Behringer have just announced a huge new range of stompboxes. The Boss-'inspired' pedals are £15 or £22 (for a digital delay or reverb). The Electro-Harmonix 'inspired' ones are £31, as are the Sansamp-'inspired' DI Boxes. Those prices are incredible, as is their use of phrases like "sound was modeled after Electro-Harmonix® Big Muff®" on the website. I imagine they have good lawyers, and that Uli Behringer thinks of his company as the Ikea of music technology. But Ikea design their own furniture. That said, this is probably new-ish technology. What they've presumably done is create a basic digital effects circuit (not too different from the Digital Stompbox). Every pedal probably has the same innards, with a different ROM chip, different knobs and a different colour box. Whatever you say about Behringer, I really wish they'd been around selling £22 digital delay pedals when I was 14.
Don't feel too sorry for Boss. Their new GT-8 looks awfully familiar.
ReplyDeleteI've just noticed that the pedals are actually the same colour as their Boss equivalents:
ReplyDeleteBoss Acoustic Simulator = Lemon Yellow
Behringer Acoustic Modeller = Lemon Yellow
Boss Compression Sustainer = Blue with white type
Behringer Compressor Sustainer = Blue with white type
That really is pretty cheeky.
Re: Don't feel too sorry for Boss. Their new GT-8 looks awfully familiar.
ReplyDeleteSure, it looks a lot like the POD XT, but it looks much more like the GT-6, GT-6B. It's also very similar to the GT-5 and the ME-50.
re: Don't feel too sorry for Boss. Their new GT-8 looks awfully familiar.
ReplyDeleteThe Pod XT pedalboard is a new product, only a few months old. Boss has been making guitar pedalboards for years. If anything, the design influence went from Boss to Line6. It's not a direct copy anyway, unlike the Behringer Boss copies, which are blatant.
Roland is suing Behringer in the United States for infringment of ntellectual property rights. A posting on the Roland US website accuses Behringer of replicating 'the distinctive features' of Roland's Boss pedals 'with such painstaking detail that the Behringer pedals are nearly indistinguishable from the Boss pedals'
ReplyDeleteI do think they were a bit silly making the boxes look so "Boss-Like". That's probably the only area that Roland can use to sue them.
ReplyDeleteIf the insides were the same but they designed the boxes not to look like anything else then there most likely wouldn't have been an issue.
Knowing Behringer, they probably have managed to be very good at replicating the sounds and features, but unless they used identical circuit boards and parts there is nothing Roland can do about that. The look and identity however is a different story.
Maybe I'll just have to be really quick to grab mine before Roland can do anything about it!
I like Behringer for having "The Nerve" I mean, who honestly wouldn't get a buzz form buying a $10 Rolex copy from a dodgy market, and kidding your smart-ass friends? I could buy any of those pedals! Shame about the lawsuit...
ReplyDeleteI just found out about this product line. I agree in that some cases, Behringer is really asking for trouble. But then there's the PB100, see here
ReplyDelete,which is something BOSS should have been making for years already.
All I want to know is where's the Slow Gear knock off?
UPDATE! Check the colors - just a few posts up where Tom lists them side by side (Acoustic Simulator=Lemon yellow..)
ReplyDeleteThe Behringers have changed their colors now.
Behringer has a unique business model: Zero R&D costs. Just copy successful gear. Imagine if everyone followed that model! We'd have all the great music technology we had in 1901.
ReplyDeleteThey've copied Boss, EH, Mackie, Tech21, G&K, and many others. Their stuff is cheaper not only because they steal designs, but because they build it cheaper.
As much as I dislike the sleaziness of many of the companies who manufacture musical equipment I have to say that if you choose to use crappy sounding or cheapo gear you deserve the sound you get.
ReplyDeleteBehringe pedals are NOT dirt cheap! The other brands pedals are just way overpriced that's all is to it.
ReplyDeleteDo you realize that for the prive of one "cheap" Behringer pedal you can also buy a portable stereo, mp3 player, transistor radio, tape recorder etc etc??? There is more components in these than in a pedal.
Behringer isn't cheap, it has a normal price compare to rip offs like the crap stuff from Boss.
"Behringe pedals are NOT dirt cheap! The other brands pedals are just way overpriced that's all is to it.
ReplyDeleteDo you realize that for the prive of one "cheap" Behringer pedal you can also buy a portable stereo, mp3 player, transistor radio, tape recorder etc etc??? There is more components in these than in a pedal.
Behringer isn't cheap, it has a normal price compare to rip offs like the crap stuff from Boss."
So, are we forgetting the whole
high-sales/manufacturing = reduced costs in manufacturing per unit thing? Because, in a grotesquely simplified way, that's how this sort of works..see.
Now, if the whole world owned a Boss Noise Suppressor (and it was housed in plastic), and maybe only like, I don't know, 80,000 people, worldwide, owned a clock radio (housed in metal). Maybe you'd have a point.
I have used many pedals to try and find a good sound. These have ranged from cheap (Behringer)to not so cheap (BOSS). The best pedal by far has been the Electro Harmonix double muff. I don't feel these are that expensive taking into account the build quality, they are bomb proof. The thing that gets me is no matter where you buy from on-line you will pay at leadt £5 postage. That up's the cost by 1/3. If you buy from a shop on the high street the postage cost is in the price (£30-£40 on-line plus £5-£7 postage in the shops they are £35-£50). There seems to be a real ebay culture of just charging huge shipping cost these days. It's kind of like how people expect you to tip. I know when I posted my BOSS overdrive pedal it cost £1.75 2 class post. It got to the guy in 3 days.
ReplyDeleteI think behringer are great especially for price. Their new models brought out this year include copies of many vintage discontinued boss pedals that cost ALOT on ebay for the originals. And a tube powered distortion pedal or a memory man clone for $129 is good enough for me. With a bit of alteration I was very happy with my hellbabe and like it at least as much if not more then my dad's dunlop crybaby reissue (mainly because of its versatility)
ReplyDeletewah, wahh, the music snobs got what they deserved for a change. The mind of a music snob is shackled by so-called morals (like a slave) to giant companies who they feel they owe their livelihood to them because they are "great pioneers". If this kind of attitude was consistent in history, all records and cd's would be Edison brand, like the old wax cylinders. There's your 1901 technology. Sorry to say, but some technologies peak long before knock offs occurr, that's just the facts, jack.
ReplyDelete