I've just bought a mini mixer from Behringer for my keyboards. £69 and it's built like a tank. A nice sturdy metal case and loads of well thought out features!

I've never known any of the Behringer products I, or any of my friends own, go wrong. I am still using a Behringer rack mount compresser from about 10 years back.

I don't see what's so wrong with these pedals. People have been imitating Fenders and Gibsons for years, amps are copied and even modelled to be exact sound alikes. It's nothing new.

However - you'll never see a pro guitarist with a Shine Telecaster Copy. He'd be using the real thing...

Likewise, if you are a discerning professional, or semi-pro guitarist then you'd invest £100 in a Boss.

BUT if you are a 12 year old kid who just wants to add a phaser to his sound (an encore strat copy going through a 10 watt practice amp) then this is ideal.

When I was a kid I bought the cheapest pedals I could get away with - just so I had those elusive sounds. OK I didn't really mind the noise and the flimsyness. As long as I could get those wooshy noises and muddy echoes I was in guitar heaven!

All valid points above for and against and all points in between and so on but ... why make them look like the Boss pedals? This is what's objectionable not that they're cheap or that they do the same even. If Behringer were confident of selling them on their own merits there'd be no need to make them look like they do.

And if they're made of plastic then they're just hilarious! If you want Boss pedals buy Boss pedals. If you want cheap pedals buy cheap pedals. But if you want cheap pedals that look like Boss pedals ... get a life!

Jim

Quote BigAl:

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It's a virtual shop.

Behringer do allow people on tight budgets to get into music & recording and that's fine with me.

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An excellent point - and in the long term perhaps other companies (such as BOSS) will understand and reap the benefits of this!

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Nick

Good design costs money; it takes time and effort to build a repution. Boss has shelled out on both over the years. Why should Behringer be allowed to reap someone elses reward with a photocopier? Theft is theft. [ ****** ] 'em!



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If money is the root of all evil, what is money squared?

Quote Stonehousestudio:

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I've broken Tons of Boss pedals over the last 15-20 years and had to bin them (SD-1, DD3,CE-2 and CE-1),

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Impressive! Those Boss pedals are pretty heavy duty pieces of kit. I wonder how many of the Buttranger pedals you'll go through, then?



Some people are harder on equipment than others. Like drummers who constantly break cymbals. I've never broken a cymbal in my life -- even in my hardest hitting days.

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Scott
--Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

Quote Scottdru:

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I've never broken a cymbal in my life -- even in my hardest hitting days.

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You lose points for not trying hard enough. That's just not rock'n'roll!


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If money is the root of all evil, what is money squared?

I've known several cymbal breaking drummers in my time....

they all had the very self same good excuse....

They were working with me.






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if you don't know who i am, i aint gonna tell you.

To be honest i cant think offhand of a Boss FX pedal i couldn't name you a better built, better thought out, better sounding alternative to.. Boss to me, are the M&S of footpedals slightly overpriced and nowt special.

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nibbled to death by an Okapi http://www.soundclick.com/tubilahdog

Quote ibliss:

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I do think that BOSS pedals have always been too expensive. Having said that, they never really break, do they...

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you just answered your own point. ive got boss pedals that still perform as good as the day i bought them 10 years ago, from a second hand shop.

and their fuzz pedals f**king rock.

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Statick Audio

Quote Scottdru:

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Some people are harder on equipment than others. Like drummers who constantly break cymbals. I've never broken a cymbal in my life -- even in my hardest hitting days.

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f**k me ive broken 6 or 7 cymbals so far... and it always been the pricier ones that go too, the cheap s**t seems to last forever... like its some kind of curse !

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Statick Audio

I broke some cymbals as well!
... and I'm not even a drummer

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if it's here when we get back, it's ours

Apparently there has been a reply from Behringer International.

Probably one of many sources

http://www.mmrmagazine.com/news.html

From the above link:

"We intend to vigorously defend our right to offer good products at affordable prices"


If only the right that this wish to so vigorously defend was then actually reflected in the quality of their products... I'm sure Behringer will sell a mass of these pedals but if the quality is as high as previous mixers etc that were owned temporarily by me then I foresee a huge pile of duff distortion pedals by the year 2007 in landfill sites everywhere. I hope Behringer lose this case heavily.

The desire to partake in "Rip Off Britian" must be particularly ingrained in some.

If cheaper Pedals is Capitalism i am all for it.

I cant wait to power them up and put them through their paces,even do a little comparative analysis with my scopes.

I don't think Rip Off Britain even vageuly compares to Behringer's policy of "Rip Off Asian Workers Making Our Pedals for a disgraceful "wage" so we can undercut our competitors and make Uli Behringer some more cash". Perhaps some people approve of the Wal-Mart technique of business so they can then go out and buy more pedals on the cheap: I don't. Cheaper doesn't mean better, something Behringer have consistently proven over the years.

Quote Thefairwayband:

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I don't think Rip Off Britain even vageuly compares to Behringer's policy of "Rip Off Asian Workers Making Our Pedals for a disgraceful "wage" so we can undercut our competitors and make Uli Behringer some more cash". Perhaps some people approve of the Wal-Mart technique of business so they can then go out and buy more pedals on the cheap: I don't. Cheaper doesn't mean better, something Behringer have consistently proven over the years.

---

Check where your other budget recording gear, TV, HiFI, Mobile etc is made....
It's nearly ALL made in china and for your info, the behringer plant is one of the better ones, but I guess you did your homework...

Boss are made in Taiwan. I suppose they get paid MUCH better than behringer workers?

Personally I think it was dumb of them to do mock ups that look like boss, but knocking behringer on the ANCIENT theory that they are bad employees is wrong.

Most companies are bad employees and just interested in profit.
And PS: Britain is a HUGE rip off....

Quote Marto:

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I've just bought a mini mixer from Behringer for my keyboards. £69 and it's built like a tank. A nice sturdy metal case and loads of well thought out features!

---

I thought my little UB802 felt pretty solidly built when I first bought it too. The problem for me was after about a year and a half of light use at home (the first 9 months of which it sat in its box unused but for a couple of sessions), I found I had 10 defective or loose pots on the mixer.

It would have cost me more to fix or replace these pots than to buy a new one -- for the cost of the two Buttrangers (or less), I could easily have bought a better quality mixer that would not have gone tits up on me. These are designed to be disposable mixers. You don't fix them, you just throw them away and get a new one.

Again, the pots felt very solid at the beginning, but the problem is that they are cheap pots that are simply soldered to the circuit board, rather than attached to the surface of the mixer and then wired into the circuit board. So all of the stress gets put on the pot and the solder joints. They may feel fine at first, but after time they may not feel like they did when they were new.

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Scott
--Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

Mr Morley, did I hit a strangely personal element within you? I certainly didn't intend to, honest!

-The Behringer stuff I owned either broke, was sold or will be sold. I've used some of their mixers, compressors, pre-amps and the quality factor has been lacking compared to other budget elements such as the small Yamaha mixer I have now. The poor quality of much of Behringer's gear coupled with their flagrant policy of ripping other people's designs off is why I criticse them. I own no Boss pedals, I have around four pedals and went the boutique US pedal route simply because they sound a squillion times better. My Analogman compressor was expensive but will still work when I'm dead, that I'm sure of, and it sounds incredible.

-As part of my personal campaign of less waste and general consumption, I adopted the policy last year of buying only secondhand possessions whenever possible and no wasteful spending, be it music gear or clothes. I view Behringer as being cheap and wasteful, something that it's easier to throw something away rather than repair it because it's cheaper to do so. That doesn't fit in with my environmental viewpoint therefore another reason not to buy them.

-I admit to being a hippy in every single way

-I slate Behinringer for producing some awful products but I also wrote to Gibson after playing some of their new 335 guitars. That sort of price for a supposedly superior 'US' guitar is unjustified as the quality is lacking. It's perhaps at the different end of the economic and manufacturing spectrum but the end result is a product that is poor quality.

