Category: Effects

Whether it is in life, music or the YouTube scene, two years is a lot of time. I first brought my Behringer FX600 in late 2015, trying to complement the rather limited sonic palette offered by my volcas. At the time I made a small demo video of it with the volca keys. I was particularly impressed by the chorus and delay effects. I also enjoyed the pitch shifter, but ended up never using it ever in my productions. I also remember finding the phaser to be a little bit too shy, an the flanger to be as annoying as any other flanger out there.

However, time comes and goes, and I grabbed this pedal on a number of occasions. For example, when preparing my Berlin School Experiment no 4 I initially planned to use the Nux Time Core tempo-sync’ed to the sequencer. However I forgot to unlock the “tone lock” memory of the Nux Time Core and, not being able to realise my mistake, I went forth recording the video with an un-synced delay from the FX600. I also used it on my Microbrute through guitar pedals video, which is still one of my favourites.

The Behringer FX600 is a silver grey pedal that shares its chassis design with the other Behringer pedals from the 600 series. Continue reading “Behringer FX600 Multi-effects Pedal: Second Year Review”

A few weeks ago I managed to score a rarity on e-bay: an almost new  Behringer VM1 Vintage Time Machine. This is an old Behringer pedal (perhaps one of their earliest models) that is no longer in production, and hasn’t been for a long time. It is not an expensive pedal (usually it goes for less than 100€ on e-bay), but it is hard to come by. It is an analogue delay effects pedal, with some interesting features.

The first word that comes to mind when I think of this pedal is “Huge”. This pedal, like the VT999, is bigger than my volcas. It is also considerably heavy and can only be powered from a 9V power supply (center pin negative, like most pedals). In fact, the similarities with the VT999 Vintage Tube Monster are so many, I think the level knob on the VM1 is there only to accommodate the number of knob holes on the casing for the VT999. They were also made at about the same time and are fully analogue effects pedals. Both have a power switch on the back, but the effect is only engaged when you press the stomp switch on the front.

Taking a tour of the controls on the VM1, you’ll find the stomp switch and five knobs on the front panel: LEVEL, MIX, FEEDBACK, DELAY and CHORUS/VIBRATO. On the back panel, you have the power socket, an ON/OFF switch, one INPUT socket (6.5mm unbalanced TS mono), an EFFECT OUT socket and also a DIRECT OUT socket that send the unaffected dry signal. You also have a switch to select between CHORUS and VIBRATO as the modulation for the delay effect. This latter feature is a great addition I do not see very often on delay pedals at this price point, and greatly enhances the expressiveness of anything going through this pedal. There are also two LED indicators for POWER and for OVERLOAD. Continue reading “Behringer VM1 Vintage Time Machine”

Some time ago I got a deal on a pack of 10 behringer pedals on sale. Most of the pack was made by chorus pedals, such as the UC200, but there were also some other effects, such as this TP300 Ultra Tremolo/Pan, which I demo in the video bellow.

As you probably already know, Tremolo is an amplitude effect, in which the volume of the instrument varies in time in a periodic fashion. This can be easily achieved on most synths by modulation the output amplifier with a LFO. But the Volca Keys doesn’t have this routing available, or you may have already used all your LFO resources on other modulation. This is where a Tremolo Effect (either in hardware or software) can be useful when playing a synth. Similarly, the auto PAN feature of this pedal can also be done by routing an LFO to the PAN of the amplifier… provided your synth as a stereo output, and that routing is available.

The TP300 is a very simple pedal, with four modes of operation: two tremolo modes (one with a triangle LFO and another with a Square LFO), and Continue reading “Behringer TP300 Utra Tremolo/Pan”