Behringer TO800 Vintage Tube Overdrive

It's green!!! It's a Tubescreamer copy!
Everyone knows the best way to get a sound from a TS - gain down low, level almost full up, tone somewhere between 9 and 12 o'clock to taste.

Once you've worked out how to get the battery in (that compartment lid IS as tricky as everyone has said!) it's hard to get a bad sound out of it.

Prepare to be amazed!!!
I have an original TS9, a UE400 rack unit with an original TS808 circuit in it and a reissue that's been modded to TS 808 specs. Of the three I generally use the latter and this was the pedal with which I A/B this funny little #15 plastic box.
Guess what? They're virtually undistinguishable - ie BOTH sound GREAT!!!

The $64,000 question, of course...
Cons: It's made out of plastic.
The jacks and pots don't seem to be fixed to anything except the pcb inside.
The battery cover is a bastard to get off and looks as if the little hinge pins might break with repeated removals.
Pros: It's pretty tough plastic - and it sits on a steel base that gives the pedal a lot more or a weighty, solid feel thant the (much more expensive) Danelectro mini-pedals.
It's very responsive to volume and pick attack, so you might well be happy to sit it on top of your amp and leave it switched on all the time, in which case, durability is less of an issue. (I often use my overdrive pedal like that)
It's #15 for God's sake! If you have to buy a new one every year, you're still quids in!
And at that price, you could afford to buy two and have a backup!

I've e-mailed Behringer in Germany a few times with support queries about mixers and digital FX and always found them mega helpful.

I play blues, so obviously this pedal is idea from my Strat-into-Fender-amp SRV type sounds.
I've been playing for about 25 years and have owned all kinds of gear - currently 14 guitars (mostly USA and Mexican Fenders) 12 tube amps (mostly Fenders) and loads of effects.
I also have quite a lot of Behringer PA gear and have yet to buy a bit of their kit that hasn't impressed and amazed me.

Given the stupidly low price of this unit, it's hard to find fault with it, really. The power jack is in a slight awkward place - especially if you want to use an angle jack on the input - and that battery compartment is a pain in the arse.


However, that aside, this is an amazing bit of gear. For a beginner, who can't afford an Ibanez this will be a Godsend - for a tired old hack like me, it's a revelation!

It's fine apart from the battery compartment, which is way too fiddly to get off and back on in a hurry. Simple controls, enough said. The location of the mains socket will be a problem but I understand it was moved from the rear to avoid the wrath of Roland and their legal team given they realised that their sales would be badly hit!

Does a good approximation of the Tube Screamer, maybe not enough gain though (the Boss equivalents have a much higher gain range) but that is also true of the original TS808/TS9 etc. Superb value for money though given the sound. I did notice that it can produce odd noises (oscillations?) if the battery is running down - cured with mains power and it was fine again with a new battery. I've listened to a lot of their new fx units and they don't sound as "clear" as the same units made by Boss - a lot of people are lured in by the price but I would probably still go for the Boss or another "premium" unit that's built to last (my CE2 and SD1 are well over 20 years old and still 100% reliable).

I think the small pots won't last plus the battery lid on the case is flimsy. I've got a plan to re-house this along with a few other Behringer fx into a single case, replacing all the pots and jacks with "external mount" components to make a reliable pedalboard of single fx units.

Contacted them before, pretty helpful and they have one of the best websites out there with all the manuals and even price lists available.

They are all good VFM but I would probably still go for the Boss or another "premium" unit that's built to last (some of mine are more than 20 years old and still in perfect working order, with just one battery snap changed in all that time). I only bought this as a bit of an experiment - you get what you pay for indeed!

3 knobs "Drive","Level" and "Tone". Drive affects gain, Level affects volume, Tone affects the level of treble in the tone. But you knew that already, and any discerning guitar player knows that. If you're clever enough to plug a cable into a guitar, you're clever enough to use this.

It does the tubescreamer thing very well, in terms of it adds gain yet keeps the original tone there to. I was able to get SRV tone in minutes, using a strat, my Laney LC15R, and this baby, with the gain set at about 12 o'clock and the tone just slightly rolled off 4 o'clock. Pride and Joy finally sounded right. However, this thing is very limited, in terms of it can only really do one sound. However, so can a real tubescreamer, and they're far more expensive, I got this for #20 with delivery. Also, if you put the tone to full then it does sound harsh, but I don't think anyone would do that anyway. Having a tube amp, I can tell you the TO-800 actually does a pretty good impression of a tube slightly overdriving, except slighty (very slightly) more fuzzy. I started playing the Kink's You Really Got Me, and was able to get that slightly overdriven tone by setting the drive to 9 o'clock, the tone to 4 o'clock, and using my bridge single coil on the strat. Of course, it sounds better by slightly overdriving the amp instead, but that's not what I bought the pedal for anyway, and it's just nice to know I can do that if I want to.

