Behringer Bass V-Amp

There is a very small bit of button-olgy and thumbing through the manual required, but it's much easier to operate than any other piece of digital gear I can think of.

Editing presets are a breeze, which is good because I didn?t find a single preset I could use, but everything is totally tweekable, just like the real amps this thing replaces. (yes, I said REPLACES).

Don?t think your going to be tapping effects on and off with the supplied foot pedal, it takes about a second a half to change presets. Maybe if you plugged in a MIDI foot controller, it would work better, I don?t know. Compare the foot pedal as an alternative to walking back to your amp and tweeking the knobs and you?ll be impressed, but compare it to a real effects loop and you?ll be disappointed.

The lights are really cool because at a glance you can see what the settings are, and when yo change presets, all the lights change. Try that with a Line 6!

I play live music once a week for an audience of about 300 and this little ?toy? completely replaced my all-tube head and cabinets. YES, IT SOUNDS THAT GOOD! I used to go direct out from my head to the board and was frustrated because our sound engineer kept having me turn down to reduce our stage volume and bleed through to the vocal mics (our drum kit is mic?ed and behind a shield and we use in-ear monitors). Up until now, digital bass processors were ok, but didn?t really sound like a real tube amp...

Through the PA, this thing sounds just like a real tube amp, no kidding. Okay, it doesn?t sound quite as good as when I stand in front of my rig, but that?s not the same sound that?s getting to the audience anyway, even if you mic your cab(s). If you play in a club and only use your PA for vocals (old-school), you might want to hang on to your old amp, but I?m telling you, YOU NEED THIS FOR THE OTHER 90% OF PLAYING SITUATIONS. Coffee house-size venue? No prob, plug into a keyboard amp with a 12 or 15? woofer and it?ll sound great. Bigger venues? ...go direct into the stage snake - all I did was make a 1/4? stereo to XLR cable.

Like most bassists, I don?t typically use effects, except for compression. The compression of the V-AMP is pretty good, although not a versatile as my digitech bass squeeze. The octave divider is better than my mxr pedal (I never used it much because it doesn?t track well unless your playing in the middle to upper register.) The ?ultrabass? effect on the V-AMP actually tracks well down to a low A or G, which is much better than anything else I?ve tried.

I keep going back to the mesa boggie sound - it?s a very open tube sound with plenty of over tones and has great tube ?feel.? Perfect for straightforward rock.

I have butter fingers and have managed to drop it a few times, even though I've only had 3 weeks. Once it flew against a brick wall (yes, I'm that clumsy), but it still works fine, except for a few scuffs. We?ll see if the plastic case holds up over time. If not, I?ll happily buy the ?PRO? model and put it in a 2-space rack case. Besides, I?m already thinking the effects loop on the pro model is looking pretty cool.

You gotta have one of these. If lost, destroyed, or stolen, I would DEFINITELY buy another (and couldn?t get it fast enough!). Don't be fooled because it's cheap, put this up against any other piece of gear on the market and you'll be impressed!

I'm not much of a technical person and I was pleased with the pre-sets on this unit. There were some decent sounds included with the pre-sets. I'm not much on reading a manual and never even tried to figure out how to program it. The pre-sets work for me.

I am using this with a home recording set-up and have been very pleased with the sound. I bought it so that I wouldn't have to use my amp to practice with a drum machine and I was very pleased. I did run it thru my rig to make sure it performed as well as it did thru my headphones and was very pleased. I don't know if the plastic case is gig worthy but the sounds are.

I've had the unit for 3 months and so far so good.

Haven't used customer service so I don't know.

Compared to a POD, I think it's a great deal. For the money I am very pleased with the unit. I have used it with bass, electric and acoustic guitars and have been pleased with with the result. For the price I think it is great. Other units may be better, but they cost alot more.

