Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

I have several Behringer mixers, and that series is the most recent one I purchased.
I got a 1222 with usb and fx, but the fx are bad. I just have to leave them off. It's the only problem I've had with a Behringer mixer. Most of their stuff works (in my studio, not dragging it onstage). The duds, for me, have been the acoustic d. i. box and the wah pedal ( I think it's called "soul screamer", more like whimper ). I've had nothing but good results from the 4 other mixers, the headphone amplifier/ 4-way splitter and the expander/ compressor/ limiter rack unit. This stuff is so inexpensive, you can afford to take some risk on these purchases. Especially a "pedestrian" musician such as myself.

Before I got my Mackie USB mixer (which was before I got my Tascam USB Audio Interface), I bought a Behr 1222 USB mixer at GC on sale. Took it home and found that between the preamps and A-D converter it was much too noisy to use for recording. The main thing that made it that way was the A-D converter - on the Mackie, there is a volume control, keeping it below 11am on th dial keeps the noise low. The behr didn't have a volume control, so the high-pitched squeal was always present.
Like I said, the behr will just be my backup mixer in case the Mackie shits-the-bit some night.

Now if I could just figure out how to carry both in the same box!

Craigslist score - $100, '51 Stromberg Carlson AU29
Guitar/harp amp conversion
Single ended 6L6, octal preamp tubes

It wasn't working when I got it but it but I found the problem in a few minutes, repaired it and made a few necessary safety updates. It sounds fantastic.



A family friend picked up a non-functioning Peavey 6505+ for dirt cheap and brought it to me to fix it. The 6505+ is the same amp as the 5150 II. Peavey had to change the model # when EVH went to Fender for his next endorsement amp but Peavey owned the circuit. It was powering up but the heater circuit was dead so none of the tubes were lighting up. I checked all the usual problem areas and eventually found a brunt header on a harness connecting the preamp board to the power amp board. I pulled the harness and hardwired the boards together. It fired right up. It's a total BEAST. I had so much fun during the test run I decided to offer some amps in trade which he took. Then I made some tube upgrades with some nice vintage glass in a few key gain stages to loose some of the fizziness and modified the front grill for a nice updated look. It's a true shredder's delight.

Not exactly a new purchase, but very recently got it working...

Behringer Xenyx 1202FX, same board Mike posted about, my sister found it at a resale shop a couple of years ago for $5. I got a DC power supply later for a buck at another resale shop, it happens to work. Dug both out of a box in my shed around 2 weeks ago, crossed my fingers and plugged it in. Works perfect.

Used it in the practice room to check it out, make sure it would work, then used it at a gig 2 weeks ago as an acoustic amp. Worked great. Send a line signal to the main board, it did a very good job. Cut the effects on the man board and used the echo in the Xenyx board, if you tinker with it some it's not hard to get usable effects from it. The trick is to set the main effects level pretty high and the channel effects low, and it works well that way.

I plugged it into my Fender Champ to test it out at home, amp volume around midway still gets a clean sound, combination of guitar EQ and board EQ works out pretty well for a good sound, and tinkering with levels, EQ and effects let me figure out how I wanted things set before I got there, didn't take long at all to get it working right. Soon as we figure out what was wrong in Shane's Acoustic channel of the main PA board we'll be able to use it for both acoustics, (pan one left and one right, they don't bleed into each other, one main output into each of our PA channels) and I can still use one for electric guitar for some of the chorus/flanger type effects, which work well if you tinker with it and learn how to use them.

We're playing a family get together next weekend, and might use it with just acoustics, haven't decided yet, but so far I'm pretty pleased with it. Not built of plastic like some Behringer stuff I've seen, it doesn't feel like cheap plastic junk when you pick it up, like most. Works well, and should do a nice job for recording. Effects aren't great, but if you tinker with them some you can get some usable ones. I like #52 for onstage, short echo, #10 works pretty well for just reverb if set kind of low, and the octaver might be useful too, can't remember what number it is. But you have to spend some time with it learning to fine tune the levels. Things like the Chorus, Flanger and Octave have to be set higher at the main effects level, and fairly high at the channel control, echo and reverb both just over midway at the main control and channel level seems to work pretty well. Main output level in the recording level bracket seems to work well for everything, and it gave me no problems with feedback at all onstage.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with it, I'll be using it as an acoustic amp onstage and we're probably going to use it as the main PA for practice and for recording. I've done some test recordings at home, just the acoustic so far, and it seems to do pretty well. Trying to decide now whether to redo the one song I finished or let 'er rip as is...

Oh yeah, I fully agree about too much echo onstage, my mic had a midrange howl all night onstage, I think that's why...too much echo...Everything changes onstage compared to the practice room...same as guitar, you have to cut back the saturation or distortion or it gets really muddy really fast...

For $5, how can you go wrong? I spent a lot more than that, just to have a spare board (which now I don't need!) It's sure a lot more compact and portable than my big Mackie. I haven't tried any of the built-in FX though. My past experience with the Xenyx mixers was that the mic preamps were noisy, haven't tried acoustics through this one, all I did was verify that all the preamps and outputs were working.