Bugera amps

[iced_earth]

I think the bottom line here is the individual can chose how they spend their money and what kind of company they support. In my opinion, if Behringer's and Bugera's practices outlines in this thread are true, the end result of buying their products will be less innovation from the companies they are copying. Lets say the Bugera line takes off and cuts deeply into Peavey's sales. The next time Peavey thinks about developing an innovative new product, they might just say "fuck it, Bugera will just knock it off anyways and we would just be developing a product for their profit." Everyone loses in the end if that happens.

[Bengal]

Buying American doesn't guarentee jack anymore. You guys read RobRR's thread about his Custom Shop Soloist? Yeah, great quality there.

Everyone ripps off everyone. Jackson has been ripping off Fender since they started. ESP ripps off Gibson big time. PRS rips off Gibson. Ibanez rips off Fender. So what? Has it stunted the growth of Gibson and Fender? Not one bit.

I won't go into how Line 6 rips off every amp out there.

If you don't like them, don't buy them. If you do, plunk down your money. It's that simple.

[marcus]

I saw the 5150 a few months ago. I bought a guitar from the guy and someone else got the amp. We all met up in the same place. It was a craigslist deal. The amp was in MINT cond. The deals are there but you have to find them. I doubt very seriously that the Saldano amp is the same circuit as the 5150. The difference in taking an existing product and tweaking the circuit and improving it and taking an existing circuit and DUPLICATING it in a chinese factory is that the 1st is ok and the 2nd should be illegal and probably is. Mackie had to sue Behringer to get them to stop stealing there stuff. Plagurism is illegal. Duplicating cds and dvds for sale is illegal. Copying someone elses amp design and selling it should be.

According to most of y'alls philosophy I should be allowed to copy a Michael Chrichton book word for word,change the name of it, have it printed up in a chinese print shop and sell it as my own original work. Behringer has been known to do this with musical gear.

Copying electronic designs in this fashion is perfectly legal, unless some part of it is under patent protection. Patent protection goes away after a while, and most of these tube amp designs are pretty old. What Behringer is doing may be inethical and wrong, but probably not illegal.

[zeegler]

Well, sad to say Tim, but that's what's gonna happen eventually. Our economy (US & Canada collectively) will go down the tubes in a big way. Once all the manufacturing jobs are gone, what's left? Sales and service, and I don't believe an economy can survive on sales and service. So yeah, there will come a point where the average Joe won't even be able to buy this cheap Chinese made stuff.

Whether copying an amp design is ethical or not, it makes no difference. What happens when the Chinese design an amp that has a unique design, AND sounds fantastic? It COULD happen. People will buy them because they sound good. Let's face it, people are like cattle, and they think about things in a localized, selfish way. Product X is cheap, so I'm gonna buy it. They're not thinking about the consequences of their actions, or they rationalize it by saying "one person can't make a difference". It may be a cop-out to blame the government, but it's in their hands. They are the ones who need to do something to put a stop to it, because we as people can not help ourselves.

[Newc]

According to most of y'alls philosophy I should be allowed to copy a Michael Chrichton book word for word,change the name of it, have it printed up in a chinese print shop and sell it as my own original work. Behringer has been known to do this with musical gear.

Wow, in this thread, Behringer went from cloning Mackies to cloning everything else?

They're "known" to have done it with Mackie gear, and then I'll bet it was only ONE Mackie unit (maybe 2), not an entire product line.

Let's not saddle them with the accusations that they clone everyone else's stuff until it's proven they've done it.

I knew someone would bring that up and I almost addressed it so as to preempt that discussion.

Of course. No sense in letting anyone inject a valid point.