It comes with a nice Bag, a small footswitch and a short but satisfying manual.It has lots of Amps,Cabinets and FX for Bass,Guitar(some amps from Git V-Amp),Acoustics(also Ac.Sim) and Keys(Leslie).It has the same layout like all the Pods and J-stations etc..Easy to fiddle around,and the submenues are easy to access i find with this one.Like with all of them I dislike this 2nd Function-button-business.Everybody who tries to set up a sound and holds down a shift-button and tweaks a knob and hits a string the same time, knows what I mean.I do like the LEDs around the knobs, makes it easy to view where you are.The Tuner is not as good as the Pods one, because its too nervous for my taste, also it sometimes seems to stuck on a note(eb) and don't follow the strings I hit.Very good is the aux input, so you can connect your portable CD or Mp3 player to it for rehearsing.Because of the tuner and the 2nd Function-Button (of course I know its impossible to have every function linked to just one knob, but... ) I give it an 8.
(none of them would get more from me)

I use it with a Stingray and a LP Custom,Tele Thinline for recording and homepracticing.
Initially I bought it for our Drummer as a birthday present, because he got himself a Bass and wanted to learn a bit of the Instrument.When It arrived I had to try it out, to see if it works.As I am a Studio Pro and have my hands on a lot of fancy and expensive stuff I didn't expect much, regarding the price of the unit.I got it out of the Box and plugged a good pair of AKG-Cans to it, and was gone for at least 2 hours.
I immediatly ordered one for myself.
Its pure Fun.To me it sounded very direct and open ,not so diffuse like some other tabletop boxes.Then I started recording a few Basstracks with it.I really dig the Jazz and Bottom End settings,also the SVT, because they really sound good in the Mix.Everything is there from the start and I don't have to do much afterwork to make it fit in.When it comes to guitar, I see it more from the fun-point of view.Though there are some good clean sounds, the driven area is mainly made for Metal or Heavyrock, not the Blues.(..maybe I havn't found the right settins yet).But again I find myself not using my GuitarPOD(II) anymore, beacuse this unit has just more balls.When I turn back to the PODII after using this one I find it a bit dull and muddy against it.(to admit, I haven't tried the XT so far).The Eq-section is very effective and I like the control thats given over the bottom end.Also the Mids can be changed very drastically.Good!The Noisegate is very effective.The Fx could be a little more sophisticated in the way that I would like to have Chorus and Reverb at the same time.Because I use Macs in the studio I can't get the software running that comes with it(Only PC). Maybe in there it is possible to have more access than on the normal surface.(..like in the POD, where you can have Reverb ,Delay, and Chorus at the same time with deeper editing access over the Software Interface.
Overall I find it very versatile and enough good sounding for some of my Studiowork.
For the stage I don't have made any experience with it yet, but I genarally don't think to take any of these boxes out there, nothing beats real Amps and Cabs.
Regarding the Price I give it a 9.

To new to say...

Can't say so far....

I play all kinds of music from Rock,Funk,Blues,even Techno.I am a Studio Pro for 18 Years now.There are a lot of things you can do with it when it comes to recording and practicing.I wouldn't consider placing a Review here if this little thing wasn't so cheap and good sounding the same time.Its really worth tryin' out.Believe me.
For the Price of 2 stomp boxes you get a much more value in my eyes.
Thats why I give it a 10.

The unit itself is pretty straight forward to use, bass, mid, treble, and all the other knobs do pretty much what they say. I would give it a higher rating except that the manual is not great, but then again they rarely are. Also, every knob has an alternate function, which I think is a good way to compromise between simplicity while still providing deep editing, BUT the "2nd function" button has to be held down while you are tweeking, which makes it hard to tweek and play.

To be honest, when I first started playing with it, I was a bit disapointed. But after I had played around with it for a few hours, including recording a few tracks and listening to them back, I was really happy with the sounds I was getting. For example, I found I could use the Ampeg SVT setting to get a similar sound to QOTSA, and the Fender Bassman gave a great clean sound.

Some of the amp models do have a bit more hiss than I would like, which may be true to the originals, but you'd think using digital, they could have kept them cleaner. It does however have a simple and effective noise gate (they call it a denoiser, which isn't really acurrate) that cuts out excess noise.