-As someone who moved from Britain to Canada well over two years ago and who has spent some time in the US, I feel that the Rip Off Britain idea is nothing compared to the exploitation that goes on within the lower waged elements of society in both the US and Canada. For example, does your UK bank charge you for taking out money from a cash machine even when you're safely in the black? Free banking over here isn't like free banking in the UK. A year ago for a university essay I took the average Toronto wage and living costs and compared them to the average Bristol wage and living costs (unfair to compare TO to London, economically it's better to compare TO to Bristol) and it is more expensive to live in Toronto than Bristol in terms of taxation, rental, salary differences and day to day living costs. It's too easy to say that Britain is a rip off because, for example, monitors cost more in the UK than they do in the US but I don't hear anyone saying Britain's decent for introducing a minimum wage that has cosistently increased since its introduction. The minimum wage for Toronto has gone up around 50 cents (less than 25 pence) per hour in the last seven years and currently stands at around about 3 quid 20 pence per hour (UK equivalent). Rental prices have increased by over 40% in the same period, property tax has consistently gone up over the period. High-end audio products aren't cheaper in Canada than the UK, for example something like the Roland VS2480 is more expensive. Software is generally the same, monitors slightly cheaper but outboard gear is often more expensive. Ordering from sources in the US is hard as many dealers have arrangements with companies like Roland not to sell outside of the US. Even if you do order from the US, Canadian customs will slap on 15% in sales tax.

Sorry to go off on one but this perpetual myth that Britain is being shafted whilst everyone overseas gets it so much better isn't true. Living in North America does open your eyes to how capitalism and commercialism has affected society, in Canada the socialist elements regularly clash with the capitalist elements. Living out here without free health coverage as I had with the NHS makes you appreciate the hospitals so much more. I'm not aiming at you personally Mr Morley but reading comments on the BBC website about Rip Off Britain made by people complaining about their jeans being a tad more expensive than the US pisses me off beyond belief. Perhaps those people would like to trade off having cheaper jeans against a lower wage whilst they work for Wal-Mart?

So please accept my apologies if I did get to you personally Mr Morley, it wasn't meant to!

Andy.

Edited by Thefairwayband (09/03/05 09:17 PM)

Sorry, I got carried away.
Your heartfelt apologies are accepted
Seriously, I just hear non stop about behringer and they are no better or worse than many other companies, but they are an easy target.
Personally I have a couple of their pieces that I got for free in a deal and I have never used them...but I have used gear and I preffered it to equivalently priced gear.
Re Britain, I think it is a rip off country in lots of cases.
I understand about minimum wages being a factor, but when you can buy things online from anywhere in europe (that thing the UK is meant to belong too) for a lot less and generally with better service in my experience, it does imply something is wrong.
I didn't mean to attack, but I am touchy re behringer because despite not being bothered either way; it takes the pressur of other companies who are equally as bad at copying or "borrowing" ideas.
Put it this way. Imagine if in music it was wrong to be influenced by other musicians or bands. Music wouldn't evolve. All Boss have to do is just make a better product and compete. Same as Gibson should do, but they prefer to have VERY high prices and slam the competition.
Companies should focus on making the best gear they can and making it as affordable as possible. May the best man win.
(take a deep breath Morley and sit down! )

Quote Thefairwayband:

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Mr Morley, did I hit a strangely personal element within you? I certainly didn't intend to, honest!
BIG SNIP
So please accept my apologies if I did get to you personally Mr Morley, it wasn't meant to!

Andy.

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http://www.davidmorley.com

I totally forgot about this thread! Bring it back from the dead!

-Boss do make a better product though! You can say that the sound the Boss 'originals' make are better than the knockoff Behringers and that they're in a better quality shell. Why should Boss do more R & D to release a better product when Behringer nick the sound, nick the concept, nearly nick the cosmetics and place it ina naff plastic shell? Behringer aren't trying to release a better product, they're trying to release something that will appeal to the cheaper end of the market where considerations like durability don't feature in. I can see this pedals going to the consumer who's bought their first guitar: consequently, maybe 50% of those consumers won't carry on in a year's time and their gear will be on Ebay.

-Gibson are poor in other ways for charging high prices for poorly made product. I saw many shonky Gibsons out in Toronto, new guitars for a lot of dollars that weren't worth it. Every guitar I own now bar a Korean DeArmond and Korean Epi Dot was constructed in Japan, somewhere that puts a real premium on quality. Obviously there is a lengthy history of Japanese manufacturers stealing designs (the whole Lawsuit saga etc) but they did show Fender and Gibson for what they were in the 1970s: lax, lazy, happy to churn out some real junk in exchange for top dollar.

-

Quote:

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Re Britain, I think it is a rip off country in lots of cases.
I understand about minimum wages being a factor, but when you can buy things online from anywhere in europe (that thing the UK is meant to belong too) for a lot less and generally with better service in my experience, it does imply something is wrong.

