Behringer GM110 Combo

this is an updated review to the one i did on 08/21/03.

today at rehersal, I went to plug in my amp and turn it on. however, when I flipped the switch, there was no response. the LED did not come on, and there was no sound coming from the speaker. I unhooked and rehooked the power cord from the amp, and also from the wall, and tried it again. still, no response. I tried several wall outlets and i unplugged and plugged in everything imaginable, and it still would not work. In frustration and grief, I plugged into our drummers' 20 watt rogue GSR-20.

I brought my amp home to see what the deal was, and I could not for the slightest bit figure out what was wrong. nothing was loose, the jacks were all connected; I even plugged it to the same wall outlet that I always have it plugged into my room for practice. STILL, no dice. This leads me to believe that behringer products have a limited lifespan, and this one's heart just quit beating.

six months, $100, and alot of fun gone...just like that. I'm still debating whether I should go out and purchase another one or not...I still stand strong that there is no other amp out there like this for the price range. however, if you're hoping that this amp will outlast you, keep laughing. apparently it seems i'm not alone on this amp reliability issue.

great amp, great price, and traditional behringer unreliability. what more could you ask for?

The GM110 has numerous ouputs for headphones, PA, loops. One channel - the analog options have been covered well in previous ratings. Want reverb? Echo? Just add your own.

I play mostly fingerstyle through a Stromberg jazz box and a late 80's American tele with a quarter pounder neck pickup. Styles of interest include classic jazz, travis/atkins picking, blues, This amp covers them all. I get some great clean jazz sounds out of the California and Fender clean settings. The distortion is highly definable - more on the bluesy side than metal. The British tone emulates my Marshall Artist 30 watt tube amp well. The amp has nice tone response - the bass response is great considering the size of the amp.

So far so good - I read about a few problems in the reviews but overall the reliability looks pretty good. Thus far I'm not dissapointed but if it breaks I'll probably be singing another song. I tend to play the amp at low volumes.

Don't know - bought from American Music Supply with a 1 year warrenty.

This is an amazing little amp for the price. I would definitely buy another one - for the price I think I could have one in each room of the house. I really like the amp's range of tones, small size and 30 watts (instead of 10 or 15). My goal in buying this amp was to be able to get everything from the car to gig in one load. This amp does the job.

Update to previous review

Still sounds good on most settings

OOPS!
The 'tweed' setting has died. I didn't use it. Tried it once when I bought the amp, then left it alone. Decided to try it again, and whollop. Switch to tweed and instant silence from the amp. Not good.
Not hugely happy with that. I didn't use it, so won't really miss it. It did make some funny smells when it was used at full tilt for an hour. I put that down to lacquer burning off the components. It hasn't done it since.

The amp has a two year warranty, but claiming on it seems to involve tying your left testicle in a red ribbon, chanting phrases of allegiance to the moon on a cloudless evening whilst dancing with an inflatable shark. Shop say 'Behringer' Behringer say 'Shop' Shop say send it back to us and we will get it repaired. I say send me a replacement on reciept of the faulty unit, shop go quiet....
I'll no doubt get frustrated and fix it myself. Firstly, it will be quicker. Secondly, I'll get to know the PCB, so may be able to mod it :-)

Playing for longer than I'll admit to. I doubt I'll buy Behringer again as my next amp -must- be suitable for loud live work as well as practice and I cannot have an amp fail live. That has happened to me, and it was bloody embarrasing.
This little amp does sound fantastic though, so I'll persevere.

This amp is WONDERFUL for recording when you have neighbors. I can run the fx out direct to my outboard soundcard with great results. Even the clean sound compresses enough before distortion that I don't need to compress or limit anything. I don't know what everyone's beef is with the quiet clean setting. I usually have it on fender>hot>u.k. with the gain up about 1/4 and bass 50% mid 80% and treble 100%. with my duo-sonic guitar, this makes a comprimise between small amounts of distortion when i dig in, and maximum volume. then i kick in my boss sd-1 on full volume, 1/8 gain for a boost into absolute raunch-rock. another tip: tune the big E down to a low A. turn amp to california, gain switch low, no speaker sim, all eq up all the way and gain knob up all the way. the a on a octave thing makes the coolest sound i've ever heard.

I've never had a single problem with this amp, which is making me like tubes a little less.

Don't be afraid to gig with this little thing. I used it at the Crocodile in Seattle, and it sounded awesome cranked through the monitors.

Bought new in 2004 - you can get the scoop from the other reviews or the Behringer website. Best feature on this amp is that it is 100% ANALOG - not digital, the effects loop, XLR out, and it's small size... I Wish it had reverb & channel switching - but what do you want for $99? This is a SHAMELESS ripoff of Tech21's T10, so shameless that I had to email Tech21 and apologize for buying this... I felt so dirty I had to go take a shower... But until Tech21 comes out with something between 10 & 60 watts there's not much I can say!