Original Fenders used generic circuit designs from the General Electric tube manual...very little R&D went into those amps and anybody was permitted to use those circuits, they were not proprietary. Marshall then took these same design types and tweaked them a bit...a Plexi Marshall is essentially the same circuit as a Tweed Bassman. When the boutique amp craze started, the amps that were being copied were no longer being manufactured, thus no substantial amount business was really being diverted (that's arguable to a degree I suppose) to the boutique builder. The success of these boutique companies then led to many of the original manufacturers (or the parent company that now owned the name of the original manufacturer) to rerelease some of their classic designs. Very few of the boutique amps are exact copies anyway (although some are) and I don't know of any that are cheaper than a reissue so it's not like they are stealing customers away with lower quality rip-offs. I do believe companies like Marshall or Fender should be able to receive royalties when their look is copied in addition to the circuit by a boutique builder...maybe in a perfect world

So where does that leave GE? Tell me what "tweaking" or "improvements" were done to these circuits (a new knob? a higher-quality capacitor here and there?), and did said manual include a written statement that the designs were public domain?


Is "tweaking" only allowed if you use a better component? If you use more expensive components than Marshall, it's a Boutique amp, but if you're using less expensive materials it's "making cheap ripoffs"?

Like I said, different companies view that in different ways. Speaking as a former Executive of a Berkshire Hathaway company, I have been in many boardrooms where these exact costs were part of the equation when it came to pricing strategy and cost recovery of certain products and programs. In fact, I was ultimately outplaced for that very reason...increase the ROI of our customer service organization by putting effective programs in place and then hiring monkeys to administer them.

And yet you still agree with this notion that R&D is and should be recapturable?

[Rupe]

Newc, you certainly like to put words into peoples mouths, don't you? How about reread everything that you commented about and try answering the posts with a modicum of intelligence...WTF?

First the GE manual was there for people to use these circuits...they were not for proprietary use. Did you see the part where I said ANYBODY WAS PERMITTED TO USE THOSE CIRCUITS...you can actually answer your own questions when you aren't trying too hard to be clever and come up with pointless arguments.

And what's with the line about R&D? I'm simply stating how it is in many cases...I haven't offered any opinion as to what my beliefs are yet you assume I've endorsed this. The reality of it is, if a company continues to incur large R&D costs while another company simply reverse engineers the first company's products, I don't give a shit where you assign the costs, company B still stands to be more profitable. There isn't a "magic little pot of gold" that covers expenses outside of those that are directly associated with the product...higher overhead still leads to issues. It puzzles how much difficulty you have trying to wrap your head around that.

Go ahead and buy all the POS amps that you want...I'll quit here. BUGERA RULES

[Newc]

Newc, you certainly like to put words into peoples mouths, don't you? How about reread everything that you commented about and try answering the posts with a modicum of intelligence...WTF?

First the GE manual was there for people to use these circuits...they were not for proprietary use. Did you see the part where I said ANYBODY WAS PERMITTED TO USE THOSE CIRCUITS...you can actually answer your own questions when you aren't trying too hard to be clever and come up with pointless arguments.

And what's with the line about R&D? I'm simply stating how it is in many cases...I haven't offered any opinion as to what my beliefs are yet you assume I've endorsed this. The reality of it is, if a company continues to incur large R&D costs while another company simply reverse engineers the first company's products, I don't give a shit where you assign the costs, company B still stands to be more profitable. There isn't a "magic little pot of gold" that covers expenses outside of those that are directly associated with the product...higher overhead still leads to issues. It puzzles how much difficulty you have trying to wrap your head around that.

Go ahead and buy all the POS amps that you want...I'll quit here. BUGERA RULES

I don't understand the hostility here. I have never seen this GE Manual personally, ergo I do not have any proof other than your statement that the designs were in fact public domain/free use. In my experience, many people have seen similar manuals and assumed they were allowed to use those designs (instructional manuals, etc), and failed to notice the part at the front of the book that "said these designs are copyright so-and-so and are provided here for educational purposes only and may not be manufactured into reality except as an educational aid in conjunction with this book", or something similar.

As for the line about R&D - I said it's an expense, not a loan that the company gets back. You said you lost your job as a result of coming up with a plan to get back R&D expenses. Or at least, that's how I interpreted what you said about streamlining the system so they didn't need you to run it.
I was merely asking if you still perceive R&D as something a company should try to recover, seeing as how doing so meant they would start by keeping your salary.


