Auuk!!! I ordered a Behringer???

  • Thread starter Thread starter John McGhie
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John McGhie

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Last week I ordered a Behringer T1953 Tube Ultragain Pre-amp from Musicians Friend. The specs "looked" very good and yes, I was taken by the Groovy Retro look. I also like the simplicity because sometimes I have to have other people run my levels when I'm playing drums. I own a Behringer headphone amp and am very satified with it.

THEN I went online and did some searching about Behringer. Comments were on the line of "nice boat anchors", "hisses like a witch" and something about "Chinese people being beaten with bamboo while soldering". I had pretty much decided on a Midiman M3 for my next pre-amp, but was swayed at the last moment (did I mention it has this really groovy front pannel???)

Enough said. I know Musicians Friend is real good about returning stuff, but is this particular unit a dog too? Have you seen those knob???

O.K. Thrash away.... -John
 
Hey man, you never know! Give it a go and let us know what kind of perf you get out of the unit!
 
If MF will take it back, why not see for yourself and THEN send it back? :D

I bought the Behringer DI box and was disappointed but not enough to want to take it back given the price of the unit.

It's good enough for who it's for. I'll use it to run a bass track into the board during a scratch track recording. So long as it's not too noisy to distract the drummer who is listening to it to keep the band in time while recording the drums in isolation my $35 wasn't poorly spent.

A pre-amp on the other hand is usually gonna be used to record stuff that will end up on your recording. I'd be a little more picky.
 
Depends on who you ask, but most of the jeers were for the mixers which still have a big question mark. I am curious of one thing whether its a starved plate design or a true tube gain stage. And the tubes make a big difference so before you return it you should try a few diferent ones in the path. I know Mullard tubes make a big diference.
 
Cool! Thanks for the responces. I have an Aphex 107 an ART DI/O and a bunch of Audio Buddies I can test this against. I'll post when I know more.

BUT If anyone out there has already tested this or has had a bad experience, let me know. I don't want to be re-inventing the wheel when I could be doing funner stuff in the studio.

The tubes in this (according to the spec) are "selected" 2AX7 tubes. I'm guessing this is the size/style and not the manufacture. Are the Mullard tubes expensive? Not sure If I want to dump too much money into a $200 Behringer.

Thanks again...

-John
 
The Behringer preamps are supposed to be OK. And how hard can it be? Good cheap preamp designs have been around forever.
 
I don't have that particular unit, but I have a lot of Behringer gear. No problems here. My impression is: when people bash Behringer it's either because they compare it to gear that costs several times as much or because they see Behringer-bashing as a way to position themseves as a "pro". There's no cheaper way to feel professional than buying a small Behringer mixer @ $99 and not liking it. In public.
Also, my feeling is that it doen't help that the company is Germany-based and has their units made in China. Hence the "Chinese people being beaten with bamboo while soldering" remark that you found on the web. Of course, this is pure nonsense, but common clichés and prejudices seem to render stuff like that credible, somehow. I don't think I've ever read stuff like this about other companies like Samson etc. who have their stuff made in China as well, probably in the very same factories.

Anyway, from what I've heard, the Tube Ultragain is pretty decent, nothing more and nothing less. Big studios won't trade their Neves, Avalons, whatever for it, but what do you expect. It's not really a tube device, either. The pre itself is solid state, there's a separate tube stage after the pre to create additional harmonics. Just like in any other low cost "tube" pre.
 
I have the Tube Composer T1952, and the Tube stage just adds a bit high-end sparkle. But not really the smoothest sparkle. The unit CAN get noisy...I tried to track a female jazz-vocalist once with a jazzcombo, but in the quieter passages the noise was too much. I basically use it to fatten up my drumcomputer. Instead of picking the 'already compressed' drumsamples, I take the most 'rehearsalroom' sounding drumsamples and make 'em bigger with the Tube Composer.
For clean guitars directly it works nicely too, but if you put ANY distortion pedal in front of it, it will hiss too much...
Basically, for under $200 it's o.k., but it's nowhere near anything double the price. (or a $600 Peavey VMP-2 for that matter, which is a REAL tube design, not a starved plate one, like the whole Behringer-Tube series..)
 
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