Behringer sued by Roland

[gtrmac]

I'm not fond of Behringer since I made the mistake of buying one of their knockoffs a few years ago and I regret the decision. I wanted a Mackie 1604 but when I went to the store they had a pile of Behringer clones on sale for 1/3 the price of the Mackie. Figuring I could use the difference towards another piece of gear I bought the Behringer after a bit of hand ringing.

Bear in mind that I've used quite a few Mackie mixers over the years.

Within 1 year the Behringer started having reliability problems. The signal would cut out on one side of the stereo buss, usually during recording of course. It was very annoying and distracting to stop what I was doing to tap on various parts of the mixer to get it working again.

Luckily I got another mixer and now the Behringer is back in the box. I might take it apart someday and try to figure out where the intermittency is coming from so that I can use it as a spare.

My point is that Behringer's strategy of imitating competitive products is misleading and it tricked me into buying an obviously inferior product. I'll never buy another Behringer product.

Ironically, Mackie has started producing their products in China just like Behringer has been doing all along. I hope they have better Q.C. than Behringer!

[Rob Strand]

Behringer have gone way too far here.

Not only the look and feel but the *product line*.
The false claims of Roland's endorsement puts the nail in their coffin!  Pretty much blatent theft.  The boutique cloners at least disguise their activities .

Apparently Behringer haven't stopped there.  They are cloning EH pedals as well:

http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/01/behringers-dirt-cheap-stompboxes-look.html

I'll never buy another Behringer product.

That's crossed my mind as well.

[Alex C]

Lurco's picture does it for me.  At first glance, I thought he had posted a Boss display on top, then was comparing it to a Behringer pedalboard below.  I thought this at second and third glance as well.

Good discussion!

[Ge_Whiz]

I got a different impression from Lurco's pictures - I thought he was comparing how many Behringer pedals and Boss pedals you could buy for the same money!  :lol:

Seriously though, isn't it interesting? Life evolves on earth, and eventually becomes so complex that bacteria, viruses and parasites take advantage of it...

Computers start out simple, but eventually engineers make them so complex that viruses, phages and parasites take advantage of them...

Business law and economics starts out simple, but eventually politicians and lawyers make it so complicated that...

[moving_electrons]

Business law and economics starts out simple, but eventually politicians and lawyers make it so complicated that...

Law doesn't become complex because of lawyers.  The law became more detailed because society became vastly more complex and interdependent.  Therefore rules and the interpretation of rules grows.

For example, a couple hundred years ago you as the buyer were responsible for telling if a horse you were buying was healthy and sane.  Why?  Because it was relatively straight forward to test and tell rapidly.  So there was almost not seller liability.  Today, you have absolutely no way to tell realistically is a product was designed properly for it's intended purpose.  You have to rely on the promise of the manufacturer that it is. Therefore liability transferred overtime as products became more complex.

Today we have an extremely big set on interdependencies in our societies.  There is necessarily going to be a need for a lot of parsing of rules.  Blaming attorneys is like blaming electricians because we have a lot of wires connecting our electronic equipment together.

[Ge_Whiz]

Anybody wanna defend politicians?  :lol:

[LivingDeadPunk]

The pic is unbelievable  :shock:
In one hand, it is the most blantant ripp off I've ever seen, even colors are similar. In the other hand, I remember when I was 15 and at this time I would have been verry happy to get dirt cheap FX pedals.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Anybody wanna defend politicians?  :lol:

I'm happy to defend SOME politicians, but only if the thread moves to the OT zone. Sometimes politicians get the electors they deserve :wink: