Behringer V-Amp 2

Not as complicated as it first looks. Just read the manual to understand what does what. Editing patches were a breeze, manual was good. After reading the manual and messing with the unit I was able to figure everything out in about an hour.

Using this with a pretty cheap 20W solid state amp. The effects sound really good, of course they don't sound 100% like their real-world counterparts, but I'd say they got them 90% of the way there. The sound quality is great and makes my cheapo amp sound a lot better (see below). When I first hooked it up I thought the distortions & effects were great, and they still are, but this unit shines when bringing out clean channel simulations. I play mostly metal and hard rock, but find myself liking the clean channel blues and jazz sounds (and I hate the blues and jazz).



(Note: When the V-Amp 2 is first hooked up it is automatically set for use with a PA system. In order to make this unit sound good, switch to the Live 2 (L2) setting when using it with an amp.)

I haven't tried hooking it up to my computer, but I wouldn't doubt that it sounds good on there as well. And with headphones, this thing rocks!

Built out of hard plastic so I would not recommend using it for a gig, unless you are absolutely positive it won't fall or drop. Get the V-Amp Pro rack version if you want to use it for gigging (that's why they made it). Perfect for home use and band pratice. I haven't had any problems at all with the unit.

No problems

Read reviews on the V-Amp 2 on this board and trusted what others have written about this product, so I bought it. The price, sound quality, and overall fun of this unit deserves much applause. If you are at all skeptical whether this unit can compete with the PODxt, go try it out. It's easily on par with the PODxt in my opinion.

I've been playing for about 8 months and still trying to learn...uh...everything. Of course, you don't have to take the word of a beginning guitarist, but read the other reviews of many long time players and they will say the same thing, "Go buy this thing NOW!".


Easily worth the $99 I paid for it, plus some.

Gets u a while before mastering each button and knob function.Manual given is comprehensive.

This is my third effects.The sound is really fastastic.So much reading about the item in review, I was amazed they are all true.

I would use it to gig with live band and in my room studio(computer).
Maybe I have to use more careful when playing live since it is made of plastic.

Great. I've just registered online. They gave feedback instantly with customer support.I bought it from authorised dealer.

I think this would be my last multieffects I'll be using ( I don't know). I can get as many sound as I want.

I was very old school when I bought mine. So I had to read the manual a few times to get it all sorted out. Once you've done that making changes is a snap.
I only use a few sounds so the 5 chanels for each bank works great for me. What I've done is to set bank 1 for my strat, bank 2 for my FA70, bank 3 for my PF200 and bank 4 for my Duo Jet. When I switch guitars I just change the bank and I don't have to fiddle around with volumes or amp settings. I also like the fact that I can go to channel 1 and get to the tuner. And I can turn down the guitar volume and chat with the audience as I tune the guitar.

I use a number of guitars although at the moment I am using the strat most. I do occasionally get some noise but that's more the strat than the V-amp. I don't have that problem with the other guitars.
The one problem I did run across was the fact that after I had all the chanels and banks set that I had used while recording they really didn't sound good when I plugged the V-amp into my Marshall. They sounded great when I went directly into my PA though. So I searched around and found that a Fender FM212 was basically a guitar PA. It had no specific character so when the V-amp was plugged in it sounded good.

I haven't had a problem with it yet. I do carry corus compressor effects just in case of a problem because mainly those are the only effects I need to get through a gig if there was a failure. But I am gentle with the V-amp. I use one setting for an entire song so the pedal really doesn't get abused. So I really don't get to concerned about it's reliability. Besides I could do all my songs like the good old days with just my guitar.

Have never needed it so I can't say.

I play some unusual songs for a female solo musician. But playing solo was just intended as a kick that it turned out I do very well. The V-amp allows me to get the basic sound that fits the songs I do (would you believe a solo version of Mountain's 'Nantucket Sleighride'). I usually play in small places so turning up an amp isn't an option, so I can get that sound at a low level. I do wish it had at least a stand by switch. I have to remember what order to turn things on and off to avoid a big pop.