I wasn't impressed with the effects, simply because I don't use them for bass, which is what I bought the unit for. The distortions are a mixed bag, it would really depend what you wanted, and I suspect at least 2 of them are more for guitar and bass.

Short story is you can get some great sounds out of this unit, but you have to be prepared to put the time in to develop them.

It is plastic, so I wouldn't use it to hammer nails. I would only use it in the studio, for live situations, you would be better of with the pro version.

All the knobs, apart from the master, are actually data wheels, not potentiometers, which means they shouldn't get scratchy over time.

I give it a seven just because I haven't had it long enough to tell otherwise

Never had to deal with 'em.

The do provide a free program to control the unit from a PC via midi. Haven't had a chance to use it.

Firstly, I'd like to say this: if you want the true sound of an Ampeg SVT or Trace Elliot or SWR or whatever, the best thing you can do is save your pocket money and go out and get that amp. No modeling unit will EVER be exactly the same as the amp it models.

That said, if you want to be able to get sounds LIKE all those amps, then this unit is a bargin. For not much more than what a stomp box will set you back these days, you get all the bass amps (plus some of the guitar V-amp models), effects, midi implementation if thats your thing, not to mention the cool little foot switch.

And while this unit doesn't necessarily sound great out of the box, it rewards experimentation, which is what being a musician is all about, right?

If this was lost/stolen I would definately replace it, probably with the pro model. I recently used it to record our EP (www.siamesesally.com), and it made it so simple to get my tracks down, and the engineer was impressed with sound.

Easy to get a good sound? Perhaps. It's just that all of the bass sounds sound pretty much like all the other bass sounds. You can twirl that "amp" know all you want but they'll all sound about the same, give or take a few highs or lows.

Boring. Quite a bit of digital hiss too, more than the V-Amp 2 for guitar. Loved the V-Amp 2 so this is a major disappointment. The effects aren't very good either. The actual sounds are better on a Zoom 506II.

No idea. Sent it back after a day's use. of course the tuner kept saying that every note I tried playing was an E Flat so....

Had it a day, sent it back. Thank goodness for 30 day return policies (Musician's Frined in this case.)

This Bass V-Amp is fairly easy to use and get a good sound out of. The editing of patches can be somewhat tricky because a lot of the buttons offer "deep" editing. However, if you connect this to your computer via a MIDI cable - they offer a free program that does an excellend job of editing the patches... there is even a compare button offered on the screen so you can see how your changes compare to the original.

The manual isn't that great, but once you have used the graphical interface, a lot of things become clear... Not every effect that you choose hase a tweek for it... in the interface, the ones you can't use are greyed out... without it, you are somewhat at a loss to what a button in a certain position means... which basically ties you to your computer...

I tried this out with my Stewart Road Runner, a Fender Strat a Godin LG-SP90 and a Fender Jazz bass. This Bass V-amp and Bass V-amp pro offer sounds for keyboards, guitars and bass guitars. I was blown away at the compression and the quality of the effects.

I played this direct through my studio monitors, through a Tech21 Trademark60 and a Hartke 4x10 cab... sounded great on all accounts.

This is a table top unit. I was debating on whether to get the table top or the rack unit. Since I use mostly multi effect pedal boards when I gig (Yamaha DG-Stomp for Jazz Blues, Boss GT-3 for rock and funk) I use this as my "recording effects box" because I can use it with my acoustic, electric and bass guitars without having to carry my acoustic rack or a host of other gear.

It comes shipped in a nicely padded "gig bag" and the parts seam reliable to date.

I play jazz, pop and rock - it works well with these types of music. If it were stolen, I probably wouldn't replace it - simply because I have a host of other effects and this was just an impulse buy.. something to keep with my portable digital recorder.

It does come with a foot pedal that comes with something like a 20 foot cable. This will let you select 5 patches in a single bank, but there is no way to bank up or down from the foot pedal.

Overall, pretty cool piece to have.