Main reason for getting this amp is so I have a smaller amp to take to smaller gigs. I use the effects loop in to bypass the preamp when playing live, my Tech21 Tri-AC and Yamaha DG stomp handle the front end. I really don't know how you can use this live since there's no channel switching unless you only use one sound per song.

The sound on this amp is terrific! Like I said before I really only wanted a 30 watt amp with a speaker, but the preamp is really outstanding. If you're a beginner I really can't think of a better learning/practice amp. Forget the fancy FX amps, get one of these and an inexpensive multi-FX for the loop.

I usually HATE not playing with reverb, but I was surprised how much I didn't miss it on this amp. Still had a full sound with good resonance. The range of sounds on this amp are astounding. I agree with others that the clean lacks volume. Gets heavy enough for anyone but total thrashers. Can do jazz, contemporary, blues, hard rock and even lots of metal. This still has some of that "small amp" sound & feel to it which I really like - I don't really know how to describe it but it's a nice difference from my larger amp.

For me volume was the most important consideration - and there's enough power here to play smaller gigs. Other brands charge more than this for the cheesy 10-15 watt models - this one will take most of us into rehearsal/small gig territory with no trouble. Given the price of $99 bucks I'll give this one a 10 for sound!

I was a bit scared of buying this given Behringer's less than great reputation in the reliability department - but I think this amp is an exception since it's so simple & straightforward. The latest amps coming out from Behringer have this circuitry with FX built in. Somehow I doubt they'll be as reliable. Get the plain GM110 and an inexpensive SEPARATE FX unit for the loop - you can't go wrong!

Sperken ze deutche? For $99 just get another one - it will cost less than the long distance to Germany.

Been playing 18 years. I love cheap gear that gets the job done well - and this is a welcome addition to my pile of gear. I'd get another one (or two or three) if something happened to this. Again, lack of channel switching will prevent me from using the preamp live, but that's the only serious drawback for me. For a practice amp/beginner amp you just won't get better tone for 3x the price.

2003 model. 30 watt practice amp. One channel, gain and volume, 3 band eq. Selector switches for 3 amp simulations, 3 amp modes and 3 speaker simulations. Headphone out. FX Loop. Speaker out, direct out with ground lift.

For #79, this is the most versatile practice amp out there, bar none. It's an excellent facsimile of a real tube amp: clean volume is limited but tone is sweet, marshall and mesa boogie emulations are versatile and easy to use. It's difficult to make this amp sound bad, regardless of what you plug into it. My guitar collection goes from the low-powered and scratchy (Godin Radiator) to the very loud (Peavey Wolfgang QT) and this amp sounds good with them all. Excellent speaker simulations and good quality direct output for recording.

It's as solid as any other amp in this price bracket, no worries.

Behringer website is helpful, dealer was excellent. No complaints.

The best practice amp on the market. If you were being picky you'd ask for channel switching... but this is a gem for the money. If you want channel switching buy two and an A/B box...!

See other reviews

And now for something completely different...
I'm a bassist by preference but tinker with home recording and guitar playing. That said, my electric geetar is an $80 Rougue with double humbuckers... super cheap but it works for my needs. I didn't want to spend a big ol' wad -o- cash on a secondary amp but I needed it to sound good for recording. Enter the GM110, compliments of my lovely wife and Christmas gift-giving.

To my seasoned ears this thing sounds incredible! Sure, it's not on par with a Line6 Vetta but it's easily equal to most $250 amps in terms of sound quality.

Now for the big surprise. I recently took this to a wee soiree because I didn't want to lug my SWR Workingman's 15 halfway across the state. As the GM110 has an open back and only a 10" speaker backed by 30 watts I was hoping that my bass wouldn't sound like melted margarine and that at least I would be able to hear it if I cranked it and stood in front of the cabinet. To my immense surprise not only did it cut through clearly at half volume but it had a very impressive sound! This, mind you, was on clean. As someone mentioned before, the clean setting is much lower in volume that any of the distortions, possibly my only beef with this.

The only OTHER warning (for this price it can't be a compliant) is that acoustic instruments run through the GM110 tend to sound a bit muffled, making me think there is some built-in compression. I've tried both a baritone ukulele with a transducer (no, I'm not quite right in the head) and a mid-level acoustic guitar. They didn't sound bad, just not clear and open as I had hoped. I'll be pushing my accordion through it soon (with a similar transducer on the chord-side) but I'm not expecting a miracle.

So.... a 9 or 10 for electric instruments (and a baritone ukulele with distortion counts) and a 6 or 7 for acoustic.

I'd buy another one within a month if this one was stolen by garden gnomes.