---

You have to take more than minimum wage into consideration. If a country has a high rate of income tax, will the manufacturer lower the RRP to reflect the reduced spending power in the consumer wallet? Many Scandinavian countries have higher income tax rates than us. They may have cheaper guitar pedals but do they retain as much of their pay packet as we do? I don't hold with the Rip Off Britain idea because it's usually discussed on a very simplistic level, as my brother did the other night moaning about how much income tax he pays for his 20K job... I told him to go and lok at how much people paid in the early 1970s and left it at that.

Andy.

here's the point about behringer and any other inexpensive kit: it's not that you necessarily get what you pay for when you buy expensive gear (we've all been ripped off, and i agree w/t earlier post about the custom shop pre-distressed gtrs) but what is almost certainly true in this vale of tears is that YOU DON'T GET WHAT YOU DON'T PAY FOR!!!

behind every con-man and every 'too good to be true' is the fact that some people think they can beat the system, that they can get something for nothing.

a new manufacturer may price its wares aggressively to get its brand known and gain market share, but an established manufacturer won't sell its products for less than its competitors unless it's inferior gear. this is basic capitalism, folks.

btw, i *do* buy the off-market brands in the supermarket 'cause most of it is made by the majors who make it to keep their factories running and sell it to tescos or whoever for a deep discount. but, until someone shows me that boss is actually making behringer pedals or mackie is making behringner mixers, i'll pass.

cue the music, and now for the die-hard behringer rebuttals...

d

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"Patsy had the drug tolerance of Keith Richards and the moral rectitude of Brian Jones." - Dr. Walter Bishop, "Fringe"

Quote:

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don't think Rip Off Britain even vageuly compares to Behringer's policy of "Rip Off Asian Workers Making Our Pedals for a disgraceful "wage" so we can undercut our competitors and make Uli Behringer some more cash". Perhaps some people approve of the Wal-Mart technique of business so they can then go out and buy more pedals on the cheap: I don't. Cheaper doesn't mean better, something Behringer have consistently proven over the years.

---

that's a rinsed comment i reckon, and i reckon also Behringer are actualy gonna come out of this on top because.... they started in china years ago, they've had years to iron out teething problems, and their stuff seems to get better & better, whereas companies like Mackie now just starting to manufacture in china will have to go thru all that bedding-in from scratch. You watch, it'll be like Jap cars & Bikes in the 70's - utter rustbucket junk, but VERY cheap, and by selling cheap & copying european design styling a bit they grew and grew, and improved their quality until they annihilated many countries car/bike industries.

btw, i bet the chinese arent winging much

I bought one of their cheap V-Amp 2'S for christmas just to have something to widdle thru of an evening while watching TV without bringing down the wrath of 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' ! - 69 quid, bloody great little unit for the money, with a nice baggie and footswitch all-in, you cant beat it. I even tried it at a gig thru a marshall rig, wasn't bad at all if you're careful with the treble settings on the V-Amp/Marshall and the gain/post settings on the Marshall.

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www.7161.com
Free online music space & Homepages

'Rinsed'? Is this some hip word I don't know or have my faculties finally got lost after hearing the word 'gnarly' so much recently?

I don't think they can be much comparison with Japanese. In the 1970s, there was the infamous lawsuit scenario with regard to guitars in which the Japanese companies showed how lax Fender and Gibson had become. There is a huge history of research and development that has come from Japan. Japanese Ibanez guitars could compare and exceed the quality of the Fenders and Gibsons they copied: this isn't the case with Chinese made guitars as yet. There isn't the same quality application there is with the Japanese luthiers.

How do you think it's good for cheap [ ****** ] products to flood the market? More landfill sites filled with more tasteless [ ****** ] that breaks easily? Way to go on the environmental front. Let's have nice modern production techniques pumping out copies of 70's fuzz pedals! Woo-hoo! Look at the development, the slow evolution there. Behringer may well laugh all the way to the bank if money is the only factor that drives you. When all production in Britain stops and the only people you speak to at your bank are based in a Chinese call centre, let's see if people agree that the drive to push production overseas is a good one.


