I got back into playing/recording in 2001. Got a Tascam 788, enjoyed it. Not cheap then, but well made.
Got a DBX 286 pre. Cheap and good, solidly built.
Got a Marshall V67 mic. Cheap and good. Solidly built.
Got a Behringer guitar DI box. Cheap and OK. Built-in amp effect worthless.
Got
a Behringer Ultra-DI four-channel direct box for my piano and such. Hissy as hell at line level.
Then I stopped buying Behringer.
It is bad enough that their literature wallows in romantic descriptions of "sleepless nights" spent designing the masterpiece you are currently holding in your hands, when it is so often a ripped-off design, mass-produced in China.
Yes, I know my Marshall mic is also made in China; however I know WHERE it is made, in a factory outside Peking called (I believe the 777 Factory, I don't have the exact number in my head now.)
Someone at a convention made a point of asking the Beh reps if any of their gear was manufactured in prison factories (and believe me, the Chinese treatment of prison labor is downright 15th century.)
The reps refused to answer. "No Comment."
The best laugh ever over their gear came when they put out the 'Vintage' series of pres and processors, with the cute round window for the tubes to be shown...
And then it was discovered that the 'glow from the tube' actually came from a small bulb behind it...talk about theater.
Uli Behringer is an educated man with an engineering degree and I belive he is also a trained pianist. That said, the number of lawsuits against the company for stealing designs should speak volumes in itself.
And that "No Comment"....
I now have a Tascam 2488 and a Studer 807 reel-to-reel.
The 4-channel direct box still sits in the corner, and I will be damned if it will ever have XLR Intercourse
with the Studer; the boys in Zurich would send a hit man for me if they heard of such...
Best,
C