Product: Behringer US600
Price Paid: USD 65
Submitted
03/27/2008
at
06:06pm
by
Brian
Ease of Use
:
8
It is not hard to get a sound out of. What this pedal does is shift the pitch of your guitar so that it sounds higher or lower than the note you're actually playing. It can go up or down up to two octaves and anywhere in between.
Its not super simple, it has a lot of features on it which make it so you can get a variety of different sounds; whatever suites your likes/needs.
There are five modes: pitch shift, harmonist, detune, trem bar, and flutter.
It has five knobs:
DTIME/SPEED controls the speed of the pitch shift for the trem bar and flutter settings
BALANCE adjusts the ratio of processed-sound to actual-sound. When all the way up, you'll only hear processed sound. All the way down and the pedal will do nothing. In between and you'll change the amount of pitch-shifted sound compared to the amount of your own guitar's sound coming out of the amp.
HR KEY determines what key it shifts to in harmonist mode. You can choose from 12 keys (so ANY key).
PITCH adjusts the interval in harmonist mode and shifts the pitch in pitch shift mode. You can set it to go up or down up to (or somewhere in between) up to two octaves.
MODE changes the mode. I know, fancy right?
The trem bar mode basically makes the pedal your trem bar, and while you're stepping on it, it can bend your tone smoothly up or down as much or as little as you set it to, up to one octave in each direction.
Its obvious when you've changed a setting because you will either hear your pitch shift or the blue LED will blink red very quickly.
I found the blue/red LED was way too bright (as is the case on most behringer pedals) and that was fixed by taping a small peice of paper over it. You can also use the speed control to set it to bend at whatever speed you want.
The on-off switch is electronicly activated, so when turning the effect on or off, it will turn off or on once you take your foot OFF the pedal rather than analog which activates once you push in (except in trem bar and flutter mode).
Sound Quality
:
10
There are some sounds that just sound aweful, but they arent so bad that you couldnt use them for a kind of indie sound on certain songs if you wanted to.
All in all though, it sounds awesome! I've been playing with it for a while and gotten lots of sounds. It can make your low E sound like the high E, making the high E become a rediculously high E. The sound for pitch shifting is smooth. It's not PERFECT sounding (what do you expect from a pedal) but it doesnt sound cheap either. The tremelo effect works great.
You can also set it to sound like a 12-string guitar (and a perfect sounding one at that). Thats why I bought this pedal and I am not disapointed. There are SO many good sounds I got out of this pedal.
One caveat however; you should place this pedal at the begining or near the begining of your effect chain, because if you run distortion or other complicated effects into it, it will not be able to process the sound accurately and it will destroy your sound completely (the sound will change frequently, the volume and effect amount fluctuating between notes to try to keep up. This would probably wear out the effect very quickly).
Reliability
:
10
This is the 4th Behringer pedal I've bought (plus I bought a powered mixer from them) and I havent had any problems. I gig with them once a week and they've held up just fine.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
never dealt with them
Overall Rating
:
10
I've wanted this pedal for like three years but I didnt want to fork out the money for its more expensive counterpart, but the sounds it produces are exactly the same (as are the controls), and I am pleased with this pedal. I am thinking of getting another one so I can use two different types of effects at once.