And you can beat the V-Amp 2, you can beat it with a sharp stick, a pointy stick or a huge mother of a stick that transforms it into a twisted tattered hunk of blue plastic workmanship. I owned one for six months. Mmmm. Harsh digital sound. Stop it, you're making me wet

well whatever mate, lol -

Quote:

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How do you think it's good for cheap [ ****** ] products to flood the market? More landfill sites filled with more tasteless [ ****** ] that breaks easily?

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because it allows more kids to get into making music and home studio recording - a good thing cos it feeds the scene and means our hobby feild will continue

Quote:

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Behringer may well laugh all the way to the bank if money is the only factor that drives you. When all production in Britain stops and the only people you speak to at your bank are based in a Chinese call centre, let's see if people agree that the drive to push production overseas is a good one.

---

so you think it's just about the money why companies dont want British workers?

not cos they are attitude-riddled xenophobes who think they are somehow owed a living then?


dude, you'd better stop eating Turkey Twizzlers & learn to cook rice in a tin pot... soon!





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www.7161.com
Free online music space & Homepages

I still think most of you have misunderstood the situation.

Example:

My 11 year old son has a "Vintage" telecaster. It is made by a company flagrantly ripping off the design of a humble American company called Fender. It cost about £89. Roughly 10 - 15% of the price of a real Fender Strat. Strangely enough it sounds very similar and plays as good too.

How dare this unscrupulous company undermine and steal the design of Fenders unique model? hey? Hell I should take it back and go and buy my son a real Fender for £800 quid or whatever they are now.

Except - oh wait - a) he's just starting to learn guitar, and doesn't appreciate the subtle difference that 90% increase in price brings to the guitar. b) he may get bored and not continue, c) Knowing him, there's a possibility he will damage it through youthful excuberence or lack of care, and d) oh yes... I can't afford to buy myself an £800 Telecaster let alone one for a kid to play around with.

If he wants an overdrive pedal or a Flanger he will be getting a Behringer. It will cost £15. He may well pull the knobs off or try to rewire it after a year or so (I sure as hell did when I was a kid). Or do you guys think I should go and buy him a Boss? What do you think eh?

I think some of you have totally lost site of where you came from, or is it that you had so much money that it was never any object. Daddy can you buy me a Mesa Boogie as I can't possibly play this particular riff on this tatty old Soldano you bought me last month.

If there were no Fender and Gibson copies, you would have to play on really crappy looking "Woolworths" guitars that sound bad play bad and look bad. Hang - on... that reminds me of when I was just turning 13....


That was me in 1977. Spot the All valve triple rectifier amp my dad bought for me...

This is why this all winds me up so much. Because of the availability of good copies which really only started to appear in the early 80's. We, the less well off, have been able to get better and better gear. Better to the point where people like PRS are being sued by Gibson for making Les Paul copies at 1/3rd of the price and 15 times the quality. It has forced the named manufacturers to pull their lazy socks up.

What difference then if Behringer knocks off the Boss design? Boss have been resting on their laurels for years. Kids are very image conscious and want gear that looks the part as much as "sounds" the part.

I applaud Behringer as I do the guitar companys who can knock out a reasoble Les paul for £80, for bringing quality products at Tesco's prices. And for those who turn their noses up at Behringer and Boss in favour of £400 Boutique models. Then lucky you! Enjoy your caviar too, some of us have to earn a living.

Interesting complex of ideas on this thread !

so I may as well join in....

1. Kids in the west need cheap gear, so why the hell not...

2. ..'cos it's built like ****, and the only reason it's so cheap is because China can still pay it's workers a piss poor wage, while also polluting the whole country by burning brown coal stocks (and their miners die on a regular basis due to bad safety practice). Given that just about anything that's manufactured is now probably made cheaper in the far east, you may as well stop buying clothes, shoes, fridges, and anything else, if this worries you- and it does worry me. Second-hand is best, both because I'm skint, and buying new just adds to pollution etc

3. I don't give a toss if Boss are being ripped off- it's up to them to prove a theft of patent or design, that's capitalism.

4. It's almost impossible to disentangle all the quandaries about buying anything these days... at the moment the west is very happy to buy 'cheap' consumer goods that only seem that way due to existing differences in pay and conditions elsewhere- once those differences cease to exist,
(normally by wage costs rising through population pressure, though whether that'll happen in China as fast as in obviously 'capitalist' countries is debatable), the price differential goes with it, as wages and costs rise. It's likely that China will continue dodgy human rights practice and non-existent labour laws, purely to maintain it's price advantage. If you're happy with that, buy Chinese... as if we've got a choice !