It is an FX-unit with a lot of bells and whistles so you've got a lot of knobs to turn. It is easy enough to dial in a good tone though... And I like the way the rotary light thingies on the knobs show you the exact setting of each patch. You can always see exactly where you're at.

Fan-friggin-tastic!

Unless you get a lemon that doesn't function properly, I don't see how anybody could knock this thing?

The amp models are the usual suspects with a few Fender models, a few Brits (Marshall, Vox) and some Mesa/Boogies for good measure. On top of that you get a JC120 model and some extra V-amp models. 32 models in all.

The effects are pretty versatile and you can dial in enough parameters. They're digital, so the sound is absolutely hifi.

I usually play the V-amp through headphones, or plugged into the clean channel of a Laney TF200. Through the Laney, the sounds are already pretty good, but through headphones it's amazing. It's like you're listening to a CD-recording. Through the phones, set to a small tweed amp with a number 5 reverb and some delay you get some mighty trippy sounds, man! Like Jeff Beck on acid.

I've also played it through a stack and it just blew me away. All these differences means it DOES let you guitar/amp shine through and it doesn't all sound the same. Which is good, because why would you want your 2,000$ Gibson to sound exactly the same as a 100$ plywood Squier?

The only quirky thing I could find soundwise is that some of the models (mostly Behringer's own models) are considerably quieter than the others. It's no big problem, though.

Also sometimes you get some digital feedback.

Pretty dependable. I would gig with it, but WITH a backup.

I've had mine 4 years now and I used it extensively. It broke down once. Nothing major.

The plastic casing doesn't seem very rugged, though. So treat it with TLC.

This thing is great. I think they're about 140$ nowadays and for that you get a tool you can use for recording, as a preamp AND it sounds brilliant through headphones. It's a great practice tool, but you could use it in live situations as well.

Yeah, it's made in China. Yeah, it's made of cheap plastic. But like I said: 4 years of extensive use and it only broke down once. Good enough for me.

This is still the coolest little bag-o-tricks on the market to me. I've heard the Line6 stuff, but it doesn't really sound better and I've not yet been able to justify the price difference. I've played the Roland Cubes and they're pretty cool, but the V-amp is just more versatile. I own a Tech21 TM10 as well, but I really only love the Marshall setting on that one and if you turn it up loud it becomes too harsh.

I've owned tube amps and yes they sound better... If you can crank them up loud! I'm mostly a bedroom player / basement tinkerer who does the occasional gig. I used to live in an apartment so you can't really push a tube amp there. Sold my tube amps. They were just not useful for me.

This little Behringer really rocks! I promise if you try it, you'll buy it!

When I first got it, I took a while to go through the manual, as it was the first multi effect I'd had, but once you get the hang of it its easy, the manual is straight forward, it's the latest version, got a carry bag, power supply, and the pedal included.
Patches can be downloaded from the behringer website, direct to the v-amp, although I haven't tried it yet
I kept getting a little autowah sound on some amp settings, but a quick referal to the manual sorted this out.

For the price it's an absolute steal second hand, I'd definitely recommend them to anyone, I'm using an Epi Les Paul Standard, there's little if any background noise, a little hiss on higher gain amp models, but you can compensate for this by increasing the onboard noise gate setting, at the moment I'm using a Sound City Artiste combo. Pinched harmonics could sound better I think, but that may be the pickups, its as good if not better sound wise as the Pod.

