Bugera introduces Triple Rec and Mark IV copies

[derekjason]

i guess it was only a matter of time before they started bitin' mesa.

 

[primerib]

I rank Bugera up there with all the historical chinese knockoffs. shame on Behringer for their douche-baggery

 

[primerib]

That is awesome!!!

 

[Heritage Softail]

shame on Behringer for their douche-baggery

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[BoogieDown]

IDK what to say, but this is really funny. I would also be very impressed if these things are in any way comparable to the mesa products they look like.

 

[YellowJacket]

I just laughed really hard.


:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:



Let the crappy video camera comparisons begin.

Because camera mic breakup is the new vogue in boutique tone! Forget halfstack bliss, we gotta replicate that 'youtube crunch'. . . . . . kind of like trying to capture the majesty of the grand canyon with a camera phone!

 

[Dolebludger]

As I have posted on a similar thread on this board, I used to own a Mark III, have a Nomad now, and recently bought a Bulgera V22 as an amp I can carry without breaking my back and as a low wattage vintage sounding amp. In no way is it a copy of a Mesa (or any other amp I've ever seen or played), but I really like its tone and operation in its own right. It appears to be built well, and its appearance is not a copy of any other amp. It is like what we think many vintage amps sounded like -- and they never actually did.

The Trirec does concern me, from a patent violation standpoint -- even more than the Magician. This may be why they aren't available in the USA. From what little we can know about these amps, the magician is basically an evolution of the multi-channel tube amp that has been available in various brands for a number of years. Too long for ay patent to still be in effect, and so widely used so as to be in the public domain (just in my semi-educated opinion). But multiple, switchable rectification is only available from Mesa, as far as I know. And Mesa has patented just about all their innovations as are patentable under US laws, which is good business practice, and I'm sure they enforce them. So I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for one of these amps to arrive on our shores -- especially the Trirec.

However, my sole experience with Bulgera (being my V22 which is no way a Mesa copy) has actually been rather good. If you are looking for a true, low wattage, vintage sounding amp and only have about $300 in your pocket, I actually recommend it.

 

[YellowJacket]

I heard a clip of a 6262 and I actually liked it more than the Peavey it was supposedly emulating.

 

[eudaimonia02912]

I heard a clip of a 6262 and I actually liked it more than the Peavey it was supposedly emulating.

I have played a 6262 side by side with a 6505+, and a 6260 side by side with a 6505, both through the same cabinets. In both cases, the Peaveys sounded better than the Bugeras, in my opinion.

 

[YellowJacket]

Well, I'm not really a fan of Peavey's high gain heads so my opinion will be biased against them. I heard a comparison of a Bugera 6560 with a Peavey 5150 and I liked the Bugera better. There is something that sounds weird to me with the Peavey's tone circuit, most likely the fact that it sounds less similar to a Soldano SLO or a Dual Rec, tones which I happen to like more. Whatever, we all know it boils down to apples, oranges, and a freaking huge whale! =-)

I think my take on these amps is a bit different from others. I love seeing a 'good' line of valve amps being offered at a reasonable price. As musicians, we don't make a lot of cash at our craft and it is a royal pain in the *** to shell out years of savings for one decent piece of gear. I personally hate how much my stuff is worth because if it ever grows legs, there is absolutely no way I can afford to replace it. Am I the only one who feels that the pricing for music gear is kind of similar to the pricing for university textbooks? Lets be honest here!

 

[Dolebludger]

Well, we all like different tones and tonal options in our amps. If you "test play" a Bugera and find these don't "fit" you, the concern about patents and quality is moot, as you should never buy musical equipment on which you don't like the sound. But if you do find a Bugera model on which you do like the sound, these concerns come into play.

Ultimately, I agree with Yellowjacket on the need for low priced, good sounding tube amps. For all of us who post here, music is either a job or a hobby, and either way 99.999% of us don't make much money off of it. We shouldn't be relegated to SS or SS modeling amps because a lot of us (me included) just can't get any sound we like out of those.

Now, I have read posts criticizing Bugera reliability on various boards dating back to 2005. What I am seeing are a lot of generalizations about poor quality, but almost no specifics. The closest thing I have read to a specific reliability issue was a comment from an amp builder who had seen the innards of a Bulgera and felt they weren't very roadworthy. This was from a reliable source IMO, so I would hesitate to buy one if I were regularly on the road having my equipment thrown about by roadies. But, if I were in that situation, I would have the cash and justification to buy way up-market.