5. It's arguable that none of this stuff is 'cheap' in the first place. Our entire society is predicated on the assumption of continuous economic growth while simultaneously ignoring a very basic fact- the planet is not infinite, and we've chewed our way through most of it's materials already. At the moment, the only way we can replicate the energy stored in oil by millions of years of photosynthesis is by maybe building a load more nuclear power plants, and there is no way we can replace metal ores etc, once they're mined.

So the idea that any of this stuff is cheap in the first place is predicated on the belief that whatever we pull out of the earth is 'free'. To quote the old hippies, it's not, you just stole it from your children...

6. Everyone in the west is living in a 'bubble' of apparent security and economic wellbeing that is going to get totally shafted over the next 50 years- so enjoy your cheapo pedals while you may- life is going to be very different, sooner rather than later, and we'll probably be looking back at threads like this and thinking...

"bloody idiots- why didn't we do something a bit more useful ?"

... and I think I'll do that right now- see signature- music can come later, I've got onion sets to plant first !

tomafd

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http://anotherfineday.bandcamp.com/ http://anotherfineday.co.uk http://apollomusic.co.uk

Quote martin-randle:

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Hang - on... that reminds me of when I was just turning 13....


That was me in 1977.

---

What's that guitar your playing. I ask because I have one just like it. It was my brothers but I nicked it - although it's completely knackered now.

Dude, you'd better jam the turkey twizzlers somewhere sharpish. You speak to a man who actively campaigns on the field of less waste, someone who's worked in at least two of the best restaurants in Toronto and someone who doesn't offer up caustioc opinion without demanding something back. Slinging back a gross food form popularised by that well-known political commentator Jamie Oliver will only cause offence (Yes I am joking) abotu the twizzlers. The rest is true).

Y'see, the defining line here is the idea of 'cheap'. A cheap guitar amp to me means something in the range of £200 to £300. A cheap guitar pedal to me means £50. £15 for a stompbox isn't cheap, £15 for a stompbox is something priced so low, the only way to get it that low is through construction that is as cheap as possible in a factory that pays as little as possible. Sure kids need cheap gear to get them through. When a Playstation game will set you back close to £50, does a £50 multifx unit by Zoom look expensive? No it doesn't. Does a £100 Marshall amp look expensive? No it doesn't. £15 for a stmpbox appeals to the crowd that always wants it cheaper. By saying that it'll let kids get into making music, you're basically agreeing with me anyway when I said that Behringer's aiming for the market that ain't sure, the market that might use it once or twice and then give up.

As for why companies don't want to use British workers... oh come on. You think America's shipping jobs overseas because of internal xenophobia? If so, please explain to me the proposals to give Mexican immigrants a wide variety of social and legal rights. How much more proof do you want of companies wanting the cheapest possible labour? In Britain we're still rather stupid about the concept. You may have seen the figures released recently about how many EU workers applied for permits to work in the UK: the government guessed at 13,000. The actual figure was 293,000. You have workers who want to come and companies willing to employ them.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4633880.stm


Martin, you're in the classic trap of believing that anyone who complains about cheap products is instantly a product of public school, someone who spunks the money given to them by their parents away on a variety of filth. Not in this case mate. My first guitar was a Squier Strat. Ma and Pa paid £50 for the downpayment, I paid the rest out of my sodding pocket money for four months. I put myself through university, I've lived on two different continents, I'm just about supporting a wife, I have nice little pedals and guitars and all this without one trust fund or a childhood exposed to wanton sodomy at public school. You make it sound like approving of cheap gear is a class issue, that the working classes can get it and the upper classes can go off and play with their Soldanos. That's not the case at all and it brings the argument down a level. 'Cheap' is fine but where do you cross the border between 'cheap' and 'a level of cheapness that is dangerous to economies and society as a whole'? I oppose this level of cheapness because it's McDonalds-style enterprise, slinging out a product that is only GREAT because it's CHEAP and not because it's satisfying and nutritious. Like McDonalds, I don't believe pedals of this nature are good for the environment.