Now, reverse engineering isn't all that cheap, as I understand it. It doesn't take as much work as starting with a blank breadboard and using your knowledge of electronics to build a complete head, but it takes at least half as much.

And if you think Marshall builds all their stuff from memory without an existing schemtaic.....

Even the boutique places use a schematic.

[Rupe]

No hostility...just a little frustration that you have brought up things that I've previously addressed and made a few assumptions that were off base. If I came off hostile its only because I'm frustrated as hell with a build that I'm working on today that I am hoping to use at rehearsal tonight

The GE manual encouraged manufacturers to use the schematics...they were trying to sell parts and tubes back in the 40's and 50's. There may have been royalties involved as well...that I don't know.

I lost my job due to a lowering of overhead in general and was making the point that R&D, no matter to which cost center it is assigned, still affects the overall health and performance of a company. In my case, I made myself obsolete by designing a program that didn't need me to run it. Actually, I've done that twice now...you'd think I'd learn

[Cygnus X1]

Rupe is correct about the GE (or RCA) tube references.
They were considered common circuits in the day, as technology even in tubes was exploding...so a simple push pull amp circuit was kind of considered public domain by the tube manufacturers. Kind of like Seymour Duncan publishing wiring diagrams for their (and other) pickups.

[VitaminG]

If you want to buy a Bugera amp then go for it. Thats your right as a free citizen but remember that you can get USA made AMPS for around the same price but you'll have to shop around. The typical instant gratification american way of doing things will have to be set aside to find the deal on USA stuff.

comparing like to like, you can buy a NEW US made amp for a similar price as a NEW Bugera? Unless you're comparing good deals on secondhand US amps to new Bugeras. That would be kind of like telling people not to buy a DK2 because you can pickup a US Jackson for the same money - if you wait & watch ebay for long enough

In the spirit of protecting the US economy and only buying US amps (although at the Bugera pricepoint, you'd be buying secondhand which is of little benefit to the manufacturer), everyone should stop buying amps built outside the US. This would include Marshall, Laney, Engl, Diezel, Framus, Orange, Vox, Hiwatt, H&K, and all other crappy non-US amps

[bibz]

When was the last time a tube was made in the usa just for a laugh

[marcus]

When was the last time a tube was made in the usa just for a laugh

And when was the last time anyone performed and R&D on a tube amp in the USA either? Lets face it, these designs aren't exactly state of the art. So Bugera copied the 5150 or whatever, who did Peavey copy it from?

The reason manufacturing is not done in the US or Europe anymore is because it is expensive and not very state of the art. The US has moved to semiconductor manufacturing, and a lot of that is moving overseas now, too. As the countries that manufacture tubes bring their economies online, I suspect that they will move out of tube manufacturing as well.

[lerxstcat]

When was the last time a tube was made in the usa just for a laugh

Just guessing, 25-30 years ago?

I remember when the guitar mags were saying that tube amps were going to be gone soon because there were no longer any US or Western European companies making tubes any more. They said the Chinese and Russian/Eastern European tubes were shit.

Then of course they changed their tune as the amp manufacturers began getting their tubes from China, Russia and Eastern Europe out of necessity.

[yard dawg]

Behringer got sued by Boss over pedal designs being copied.

http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/03/behringer-sued-by-roland-over-boss.html

Mackie sued them and may have to again over the Onyx mixers. Behringer copied them also.Its seems Behringer is at it again

This year, Behringer have introduced a huge new range of mixers called XENYX, which feature "The new XENYX Mic Preamp", digital i/o (USB) and "neo-classic British EQ". I'm sure there's no connection with Mackie's range of mixers called ONYX, which feature "our new flagship Onyx mic preamps", digital i/o (Firewire) and "a 'neo classic' 3- and 4-band design based on classic "British EQ" circuitry"



If you like Behringer stuff then thats ok I guess but I wouldnt use it if I had to.

[Rsmacker]

I think some people are just unnecessarily hard on equipment.

Uh, huh huh, he said "hard".


Personally, I'm keeping well away from any equipment called "Buggerer", it promises to be a real pain in the arse.