Here are some of my experiences.
Everything is used in my smokeless homestudio only and I also take care of wiping dust / using decksavers or something similar.
TD-3: The resonance knob was scratching after a cpl of months. Repair took 4 months (sent in via Thomann)
RD-8: First of the 16 sequencer buttons only worked occasionally after a cpl of months. Repair took 3 months (sent in via Thomann)
RD-6: Fine for now (a year old)
UMC 1820: Fine, had it for 2 yrs before selling it
ADA 8200: Fine, still having it since 2.5 yrs
X-Touch one: Fine, but sold
Monitor2USB: Feels very good, but the power unit is not 100 % quiet
Crave: almost fine, one knob was not sitting in line with the others, sold
Deepmind 12 D: Felt very sturdy, nothing to complain about, sold it nevertheless
Guess that is all my recent Behringer gear.
Oh, just on a sidenote: A lot of B-gear (e.g. RD-8, X-Touch) does not stand even on the table. And I am pretty sure it is not my desktop because nothing else wobbles.
I have a little B rackmount mixer that I use as a submix/router for all my synths. Basically just run everything through at unity gain and mute and unmute as needed. Works perfectly, adds or subtracts nothing. Build quality is great.
Also have an ADA8200 as an ADAT utility I/O for my Apollo. Same thing, works great for it’s purpose and built well.
I’ve never used any B synths, but I’ve been eyeballing the Neutron.
I will also add that 2 of my favorite synths right now are the Quadrantid Swarm and MEGAfm. Both of those have build quality that is probably only 70% as good as anything Behringer and I love them, dearly.
Owner of a Deepmind 12D and a BCF2000.
Both built like tanks and serving their purposes. BCF2000 used in MMC (?) mode with reaper, pretty handy (and noisy ).
I think the Deepmind is a great poly for the price.
Nothing to complain about here
Two years ago I was a Behringer snob and refused to buy anything from them. Then I bought a Neutron, then a TD-3, some modular pieces, a Crave, and I have got my eye on the 2600. Quality varies and expect to dig in and adjust the oscillators. This is typical on most analogs. They DO NOT have the autotune circuitry that later poly analogs had. There are some nice upgrades on some Behringer devices, like being able to attach the TD-3 to a computer to program patterns. I do find some of their choices a bit questionable, like using S-Trig or CV that is not 1V per octave on some units. I would choose compatibility over authenticity.
There was a time when I was buying a lot of Moog and Sequential, thinking myself too good for Behringer. Then I started noticing what I was buying. Almost every Moog I’ve bought over the past 40 years has had issues. The DSI/Sequential units were not much better. People talk about poor Behringer products, but American made synths like Moog and DSI seem to be worse in my experience. At one point I owned 5 DSI units. Now all of the DSI and Moog are gone. The 5 DSI units replaced by 6 Elektron boxes. The Moogs replaced by Roland and Korg. No longer do I feel any guilt in buying Behringer. And if I need to calibrate my TD-3 or Eurorack oscillators, I know it is the price I pay for getting them so cheap.
that’s wild. exactly the opposite of my experience with these two brands. dating back to 2003, I’ve owned: desktop Evolver, Evolver keys, Prophet 08, Prophet Rev2, Prophet 5 rev4, OB6, DFAM, Mother32, Little Phatty, Voyager, Matriarch, Grandmother, and pretty much every Moogerfooger. and probably some more I’m forgetting… the only issue out of all of those I’ve ever experienced was a screw mounting the spring reverb inside the Grandmother broke off in shipment. they repaired it free of charge within a week, and paid for shipping both ways.
I don’t doubt it. Different people have different experiences. Here is my list of Moogs…
MiniMoog Model D purchased new around 1980. Oscillator 2 would NOT stay in tune. I could tune it before a song and it would be out by the time I took a solo. Turns out this was a common problem with the MiniMoogs.
MemoryMoog - I bought one of the first. This synth was plagued with problems. I was luckier than most, but I spent 3 hours every Sunday tuning each of the 18 oscillators for tune, range and scale. I was a full time working keyboardist and I had to do this for the MemoryMoog to be usable. I never had to do this with my Rhodes Chroma. But, I was luckier than most. Keyboard Magazine had an article about how the new owners of Moog rushed it into production before it was ready and many users were overwhelmed with problems. Bob Moog, who had left the company by then, said it was not ready for production and had too many issues that needed to be resolved.
Moog Source - Wanted to do it’s own thing. Would change patches and play notes without me touching it. Never found a service person that could do anything with it and I had to retire it. It was so bad I could not even sell it. 20 years later I found an article about how to fix this common problem. Seems that substandard connections for the brain would corrode enough to make it go crazy. You have to pull the chip and clean all of the connections, both on the chip and the board. But, no one knew this at the time. They would pull the chip, it would look fine, and the would put it back and look for the problem elsewhere.
MoogerFoogers - I owned 4. With age and use they start falling apart. Lots of people have had this issue. I’m guessing some of the workers did really substandard construction while others did a great job.
Voyager 1 - My first Voyager worked well. No issues at all. It was one with blue lights and wheels. Only 128 patch memory. I never sent it in for the expansion.
Voyager 2 - My second Vorager, a fire red model with red lights and wheels. Thought it would be cool to have a fire red and ice blue sitting next to each other. It was in the middle of a batch with bad circuit boards. That made it very hard to sell.
Only Behringer synth I have is the Neutron and although the build seemed fine at first (outside of the printing on the metal plate looking really cheap) the filter knob went scratchy and wonky in less than 6 months with fairly minimal use. Fastest I’ve ever had a knob crap out on me. I think the synth was very cleverly designed and is as original as pretty much anything else (I love how the drive section also functions as an EQ). Really good for drones and soundtracky stuff. I’m not into how they’re forcing all their synths into this form factor though (nor was into how Roland and Korg do it with the Boutiques and Volcas).
well I was mainly speaking of “modern Moog.” or within the last 20 years, basically.
Minimoog Model D, I’ve had similar experiences with tuning for one I owned. another I had was very stable (but less pretty!). not sure if this was a lack of maintenance thing or what; they were 30+ years old then, with unknown service history. yeah Memorymoog had some design issues from the beginning which allegedly now you can have fully resolved and it’s supposed to be super stable after. also my Moogerfoorgers were not “Big Briar” era, so it may be different than yours.
I remember working at a repair shop when I was really young. A Roland D-50 came and had an issue with notes only playing when you released a key (rather than on press).
The shop owner said that he’d seen that problem lots of times and couldn’t find a fix. I decided to troubleshoot it anyway. I discovered it was related to a bad RAM chip. Found a replacement and fixed it.
He started calling all of the people he sent away in the past to see if they still had their D-50’s. Quite a few had sold them for parts, so you’re not alone in that.
Also had a CS-80 in there for a while for a restoration, what monster wire mess that was! I don’t think I’d ever want to own one after working on one.
I think B got tired of being know as the “junk” company and upped their QC quite a bit.
I have the Deepmind 12 and absolutely love it. However, I completely forgot to register it so I didn’t get the 3 year warranty. 2.75 years into it, the main encoder started slipping. I tried my damnedest to get Behringer to help out but they wouldn’t. I’ve been waiting for the part for 3 months now. One shop offered to fix but it would cost around $200 total (with shipping). F#ck that.
I just deal for now and will wait for the part to try myself.
Super annoying but I guess it’s my own fault.
My TD-3 and 2600 have had zero issues so far.
But definitely one of my all-time favs - whatever kind of reverse engineering they made of the top-line Lexicon and TC, it was clearly very accurate (and, surely, infringing).
Currently having this and the Kurzweil Rumour as external units to complement the Elektrons and Prophet Xs fx.