Has not let me down, the only negative is that on mine the memory loses the settings if I havn't played it for a few days, which could probably be cured with a new cmos battery, but I keep a note of my favourite settings, haven't gigged it but I'm sure it could cope

Not had any problems, so can't comment, although website is helpful

I play mostly rock, metal, and acoustic, and it handles them all well, I've been playing off and on for 15 years, my son's got a POD, which I've tried several times, but I prefer the control layout on the V-amp
If it were stolen or lost I,d definitely buy another, Its a very versatile piece of kit, there may be more complex and maybe accurate gear out there, but when I see pods and the like advertised for twice the price I can laugh because I know it does the job for a bargain bin price!
I have a Marshall GV2 pedal which I use sometimes with it, and can get a pretty good Marshall tone from the combination.
The only weak point as far as I can see, is that the casing is plastic, but it hasn't broken or anything

I've had my V-Amp 2 for about a year now. Figuring things out takes a while. In one sense, it's very easy to use if you just push buttons and turn knobs until you find a sound similar to what you're looking for. However, if you want to start tweaking your sound, or you are trying to program it for certain things, like gigs or home recording, then you may run into some serious time spent reading and tweaking.

This is where I'd give the V-amp 2 it's highest rating. There are very few sounds you can't dial up with this. I've been able to find about any sound I've been looking for. And all of them are then able to be modified in a nearly infinite number of ways. While I'm not an amp-geek, I think I intuitively know what sounds good. We all do. The important thing is whether we like the sound, and I like a lot of the sounds in this. That said, I'm into bands like Coldplay, U2, Third Day, David Crowder Band among others.

I'd also like to point out that I have a friend who's played and taught guitar for many years. He'd never actually tried out a V-amp until he used mine. He loved it and is thinking about buying his own. We dialed up a couple of dozen different presets (not our own, but just factory presets) and he made them sound like Eddie, Clapton, Hendrix, just to name a few.

It's been very reliable for me. I've not had some of the problems others have mentioned on here.

However, I have to say that this is where it gets its lowest score from me. It's all made out of plastic and probably wouldn't hold up well to constant, heavy use. That's unfortunate.

Recently, a teen in my youth group tripped on a chord going into the input jack and cracked the jack. I opened it up and all the jacks are just plastic inside--not very sturdy for constant use at all.

Also, the power jack has to be plugged and unplugged constantly--there's no on/off switch. This is unfortunate.

If Behringer fixed these issues, this would be a truly great product. I don't know if the V-amp Pro takes care of these or not. You might check it out, but I don't think it's as portable.

Haven't dealt with them.

Like I said above, I play mostly Christian worship, but also some Coldplay, U2, Third Day, David Crowder Band kind of stuff. I've been playing for about a dozen years, although I've never had any lessons--all self-taught (with help from a lot of friends). I own a 1980 Alvarez Yiari acoustic, a Fender Telecoustic (for messing around on retreats and in youth group), and a Sammick AV-6 Les Paul style. I play through a Crate GX-60C or through the PA system wherever I'm playing.

If it was damaged beyond repair, or lost or stolen, I think I'd shop around, but for the price (they've come down $50 since I bought mine) I doubt I'd beat it and would probably end up buying another.

I love the portability, the sound quality and the diversity of sounds you can get from it. I doubt that few other units in this price range can even come close.

easy to use , need about 10-15 mins to figure it out . believe me , need no manual .easy to edit the presets n the amp are excellent . no prob , grab 1 from your nearest music store .

my setups are mainly to riffs n lead solo . great stuff , i can get many good effects @ artiste presets ...yngwie , steve vai , kirk , santana . the blues setup , i'm not reali going for it . the metal sounds good too . i like de chorus , delay n auto-wah . the auto-wah is this model sounds great !

dunno , just hv it 2day .

dunno , but my previous behringer amp takes few weeks to fix . slow and bad responds. just go to your nearest music store who knows how to repair amps !!

good for beginners n low budget guitarist . overall i will giv 8 out of 10 .

I believe this unit is extremely easy to use. However, I have a lot of experience with these types of units. A beginner will have to spend some time with the manual!

I must say I am totally blown away by the sound. I have played products from Line 6, Johnson, Zoom, Korg and Digitech and the V-AMP 2 just blows them all away. I cannot believe how realistic the amp models sound. I am into every think from Shred to Jazz and this unit can handle it all. My recordings have never sounded so good. I like it so much I just ordered the V-AMP Pro for my studio. I just can't believe the price of this thing!

So far so good. The unit is made out of plastic which is not the best. I would have liked to see a bit better quality with the design, but a lot of my past items have been made from plastic and have help up just find. You never know. Mine has been reliable so far.

I have heard nightmare stories from my guitar students about the customer service. I have yet to have to contact them so I cannot rate this section. I hope I never do.

I am into Shred guys like Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert, Steve Vai, John Patrucci and Greg Howe. I also play some jazz . This V-AMP 2 fits both styles very well. The factory presets are very good and usable for recording situations. I am extremely happy with it

While I do appreciate the number of features that Behringer has attempted to put into this thing, I think all the V-Amps are pretty overcomplicated to use, and I am a gearhead / tweaker at heart. Holding down the "2nd param" button to get to the other 16 amp models or presence knob gets old fast. If you don't have the manual in front of you, you have no idea what cabinet you're patching into (not that it really matters, admittedly). Adding to the difficulty is that the dark blue finish with grey writing for the "alternative" parameters makes it impossible to see or read knob or button functions on the panel in a low-lit room. Of course, they're trying to squeeze a lot of stuff into a cheap desktop-sized box. That said, I am not sure why they didn't expand a little bit on the V-Amp Pro.

I have been using this with a '93 Hamer Special FM with Duncans. I have not tried it with single coils at all. I don't adhere to a particular style but I tend to be experimental, and on the other hand I will readily admit to doing a bit of drop-tuning power-chord wanking when I'm just not in the mood to think about things very much.

This is going straight into the board for use in recording. Although a lot of people are doing it, I honestly can't understand why you'd buy one of these things for live use through an amp. I think that's an inherently bad and utterly tone-killing idea. You should get a dedicated modeling amp if that's what you really want.

I have owned a Bass V-Amp for about a year now. I ended up getting this because I wanted a "jack of all trades" processor. While I've used it with some success to create decent tones, I felt the BVA didn't have quite enough guitar amp models for me and was hoping that the V-Amp would have a little more life and sparkle to it with a guitar plugged in.

I feel the V-Amp 2 doesn't really offer that much for guitar that the Bass V-Amp doesn't already have. The tremolo is really nice to have (and sounds good too!), and if you're one of these people that loves to have reverb (I don't, ever) then the dedicated reverb control replacing the full-time compressor knob on the BVA is a big plus. But the effects in general are not as diverse as I would like. Mostly, you've got delay, chorus / flange / phase, and combinations thereof... not that interesting. It would be really nice to have a fixed pitch shifter, for instance, or a ring mod. The filter options are better and more diverse on the BVA as well (the V-Amp is limited to an auto wah), so if you like that kinda synthy weird stuff you should probably look into that machine instead.

As with the BVA, I find the clean and overdriven models on this box totally silly and just not useable. The gain controls on things like the blackface Deluxe models are set laughably hyperactively-- it is impossible to get a nice round Fender clean tone out of these, and if you give in to the gain structure here they really don't sound anything like overdriven Fenders. The metal-and-up tones are alright but most have a hard time dealing with palm muting-- they flub out a bit too much to be convincing. In general I feel like the VA2 doesn't have enough "air" or "life" on any of its models, and this is a problem with the BVA also-- they both sound kind of dull and lifeless in a way that post EQ just can't seem to fix entirely. Although the V-Amp's bread and butter would seem to be hard rock and metal, here's also a tendency toward harshness on some of the higher-gain models. The JCM800 (Brit High Gain) is probably my favorite, most musical and actually-amp-like amp simulation in here, but again, that model is in the BVA too.

All this said, we're talking about a hundred-dollar box that does pretty much everything. I don't suppose we can expect it will do any of it very well.

Lots of people have had trouble with their V-Amps; I've had my BVA running constantly on my desk for over a year and have had no issues. I think these things are probably hit and miss. The 1-year warranty is nice to have.

