OT: Behringer Equipment

[ryanscissorhands]

I've been thinking about getting the Behringer V-TONE GMX212 amplifier. However, I keep hearing a total mix of stories about Behringer equipment. I was hoping that I could hear some advice or stories about Behringer buys, and maybe some idea of what to expect in terms of sound quality and durability. All feedback on Behringer stuff is appreciated.

[brett]

My Behringer mixer is excellent.  Good quality and VERY low price.  But it's for home/small gig use, so I don't know if it's rugged enough to travel in a truck.  Cheers.

[travissk]

Like I said in the other thread, I own a V-Amp 2... essentially a POD clone. I forgot to mention that it has one REALLY cool feature - instead of the Pod's pots, this has rotary encoders with rings of LEDs around them marking the position (except for the master volume, which is a pot). The big benefit of this is that when you change presets, your settings are recalled on the LEDs, wheras with the Pod once you save a setting and twist the knobs, there's no easy way to see what you saved.

Sound quality is comparable to the pod (not the Pod XT). I liked the extreme high-gain settings better on the pod, the slightly dirty and clean stuff on the V-Amp. Reliability is good, aside from a memory reset problem (due to constant plugging the unit in at the unit after the wall, if that makes sense) I haven't heard any complaints. Then again, I don't abuse any of my stuff.

I have used one of their mixers, felt ok. If I needed a mixer I would definitely take a look at theirs, since they are widely used and hold up decently well.

For a week or so I used one of their rack units, the Virtualizer pro. I don't have a rack setup but I was pretty impressed. The knobs felt a little cheap but the effects were pretty good. Reverbs were really nice, pitch shifter beat the one on my RP-12. Had a little bit of noise, distortions were horrible, but that was expected. If I had a rack setup I would have gone with something that does more than one effect at a time, but it was a decent $100 processor.

As a company, I do have to say that their blatant ripoffs of competitors' products make me feel a little guilty about owning a V-Amp. I'd rather have my money go toward a company like line6 to innovate more, but Behringer has said this is what they do - "twice the features at half the price" which might not be completely true, but gets the general meaning across. That said, my experience with them has been nothing but positive. Of course you have to consider the "you get what you pay for" factor, so you -do- sacrifice a little quality, but you're saving some money too. That's the basic principle.

I don't know about the V-Tone, supposedly it's analog (wonder if they're cloning the runoffgroove sims ) and it looks impressive for $370 USD MSRP. I'd read some reviews on the actual unit.

[niftydog]

I'd be willing to bet that the reason behind the mixed responses is because they USED TO BE good, but now they're not so good.

IIRC, I think they were sold and started to go downhill.

The gear that I've used recently works well and sounds good, but is unreliable.

PS; don't ever, ever use a Behringer multi effects unit built into a mixer!  eeeeuuuurrrrgggghhhh!

[petemoore]

Behringer mixer...nice unit, well that power cord didn't take much to 1/2 wreck,,,now I get to unplug AC and play 'feed the pins in the AC hole' [has a 4 pin 'jack in the board case].
 And I added wood sides which bring the knob tops to less than flush...these long plastic knobs are designed to fail, I can think of numerous other ways to control a pot without an 1-1/4'' plastic 'break off knob' [volume mains output knob being in the 'guardrail' position. I haven't broken any on 'this one yet...
 basically not bad for low price/ease of production, take it extra easy and you should have N/P, the innards, and Gold plated jacks I like just fine.