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Comment by TrackerFF | Hacker News Reader

Behringer has made a bunch of old (and now very expensive) synths that the original manufactures really didn't want to make again, available to the public. At a fraction of the price. And more lately they've started to clone a bunch of studio equipment.

When I started out playing music, they were mostly just seen as cheap garbage.

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Apart from the cheap plastic case their circuits actually sounded exactly the same that the stuff they cloned, but it took awhile for forum users to publicly acknowledge it.

Also some plastic cases, like in guitar pedals, are sturdy enough for its usage. You need durable switches, but the casing doesn't need to be 2 mm steel. Specially if you use a floor board, the pedals could be made with a cardboard case and be enough.

I make a device akin to a guitar pedal. If you want to use a plastic case, it has to be designed for mechanical ruggedness and protection of the innards. For small time pedal makers, the cost of design and mold tooling rules this out, though I wouldn't try to predict the future of technologies such as 3d printing.

But if you're limited to drilling some holes in an off-the-shelf enclosure, it had better be metallic. I learned that lesson the hard way, and I now use metal boxes exclusively. Luckily for me, my product somehow hasn't attracted the interest of Behringer or other low-cost makers -- yet.

Also, judging from some returns I've gotten, gadgets can be subjected to a lot of abuse. A musician can control this, but a gear maker can't.

I've seen the insides of some early Behringer gear. A lot of their early stuff was mechanically delicate, and showed signs of extensive "re-work" in production.

I have a local pro A/V business- when I started they absolutely -were- cheap garbage. I was forced to work with (and repair) a lot of their consoles, mics, etc over the years and a lot of it was truly bad stuff that was made as cheaply as possible simply to get "something" to that functioned (mostly).

They have gotten a lot better- I have made a lot of money off owning my xr18 over the last 12 years. And if you count midas, the m32 etc has been really good for me too. I've go a pair of the 76kt and they have been useful as well.

It's really great that they are making synths, and cheaply.

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