On topic, I have to say that I’ve been using everything from the extremely old handmade German units to the new Blue Marvins and cannot say that any of the build qualities have been worse than competition, in any area.
haha. that is what people call the issue with the RIM and Clave volume being tooooo different in the sense that the clave is way louder than rim (or the other way around) which makes it difficult to switch while playing. I couldn’t care less…
The MS-1’s mod wheel in my local shop has been defeated by gravity. It is forever in a down position… that is the only Demo synth where I have seen it’s mechanicals fail…
I could see those pitch bend/mod sticks getting abused as a demo in a shop. Someone just starts yanking it all over the place. That goes for those types of mod sticks in general I think. But it’s something to keep in mind.
if we’re heading towards listing hardware with issues that ive had. ive bought a lot of new/2nd hand gear over the years. roland sh01a - new - dead on arrival. rokit 6 speaker - 2nd hand though it was basically unused - its making quite explosive dangerous bad splutter/glitch noises when i turn it on.barely used, dont want to buy anything from them since i checked out youtube and found they had a lot of quality issues with that particular speaker/range. digitakt - bought new on release - midi side of firmware was basically ‘add your own expletive here’ when it was released, shocking amount of bugs, froze repeatedly. and shouldnt have been released in that state… they actively avoided talking about it in the sonic state ‘exclusive’ … has since been resolved. an old octatrack 2nd hand - one of the buttons stopped working and a trig stopped but i replaced them (elektron sent me free replacements i think) dreadbox nyx 2nd hand - had tuning/power issues but dreadbox fixed and returned it for free. blofeld 2nd hand - encoders were a bit wobbly
so far i’ve had less/no worse issues with behringer than other companies.
Model d - no issue
Pro one - no issue
Neutron - power switch problem
Td3 - no issue
Never really had many issues with other gear over the years , but had to sort out encoders with elektron a few times !though I didn’t really keep th3 behringer stuff in my house for to long, my lust seemed to go elsewhere haha
V-Amp Pro - new - Intermittent digital noise on the output. Rejected as defective. Eurorack Pro (x2) - new and used - little else fit the bill at the time. No issues. Ultrapatch Pro (x2) - new and used - No issues. UtraGain - new - ADAT used to expand a MOTU 828. No issues.
Came with other purchases but never used:
Virtualizer Pro
Composer Pro XL
My experience:
The simple/utility items seem to have worked as expected and lasted.
The patchbays allow easy configuration without opening up. Samson produce one with the config on the front panel, but it’s not the sort of thing you regularly need to change.
The line mixers, I’ve outgrown, but they were useful (so if I needed them again, I’d bring back into service)
Nothing feels built like a tank, but there’s also far worse build quality out there.
Always a little scared when racking things up that the sharp(ish) edges might slice my hands, but it’s never actually happened.
I’d have no issue with purchasing more patchbays or ADAT expanders in future.
I’ve not bought one of their synths yet…not had a reason to, but would be wary to purchase anything too pricey given the increased complexity vs experience with V-Amp Pro
I bought the Boog D second hand and there’s no problem so far, great sound (but I haven’t used it much tbh as I’ve discovered - after the fact - a few things B did I didn’t really appreciate).
I’ve had a few pieces of their gear over the years. There was a time when I wouldn’t have deigned to run my signal through anything of theirs but they’ve come up to more or less usable levels (or better) in most cases it seems.
1820 interface - no issues, still use it.
Boog model D - no issues, sounded great, sold it because it was redundant in my setup.
RV600 stereo reverb pedal- I have two of these. Bought them on a whim, $15 for the pair. Surprisingly good though not amazing. No issues.
Some small mixer, I don’t remember the model. 10 channels, battery powered. Was given to me. No build quality issues but sounded terrible, and not in a charming characterful way like the old boss mixers. It was unusable. It was also far older than the other things I’ve listed here.
All in all I’ve had good experiences with their gear from a reliably standpoint. So much so that I’m considering their powered 18” sub for fill in a band setting.
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