Just purchased new, so probably 2003 vintage. I'm just picking up after 30+ year layoff, and wanted a versatile amp to play around the house or gig with friends, but didn't want to spend much. After web research, I decided on this model, and am very pleased. This is an analog 30 watt modeling amp (10" Jensen speaker) that emulates three major amp styles: Mesa Boogie, Marshall and Fender, with a variety of speaker emulations. Has effects loop, DI, external speaker jack, etc. Many of the reviews I saw compared this to the Tech 21 Trademark 10, but at less than half the price. I didn't try a Tech 21, but I went on their website, and they have very useful sound downloads and amp presets, as well as some preset styles (such as AC/DC, Van Halen, SRV, Mesa Boogie, etc.) I decided to try those settings on the Behringer and, though I'm certainly no expert, this amp is amazing and the sounds it produces are spectacular considering the price. Only thing missing is reverb (on Tech 21), and the ability to change models with a pedal.

I'm playing a Squire Series 24, Model M77 (Les Paul/Guild Bluesbird style) with Duncan Designed humbuckers, mostly blues, Southern Rock. Since I've only had the amp for a few days, so I'm still experimenting, but using the Tech 21 settings mentioned earlier have really helped me dial in some great sounds without a ton of experimentation. This amp is so versatile that you can go from extremely clean to very distorted (for me, but I'm 54). Some of the other reviews I read weren't as complimentary about the distortion levels, but if you need more than this amp produces, just use an effects pedal.

Less than a week old, so I really can't judge yet.

Purchased from Musicians Friend, so I haven't had contact with Behringer yet. Hope I don't need them.

Played in a few garage bands as a teenager, but hadn't had an electric in more than 30 years until this Christmas. Other than the Squire M77 (Christmas present) mentioned above, I have a Takamine Jasmine acoustic/electric. Would I buy it again if it were stolen or lost? I'll have to see how it performs over time. But, based on preliminary use, I would definitely repurchase because of its flexibility. I'd love to hear if others have tried the Tech 21 Trademark 10 settings on this amp to see what other, more experienced players would think.

If you're reading this you probably know most of the features. From my standpoint the only thing this amp is lacking is reverb and the ability to switch sounds with a foot pedal (more than once I've tripped over my cord going from tweed to US

I bought this amp from zzounds based mainly on the reviews I've seen here and the wonderful dollar/value ratio. There are a couple of things I've found that I thought I should review though. As one user mentioned, the clean sound is significantly lower in volume than the others. I had been using an el cheapo Fender 15 I pulled from a garbage can and figured with 30 watts vs 15 I should be OK. Unfortunately on the clean settings I think this thing is probably closer to 5 watts. My Fender 15 was significantly louder. When I'm trying to compete with live drums, I may need to replace this amp or use the DI output into the PA.
The other thing that I find (maybe mine has a defect) is that the transition from clean to distorted is not always pleasant sounding. There seems to be some unharmonic distortion that is produced as you ease into distortion. This isn't a problem if you're well into the distortion but if you trying to play something with just a little bit of "edge" it can be unpleasant.
Overall, I am very pleased with the overall sound. To get this much of a sound pallete at this low price is amazing!

so far (3 months) no problems.

I would give this amp an 8 overall. If you're only going to be playing by yourself or in low volume situations it's probably more like a 9. If you're planning on gigging with it, and will use the clean sounds a lot, you'd better make sure you either can mic/DI it or are playing with a group of very quiet musicians who will wait as you readjust your volumes. You'll also wish you had some foot pedals. For this case I'd probably only give it an 7.

3 amp models.. 3 types of cabinets to work with the three amp models, XLR output for working with a mixer or recording at the board, headphone output that mutes the speaker, 8ohm output for driving an extra cab, and fx loop.. Perfect except you can't change amp models on the fly, but still killer! This thing rocks!

I'm using a custom shop built washburn guitar.. It was made in Chicago in the custom shop .. has two seymour duncans.. CC in the bridge and 59 in the neck.. It fits my musical style perfect.. It's a tad noisey on high high gain, but I attribute that to my guitar which probably isn't shilded as well as I'd like, but I'll solve that by buying EMG's which are dead quiet almost..

So far so good.. Seems tough.. Has a jenson speaker, and everythign is tough looking and designed well.. Real wood or playwood with metal corners, etc.. metal covering the back of the amp where the circuits are, etc..

Havn't used them yet and don't look forard to it.. We shall see..

I've been playing about 25 years on and off.. I'd buy another one in a minute. Would love to try the 2X12 version that I think they have since it's loud, but not quite loud enough to jam with a lound drummer! hehehe.. I've tried all of the modeling amps, and this one and the Tech 21 stuff is the best.. It's so because it's analog I guess.. I don't like the digital stuff and I'm a programmer.. They just don't have enough "Touch Factor" for the digital stuff..
I only wish it had a pedal to switch amp models and cab models.. and to switch gain models.. I also wish it had some reverb or delay maybe for solo's..