So basically, I'd like to hear reports of first or second hand specific reliability issues with Bugera, if any of you have such to offer.

 

[Turumbar82]

Well, we all like different tones and tonal options in our amps. If you "test play" a Bugera and find these don't "fit" you, the concern about patents and quality is moot, as you should never buy musical equipment on which you don't like the sound. But if you do find a Bugera model on which you do like the sound, these concerns come into play.

Ultimately, I agree with Yellowjacket on the need for low priced, good sounding tube amps. For all of us who post here, music is either a job or a hobby, and either way 99.999% of us don't make much money off of it. We shouldn't be relegated to SS or SS modeling amps because a lot of us (me included) just can't get any sound we like out of those.

Now, I have read posts criticizing Bugera reliability on various boards dating back to 2005. What I am seeing are a lot of generalizations about poor quality, but almost no specifics. The closest thing I have read to a specific reliability issue was a comment from an amp builder who had seen the innards of a Bulgera and felt they weren't very roadworthy. This was from a reliable source IMO, so I would hesitate to buy one if I were regularly on the road having my equipment thrown about by roadies. But, if I were in that situation, I would have the cash and justification to buy way up-market.

So basically, I'd like to hear reports of first or second hand specific reliability issues with Bugera, if any of you have such to offer.

From what I know Bugera wasn't available in the US till 2007 so that's weird that you say 2005 unless it was international. I got one of the first 6262's when they came out before they raised the price by 100 bucks. At first you could get them for $459 for the head. It got the job done for me. I had it for a year and traveled an hour away weekly for band practice. I never ever had any problems with it whatsoever. No tube problems, no switching problems, no funny noises, no burnt electrical smells...no problems whatsoever. I sold it because I found something I liked better. Soooo many people bash Bugera but I really wonder how many people who bash them have actually played one and owned one. I don't care if you read on a bunch of forums that someone said they have bad reliability because most of the time that person saying that hasn't owned one! They just say they sound bad and are cheaply made because they are related to Behringer.

For me...all I can go on is my personal experience with actually owning and playing one for a year and I think they are decent amps and they sound good. Not amazing but for someone who doesn't have much money and doesn't want a modeling amp they are a great option.

 

[94Tremoverb]

I've repaired a couple for the notorious burnt-out board connector problem, one of which also had a blown standby LED - which might have been caused by the connector fault, since if the tubes aren't running the B+ voltage goes over-high down the whole chain... which could be hazardous to other parts too. I wouldn't say they're particularly badly-made, and I haven't put them on my list of amps not to work on yet. (Which includes Behringer - basically any amp that's either a waste of time to open up because it's not likely to be economically repairable, or which is too risky to work on because even if it can be repaired, it can't be guaranteed not to fail again for the same or some unrelated reason.) Probably no worse than some other big-name amps I can think of where the company trades on a famous reputation, which their modern amps don't deserve...

I just intensely dislike the whole company philosophy of stealing other people's work in order to make it cheaper in China and take sales from them - basically dishonest. I suppose you either have a problem with that or you don't.

 

[Silverwulf]

I just intensely dislike the whole company philosophy of stealing other people's work in order to make it cheaper in China and take sales from them...

But that's the modern day American business model...

 

[Heritage Softail]

I just intensely dislike the whole company philosophy of stealing other people's work in order to make it cheaper in China and take sales from them...

But that's the modern day American business model...

If sellers were closed down for peddling illegal copyright infringing products..... This problem would go away. Could you imagine how quick Guitar Center would drop Bugera if they were threatened with being closed for 3 days? That is all it would take... Close 'em down for 3 business days.

 

[Minoin]

Personally, I'm in love with the Boogie Sounds. My TriAxis/2:90 makes all my dreams come true and it's worth every penny. But it took me years to get here and as a university-student I don't have the cash to buy anything near it. So yeah, I'd buy a Bugera clone Mark IV-head as a back-up if it turns out to be a great buy. I'm staying with Boogie, but the price-tag and my wallet are just things I cannot ignore.