I have been playing all kinds of styles for a while and, yes, at one point I was a serious tube amp and analog-gear snob, with my whole house filled with the stuff. When I became more casual about the habit, I got a Yamaha DG60 cheapie modeling amp that changed everything for me; unfortunately, while it sounds utterly fantastic (especially for what it cost!), it is just too darned noisy for recording. So I've been looking for a long time for something this good in a direct-recording form factor. The DG Stomp (long since deceased) was a huge disappointment compared to the DG60 or anything in the should-be-absolutely-famous Yamaha DG line, and I'd prefer the V-Amp over the Stomp.

I want to like the V-Amp 2, and I think it makes for a neat practice toy, but I really don't think it's completely suitable for its primary intended purpose, which is recording. I may give the V-Amp Pro a shot, to see if it does better when connected through SPDIF. It would also be nice to have the bypass option, because I'd really like to use the box as a "draft tone" option so I can process dry guitar tone with something more proven later on (like the Amplitube plugin, which is harder to set up but, once set up, whips the snot out of any such hardware modeling box I've tried).

To be fair, I have yet to try one of these modeling boxes that I think really gets it right. I tried a Vox Tonelab at my local GC thinking that it would be the ticket. I thought it sounded awful. Might have been the headphones.

If you are going to buy one of these things, you might as well buy the Behringer. It's really no worse than any of them, or so it would seem. I just don't think modeling is 100% there yet-- it requires too much "covering up" in a mix, and as nice as it is to just plug in and play, there's a lot to be said for a couple of tracks of dry Princeton-and-Rat or something that required absolutely no processing or tweaking because the tracks sounded totally perfect straight out the speaker and into the board. I suppose that is why you can't find a Princeton for less than the cost of 8 V-Amps at this point. Wish I'd held onto mine. But I believe that somebody's going to get this modeling stuff down, and soon... just not soon enough for me.

This review is early seeing as how I've only had the Vamp2 for about 2 months and haven't had a whole lot of time using it. From what I've seen so far it seems to be easy enough to use. I would imagine at some point and when I get more serious with it I will have to start doing some editing and add my own presets but I'm not there yet since I am still having fun exploring the presets they provide. I don't have the unit with me right now so I don't know what patch it's at but I bought it in January 06 if that helps?

I'm currently using my Vamp2 with an amp a friend made about 10 years ago. Don't let that fool you, my friend sold his amp design to another company. I believe the amp after being sold was called the "Bedrock", my amp being only the 654th amp he made was called "Fred" (get it? Bedrock -> Fred...I guess he liked the Flintsontes?) Anyway, the Vamp2 sounds great. I need to pick up a half decent pair of headphones though because that is the way I intended on using it, so I can play without bothering anyone in the house. Eventually, the big plan is to record with this thing using CakeWalk. I think the flexibility of the Vamp2 when used in recording will really show it's flexibility...I hope anyway! There are so many ways to tweak the sound of the Vamp2, I don't see how I won't be able to find the sound I want when recording? The Wah Wah may be a bit lame but most other effects sound pretty good from what I've heard.

Don't know yet since I've only had it for 3 months!

I used the sales office when I was first thinking about buying the Vamp2. I realize that being "sales", they may take the opportunity to be nicer than usual, and they were. They didn't have a problem answering my questions regarding competitive devices. I can only hope support is the same!

I like it! It beats dragging around any huge amp which I've done many a time in my 28 years of playing.
I like any music that sounds good on the guitar, which for me falls largely into the rock category spanning from Led Zepplin, Van Halen, to STP, NickleBack, AlterBridge, etc.
The biggest factor for me in purchasing the Vamp2 was price. I asked them if they would take $90 and they said "Yeah!". So for $90 how can you go wrong? I can switch amps at the press of a button. I don't want to get into sound to much because it's objective. Iknow this thing cranks though and you can get it to sound as dirty or clean as you want. Comparitive modelers were much more expensive. This one is a good place to start I think.