Martin, you take it to such extremes. You don't have to buy your son an £800 Telecaster. I wouldn't buy an £800 Telecaster, my secondhand Silver Series Jap Tele is great for less than £200. My argument that getting everything at a Behringer level of 'cheapness' is unsustainable for our planet and for the Western economy due to the increased production from China. You can applaud them for bringing out cheap products for your kids to use nd then discard if they like with no worries about the cost but I disagree with that attitude as it can often encourage an attitude of disposable consumerism, one that buys, discards, buys, discards etc etc etc. Check out how mobile phone manufacturers operate for proof of this. Ever wonder why it was imperative for phones to get smaller and have more gizmos? Answer: they break easier. Once they break, they can't be repaired, they need to be fully replaced. Great.

Cheapness promotes greater consumption. Consumption in many cases is based on greedy. As a species we are sodding greedy and give back very little. That has to change and I do my part by buying secondhand as much as possible and buying items that I believe will last. I don't have an iPod, I've owned two mobile phones in six years and I have no TV. Sorry for being a hippy but I'm a hippy who believes that this wanton consumption has to stop.

tomafd, I love you. When it's you and I on the lone island, watching the world sink into a giant refuse heap of discarded behringer overdrive pedals and plastic goods, we'll be eating cocnuts and breathing the last of the clean air


(And yes I am taking the piss out of myself)

Edited by Thefairwayband (21/02/06 05:28 PM)

Quote Thefairwayband:

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I have nice little pedals and guitars and all this without one trust fund or a childhood exposed to wanton sodomy at public school.

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Hey, don't knock it mate. In the seventies it was either that or Benny Hill on the tv every night.

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Produced by Fred Quimby

...are we to take it that your childhood wasn't filled with buxom nurses walking surprisingly fast then?

Ah, so that's why I always find myself whistling "Yakety Sax" when I drive past the hospital. Been puzzling me for years.

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Produced by Fred Quimby

Quote:

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I think some of you have totally lost site of where you came from, or is it that you had so much money that it was never any object. Daddy can you buy me a Mesa Boogie as I can't possibly play this particular riff on this tatty old Soldano you bought me last month.

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lol, hole in f*ckin one mate!

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www.7161.com
Free online music space & Homepages

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Martin, you're in the classic trap of believing that anyone who complains about cheap products is instantly a product of public school, someone who spunks the money given to them by their parents away on a variety of filth. Not in this case mate. My first guitar was a Squier Strat. Ma and Pa paid £50 for the downpayment, I paid the rest out of my sodding pocket money for four months

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so... in reality they DID pay for all of it then by giving YOU the pocket money which you then used to pay off the guitar... spoilt brat!

I had to f*cking work on a farm man, hoofing bloody great 1/2 hundredweight sacks of pigmeal around all day when i was 10!!

you city kids... pah!


yar boo sucks to you

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oh yeah one other thing hippy

Behringer are GERMAN, where they manufacture is irrelevent because that is an OUTGOING capital/labour costs - the RECEIVED MONEY for gross sale of goods goes to Germany. They pay corporation tax in other countries too.

muaahahahhah




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Touche!

1. I am born and bred in Wiltshire. City kid? Ha! I wish.

2. My first job was a toilet cleaner at 14 of a village hall. I was paid £2.50 per hour.

3. If a company in German pays less for manufacture in a foreign country, that company doesn't have to pay National Insurance/any sort of payment to the state for its workers. A company in that country therefore can make more money and contribute less to the state than a company who only employs 'home' workers.

4. If you know anything about corporation tax, you'll know that it's pretty lax and the loopholes to get out of paying large sums of it are numerous.

5. A clothing/pocket money allowance of £12.50 is spoiling the child? Jesus.. I hope you never have children.

Is this going to turn into the Four Yorkshiremen sketch?

oh dear, Germany's going to collapse if it doesnt get the measly NI from a couple of thousand workers eh?

dude, i'm just joshin' ya btw, relax, I thought we were having a laugh?

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Dude, I am relaxed. You should see me when I get fired up, especially when I'm talking to my Democrat- Party member friend in the US who works for the political machine! Now go light me another cigarette please! I tried giving up over the weekend... bad plan.

heh... smoker... well we're going to have to move to another country soon cos it's a lynching in a public square for smokers soon in the Uk, lol

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