 

[CoG]

I can't remember if I posted about this at the time or if it was on another board. I played a 6260 a bunch and it sounded great for the money even if it looked like hell and seemed really 'cheap' in terms of components. Still, at the time (spring 2008) I was considering getting one of the Peavey metal heads to live in a rehearsal space and this seemed like not a bad option (because of insurance issues I would rather have had a new, cheap head for this purpose than a good used one.)

However, my friend who manages the store (this is in the East Bay Area) showed me their back room full of Bugera warranty returns-- they had about 10 amps back there and that was just like six weeks' worth. He said they had been carrying the line for 6 months and had over a third of the Bugera amps they sold come back partially or completely nonfunctional. His tech guy who would take a first swing at warranty repairs before they sent it out to the service centre like they were supposed to said that there were a bunch of different problems, no one thing that kept coming up. It was the worst record he'd ever seen for a 'mass market' amp.

Allegedly Diezels and high-end H&K's are pretty much guaranteed to come back at least once with channel switching issues on the Diezels and busted-*** H&K floorboards, but even people who buy these amps know in advance that they're finicky. (Apparently Peaveys were the best and Mesas only ever came back with bad tubes or 7-pin floorboard sockets.)

However, this was two years ago when the Bugeras were pretty new on the market and it's hard to imagine that things haven't improved since then.

 

[94Tremoverb]

"Apparently Peaveys were the best and Mesas only ever came back with bad tubes or 7-pin floorboard sockets."

This backs up my experience as well - although they have one model (Classic 30) that causes the bulk of the extremely rare problems they have - and I find it interesting, considering the price point and brand perception that Peavey has. They're far more reliable than most amps costing several times as much.

They're cheap, extremely reliable and sound at least decent. I would pick a Peavey as a backup amp over anything else out there - there's no point in needing a backup for your backup . They're also not copies of other companies' work - including the 5150, which contrary to popular myth is not a SLO copy... it's far less related to the SLO than the Dual Rectifier is, in fact.

 

[jhhead]

wow so much for pushing the envelope of creativity. peavey, randall, line 6, carvin all have tried to emulate the boogie amps over the yrs. peavey with the triple x, randall with the v-max, v2 and treadplate module for the rm100 which is thier take on a triple rec, line 6 with the amp modeling of the mark 2 c+ and rectifiers. carvin with the v3 head. even marshall has jumped on the metal band wagon with the jvm series heads. but this is just blatant. even the knob layout and 5 band eq is almost dead on. the only thing that wont be dead on is the quality. bugeras build quality is poor at best. just as randall is pretty bad also. i had a few mesa mark amps that were 25 yrs old and they were starting to get a little unreliable. so i sold my mesa gear and bought 2 randall archetype v2 heads. after a almost 2 yrs of problems i was sorry i stopped using mesa. i recently sold the randall gear and got 2 mark v heads. i know that alot of people will say "well it sounds close to the mesa and its cheaper" . but i have learned the universal lesson that im sure many of you that will read this post has learned. when it comes to music equipment, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.

 

[DudewithFr0]

wow so much for pushing the envelope of creativity. peavey, randall, line 6, carvin all have tried to emulate the boogie amps over the yrs. peavey with the triple x, randall with the v-max, v2 and treadplate module for the rm100 which is thier take on a triple rec, line 6 with the amp modeling of the mark 2 c+ and rectifiers. carvin with the v3 head. even marshall has jumped on the metal band wagon with the jvm series heads. but this is just blatant. even the knob layout and 5 band eq is almost dead on. the only thing that wont be dead on is the quality. bugeras build quality is poor at best. just as randall is pretty bad also. i had a few mesa mark amps that were 25 yrs old and they were starting to get a little unreliable. so i sold my mesa gear and bought 2 randall archetype v2 heads. after a almost 2 yrs of problems i was sorry i stopped using mesa. i recently sold the randall gear and got 2 mark v heads. i know that alot of people will say "well it sounds close to the mesa and its cheaper" . but i have learned the universal lesson that im sure many of you that will read this post has learned. when it comes to music equipment, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.

Ill agree with everything except carvin v3...sounds nothing like a mesa. I dont think carvin made it to try to sound like a boogie. It can get those huge lows of a recto and the tight attack of a mark series but just doesnt have the mesa sound. Ive owned one for 2 years and its the best amp for the buy.