Has anyone seen the prices on the Behringer pedals?

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

I wonder how many of us would go and work/live somewhere like that for that kind of pay though !!

Probably all of us, if we were young & lived in Western China.

[gez]

Interesting vids. 

So, Uli doesn't have horns...who'd have thought it?!

[MartyMart]

I wonder how many of us would go and work/live somewhere like that for that kind of pay though !!

Probably all of us, if we were young & lived in Western China.

Absolutely  ! I wasn't "knocking it" just interested that they have to move out of home and live
where they work in shared dorms - seems a nice enough work place but they're just a "little" trapped !!

The whole "cheapest" gear ethic has other consequenses also, some large UK dealers who have several
outlets are suffering, they can't compete against the "on-line huge warehouse" sellers, (Thomann) who have minimal
ground rent and staff to pay for ..... watch this space !

MM.

[R.G.]

It seems to be one of Mother Nature's Rules that there can be no significant difference in price for identical articles unless there is some kind of barrier between them.
The barrier can be distance. One is here, the other is across a mountain range or continent, or halfway around the planet.
The barrier can be time - one is available NOW, one is available in a week, month, or year.
The barrier can be intellectual - we (or they) know how to make it, they (or we) don't.
The barrier can be capital - we (or they) have the capital to make the equipment to make the article, not otherwise.
The barrier can be societal - my society considers that the same object made by someone else is inferior to what we make ourselves.
The barrier can be governmental - it is forbidden to import the thing from there. Or it is punitively taxed and therefore directly not the same price.

Notice that the work results of people are priced by the same rules. Radiology used to be a very highly paid specialty in medicine in the USA. Then it was noticed that one could send the images to India almost instantly, where a quite competent Indian radiologist would interpret the Xrays. The prices paid for radiologists in the USA have fallen quite a bit now.

With the erasure of barriers, prices for any good will equalize as long as the buyer is free to choose.

[Mark Hammer]

Radiology used to be a very highly paid specialty in medicine in the USA. Then it was noticed that one could send the images to India almost instantly, where a quite competent Indian radiologist would interpret the Xrays. The prices paid for radiologists in the USA have fallen quite a bit now.

A little over 10 years ago, I heard a British economist interviewed on the radio, and he was proposing that software programmers and developers would be the new auto mechanics of the 21st century.  He drew the parallel between the initial rarity of auto repair skills at the turn of the 20th century and the extent to which those who understood automobiles could command high wages for their exotic knowledge and skills, and the initial rarity of programming skills/knowledge in the 1980's.  He proposed that what had happened to the field of auto mechanics in the intervening years would soon happen to programmers.  That once there was a sufficient critical mass of competent people in Asia, and especially south Asia, and it was possible to simply ship the work there and have it done for a fraction of the salary costs, that being a programmer would drift back to being a rather banal and modestly compensated career, and coders would be about on par with the folks who change your oil at Jiffy-Lube.

I think at least a small part of the boutique-vs-Behringer battle stems from the desire to believe that musicians and music of one's generation is somehow special, and not simply "a market".  When someone toils to make something specially for you (Jason Myrick hand-painted Fuzz Factory f'rinstance), or at least leaves you with that impression, one can hold onto the belief that one's musical efforts stand for something rather unique.  When you buy something bubble-packed, hanging on a hook, made out of plastic, one's generational culture starts to feel like it has about as much character and uniqueness to it as the bags of toy soldiers hanging in the bargain store or dolls with eyes and lips painted on just a bit off from where the actual physical features are.  It's that feeling that something was not made for you as a person, but for you as a consumer.  When your mother makes a meatloaf to see the smile on your face, tha's one thing.  When there are hundreds of people in a factory cranking out meatloaves because somebody somewhere buys them, it's not quite the same feeling, even if they use the identical recipe.

The video diarist's comments about how its all about feature sets for Behringer was an exceptional piece of insight, and a great summary.  The Behringer line is NOT about innovation but about delivering more for the same money or at least the same for much less money.  In many respects that's not a bad modus operandi.  No one appears to be getting hurt or pistol-whipped in the process of providing it (though clean assembly rooms don't really convey what happens to the industrial byproducts or effluents produced in the production of materials to be assembled), and they may well be the best damn jobs for miles around.  But of course that's the motive behind Wal-Mart as well, and we've seen too many examples of what that approach has done to small businesses in smaller urban centres and towns.  If the two approaches could peacefully coexist, there'd be no difficult choices to make.  The problem only arises because people want stuff, and large price differences lead them to follow their wallets rather than their hearts, leaving small manufacturers in the lurch.

So ultimately, setting aside for a moment the manner in which they subsist on the R&D efforts of others, there seems to be nothing quintessentially wrong with Behringer, his product line, his approach as employer, or his business approach.  There is also nothing in what he offers that is any different than $15 pedals from Danelectro.  What people balk at here is the sense of hugeness of the company, and their concomitant sense of being faceless, cultureless, and generationless as consumers.  Danelectro earns our support (despite having near identical approach to production) because they seem to direct themselves to our generation.  Behringer just feels to us like some whale aimlessly swimming with its mouth open catching plankton in its baleen, and we hate feeling like plankton.

[R.G.]

Good points Mark.

It's also worth noting that humans are almost infinitely flexible in wanting what they can't easily get. A few decades back, factory made goods were not thought of as cheaply made, shoddy and soulless. Factory made as opposed to hand made was the mark of being progressive, technically advanced, and highly functional. People thought plastic wrapped gewgaws were HOT, not faceless. In fact, being able to have such widgies distinguished them individually as opposed to making them anonymous.

I find it interesting that we have come so fully around the circle, to the point where hand crafted is now the sign of something you can barely afford, instead of something that you had to make do with.