Bhringer Ultra-G direct box demo

[deeaa]

Hey,

I just wanted to post this about the Behrinher guitar direct box...it really has a surprisingly good speaker emulator.

On this file I just play my guitar direct to a Vox overdrive > the behri direct box with speaker emulation on > DAW and _no_ fx or any processing on the daw whatsoever. Just played a chording backing and a short lead over it, both on one take, and changed the OD pedal gain a touch when playing the lead.

So yeah, it's kinda darkish, and very raw, of course it'd really need some reverb at least, a little EQ and some compressor badly to even the lead out, a delay would make it sound faster and smoother, doubling up tracks or whatever would work well - but then it'd not show how does the box itself sound. And really, if you just stick a 57 in front of a speaker, you'll need to tweak that too. So this is to demo how it sounds with the two dumb boxes direct, no processing or FX at all.

http://deeaa.pp.fi/clips/strange.mp3

Drums are EZdrummer, also just dropped in, no processing.

[Eric]

Is this the Behringer GI100? I have one of these, but have never used it. Whenever I go direct, I usually use a Sansamp, which already has speaker emulation. One of those oh-I-probably-shouldn't-have-bought-that purchases. I guess I got it in the hopes that I'd need it one day.

Anyway, yeah it sounds good. A demo of without the speaker emulation and then with it would also be useful to see what difference it makes. Thanks for the demo.

[deeaa]

Yep the G100. Damn, I didn't think of turning the emu off. Well, it sounds like an OD pedal direct to board without it, plenty of raw distortion/highs aplenty.

The emu is a bit dark, I suspect it's a copy of the H&K Red Box which sounds pretty similar to me. If you put it after many a device, such as the Tech21 you have, it'll sound too dark and murky. I have usually used it to create a different emulated out for stereo - when I used a Marshall JMP-1 extensively, I would always run left channel from the JMP-1 D/I out direct and the right channel also thru the behringer. Mixing these two together, panned each somewhat to their sides, gave a very very good direct guitar sound indeed. This was before the PODS really took off, and I'd say the sound was on par or better than a POD XT for instance.

Anyway. The Vox OD 'Distortion Booster' I used for OD is quite bright to start with, so it seems to work very well with the behri emulator. I think I like this D/I sound basis slightly better than the Tech21 TriAc sound, needs less EQ and after-the fact tuning. I guess because of the simplicity, there is very little noise and seems like very low noise floor, and lead playing like hammerons really jump out and aren't masked by anything, it has more 'headroom' and clarity than the triac. Surprising, but it almost feels like there's a good noise gate, there is just no drive whatsoever if you don't play it, it's completely 'dry'. Hard to explain. 'In your face', maybe best description.

I think I could easily just bring those two to a gig and ask the soundmand to EQ it a bit and add a touch of verb and it'd work quite fine for D/I. If I ever get into gigging more, methinks I'll start lugging these around for a backup system. It works just fine if I plug it straight to my home stereo, a real nice thick driven sound there too.

Glad I never did get rid of that Behri...it's proven to be real handy every now and then.

[Eric]

Hmm...well, I think you've convinced me not to get rid of mine. I saw that they recently dropped the price from ~$50 to $33 or something, so it would be hard to sell it off anyway. It might be an extra bit of clutter, but probably a decent tool to keep around.

Thanks for the comments. I find personal experience from someone I know (at least 'know' through a forum) to be much more valuable than anything else I find online.

On a related note, I think I've finally settled into a decent DI setup: Boss ME-50 for verb, OD, tuner, and volume into the Sansamp GT2 set to a mostly clean setting. I was doing a check on the tone last night through the mains, and it sounded pretty decent. I suppose this DI box would probably serve as a good backup to that.

[deeaa]

Here's a comparison file:

http://deeaa.pp.fi/clips/g100.mp3

So that's the EMG85 D/I to soundcard, then I kick on the Vox OD and then finally kick on the speaker emulation. Quite a difference...

I do it twice, just a chord first, then some chunkin'.

[Eric]

Oh wow, that's a HUGE difference between the Vox and the Vox/Behringer. I didn't realize what a difference it made.

Thanks again for the demos!

[deeaa]

Glad you liked it! And yeah, the difference is indeed big, I've usually found it to be too big. But, if you just give it very bright, harsh & raw enough material to work with, then it works very well!

[deeaa]

I shoulda really posted this to gear demos methinks