Let me get one thing straight, I hate the battery compartment. It's annoying to get it open and closed, and made me a bit annoyed. That's due to my lack of Behringer stomp box opening skills, though, and doesn't really affect the tone of the pedal or reliability, but still.

It's made of plastic. Thick plastic, but plastic all the same. I think if you dropped it out of a first floor window it might actually break, whereas a Boss or Digitech one would get a scratch and that's it.

But then, it is very cheap, and that's one of the reasons why.

Haven't used it before, so I can't comment.

I love it. It's not the best tubescreamer in the world, but I love the fact I can finally nail SRV's tone, and that's all I bought it for.

If I lost it I'd probably buy another one, or if I had any spare money I'd go for a Keeley tubescreamer, but this will do me for the while. Oh, and I think this is better than both the Bad Monkey and the Blues Driver for getting SRV's tone. I've never tried an SD-1.

Identical controls to the TS-9 and 808 pedals. DRIVE LEVEL TONE - Really can't get much simpler than that. Was kind-of miffed at first when I couldn't find the power jack, thought maybe that it didn't have one. Then lo and behold it is located on the side above the input jack, , how dumb is that. But for $25 bucks new shipped to my door I can't complain.

The sound quality. In a word, amazing. I A/B this thing side by side with a late 70's TS-808 and a new TS-9. Knobs set identically on the 808 and the Behringer and I couldn't tell the difference. Compared with the TS-9 our drummer said he liked the Behringer better. I Found the TONE knob on the Behringer is a little more responsive than on the original 808. The setup is a American Strat into Mesa Boogie Lonestar and also an '89 Squier II into a homemade practice setup using the TO800 to overdrive a RealTube 901 into a solid state practice amp head. The tube sound is still there and sounds great. This pedal is not a distortion box and I wouldn't use it as an overdrive for a solid state amp. This thing is meant to sit in front of a tube preamp and that is where it shines. For those players out there that are die hard Vintage TS808 user, but tired of getting paranoid with that $500 dollar pedal on stage getting beer spilled on it, get this thing. They can be had for about $25 and they are worth each and every one of the 2500 pennies.

Been able to depend on it so far. The case is plastic with a metal base . I was a little hesitant on the plastic at first, but it is nothing like the cheap plastic in the mini Danelctro pedals. This stuff is very solid and the finish actually looks like painted metal. Well done.

Overall rating for this would have to be a solid 10. This thing allows me to nail the SRV tone, just like the TS808, but without having to spend $500 bucks. Been playing for about 20 years and I actually got this pedal for my practice rig. I'm getting the tone that I get with the TS808 and the Mesa with my practice rig so I can't complain about that at all. I love the fact that it is very comparable to a vintage TS808 in a price that anyone can afford, if it were lost, stolen or broken I would probably get 2 more. The one thing that I hate is the power connector on the side. Other than that this thing is great.

Easy. It's an OD stomp box. You use it the same as any other. The battery compartment, by the way, is identical to the one used by Digitech; it is not weird or unusual. The retainer buttons (to release the battery compartment) are designed to be pressed with the end of a 1/4 inch phone plug.

This pedal has one HUGE DEFECT that is shared by ALL the Behringer stomp boxes. It has the external power connector on the SIDE, just above the INPUT jack. Everyone else puts the power connector on the BACK. This causes real problems when you try to arrange several pedals side by side. Behringer must fix this ASAP; it is STUPID and very, very, very annoying.

SOund is good. Not noisy. I had to turn the gain down to near zero in order to keep the over-all sound level unchanged when engaging the unit. Quiet is good.

Tube sound is distincly tube-y, as opposed to distorted. It's an overdrive sound. I run it into my Peavey Classic 50 212, which has a very fine tube sound itself. The combination is good -- so that's saying a lot, when a box can augment the sound of a very good tube amp. (EL84's, in the Peavey, rock.)

Seems solid. Plastic, but GOOD plastic. It is not built for warfare the way Digitech and Boss are. It costs a lot less than either, especially Boss.

I had to return my first one, because it was MISSING the spring under the footswitch. So there must not be much quality control. Nevertheless, my second unit works fine, sounds good and seems sturdy.

THE GOOD
* Sound is excellent
* sturdy
* quiet, doesn't suck tone, when it's off it's OFF
* Very inexpensive, which is a good thing. Thank you, Behringer.

THE BAD
* power jack on the side, designed to make you hate your life.
* hinge spring pins for footswitch ought to be metal.