.
Thank you for the answer and information. As I said, this amp looked very interesting to me. I just wanted to make sure I'm not stepping on toes or doing anything unethical by buying one of these amps.
My pleasure! I understand the concern.
Best regards,
Sean Fairchild
Specialist, Channel Marketing Prosumer Division
MUSIC Group
BUGERA
Best regards,
Sean Fairchild
Specialist, Channel Marketing Prosumer Division
MUSIC Group
BUGERA
Not trying to troll, flame or bash, but this caught my eye today and there is no info anywhere on what appears to be a Bugera take on the Genz-Benz Streamliner.
I have no idea, but simply wanted to share on TalkBass.
Cheers!
Hey folks, here my contribution to relax the heated minds:
This is what came to my mind when I saw that print screen...
Invalid Link Removed
I have no objections to copying other industrial products. At least there's some Genz "spirit" out there
But I know you guys are desperately looking for Jeff Genzler's influence on the new Fender Rumble amps...
No matter how this discussion turns out - I'm planning on buying a small but powerful backup amp. And I'm pleased to see new products on the market
svtb15
Inactive
- Mar 22, 2004
- 13,004
- 4,741
- Disclosures
- I play it all. Whatever works for the gig. Q+
I wonder if their CS will be as good a knock off of the Genz CS when people start to have issues with these amps.
My streamliner so far has circumnavigated the globe a few times on my fly dates .. Not one problem...
My streamliner so far has circumnavigated the globe a few times on my fly dates .. Not one problem...
