Instrument Tuners--Snark And Behringer TU300

Concept: 3 out of 5 average
Execution: 3 out of 5
Yeah, but: They both work for me and cost little

The Long Version: In addition to running sound and lights for a rock band and a country music group, I'm also the bassist for a progressive rock band called Televators, and we're working on our debut CD.

When I started playing guitar in the '70s, you could tune with a pitch pipe, a tuning fork, some dude's piano, or spend over $500 on a Conn or Petersen strobe-based tuner. All bad choices for a kid just trying to play in-tune with his garage band. Luckily, cheaper electronic units came out around 1980, but they weren't very good, nor cheap enough. The situation is much better today.

Tuning is critical when money is on the line. While pouring dollars out a hose to record in a professional studio in April I used a rack-mounted Korg that's long been a favorite of professionals. The wide display that sweeps left-to-right and back again while you're playing earned this model the nickname "Cylon". It was great, but kinda pricey and I think it's been discontinued although other rack tuners are still available. For our live shows I kept getting lucky in that the amp rigs I was borrowing all had similar units, but as I've been building my own system the need arose to finally buy my own.

And suddenly I had two!

The pedal style tuner on the right is one I ordered from B&H in NYC. It's got all the features I'll never need just like most of the other brands out there, but at a much nicer price. Think 75% less, which is how I like to shop.
Behringer gets a bad rep sometimes because their very affordable gear, while based on excellent German designs, is made in China to meet the lowest possible price-point and tends to fail when subjected to rigorous touring conditions. My experience mirrors many online reports, so I just try not to let clumsy roadies carry any of the company's products, and never use them in critical show-ending parts of the audio chain unless I have a spare with me.
But even when considered slightly disposable, I like the results of many Behringer products. "Don't drop your toys or they'll break" was good advice when I was 4, and it still makes sense.
Plastic body shell and hinge points, not various metals like the competitor's $90+ offerings. Don't stomp on it = No problem.


Other online reviews of this tuner mention that it's a little slow to respond on the very lowest notes of 5+ string bass guitars. My testing agrees, but since Televators only go down to drop-D tuning it hasn't been an issue for me. Still, this can be a deal-breaker for bassists in a big hurry.

You don't get an AC adapter (wall-wart) for $25, but it uses the same plug, voltage, and polarity as most other pedals so chances are you have a spare. I had three.
It's a great tuner for the price, but I'll admit that it's a bit tricky to change 9-volt batteries if you want to power it that way.


For my birthday the guitarist for Televators gave me the same tuner he uses, a SNARK brand chromatic that clips onto your instrument's headstock and senses the vibrations physically:
Nothing to plug in, works on acoustic as well as electric instruments, and it's tiny.
The going price online is usually under $20.

When playing live I dislike having anything hitching a ride on my bass for both aesthetic and practical reasons, and to use the Snark between songs it's necessary to turn your guitar off so nobody has to listen to the annoying sound of a musician tuning up for however long it might take. Pedal tuners like my Behringer mute the sound while tuning with a simple tap of your foot, and I love that convenience.

But the Snark has it's good points, for sure.
It's surprisingly quick at picking up your note and displaying results--faster than the Behringer and the Korg Cylon and pretty much every other tuner I've used during the past 30+ years.
The display looks great under the usual lighting conditions, although I still haven't tried it in direct sunlight--no foreseeable need to.
It's tiny and light and runs off a standard CR2032 button cell.
Has a built-in metronome, apparently. For students I guess.

The best part is that you don't have to plug into it, so ANY instrument to which it can be clamped is tunable with great precision.
When I'm writing songs or learning covers it's usually in front of my PC with the speakers down low. No amplifier, just bare acoustic energy from my bass or guitar strings. Having to plug into a tuner is a hassle, so the Snark is a real time saver. Same thing at band practice or in our ProTools studio.
I also set-up other people's guitars and basses, adjusting the truss-rod and bridge so that they'll play nicely and in-tune all the way up the neck. Sometimes these instruments are waiting for electrical parts to arrive, so the Snark allows me to get work done ahead of time.

The funny thing is that while playing with the Snark I clamped it onto my Black & Decker cordless drill, and I'll be damned if it didn't track the RPMs accurately!
My brother is pretty excited about this, because all it takes is a note-to-Hz-to rpm conversion chart to be able to measure all kinds of motors and other things that vibrate, as long as the fundamental frequency or one of the major harmonics falls within the tuner's range and you have a good idea which octave you're dealing with.

My Samsung Galaxy S phone vibrates a little above F.



Note added by Matthew: The Televators' first single, Milk Run, can be found on iTunes.

Behringer Tube UltraGain MIC200 Preamp/Direct Box

Concept: 3 out of 5
Execution: 4 out of 5
Yeah, but: The Price Is Right

The Long Version: One year ago we were at a party and after a few too many whiskys I suggested to my friends that we “put the old band back together” but that instead of running sound, I would play bass.
They called my bluff, and it’s been going great.
But I still don’t have a bass amp of my own, and borrowing got old after the second time.

As a professional sound engineer for over 20 years, I have dealt with almost every bass amp on the market and have come to a few conclusions as to what would work for me.
Foremost in my mind was to get the most accurate sound straight from the bass sent to the mixing board. Most bass amps have an output for this purpose, and it’ll usually be switchable so as to bypass the amp’s graphic EQ or other tone modifiers, but none of them are as close to the source as I would like.

When confronted with the ugly tone many amps are forced to produce as a crutch for bad players, the next best option is to use a “Direct Box” between the instrument and amp.
This is a simple box with a transformer that converts a high impedance instrument’s signal to the low impedance preferred by mixing boards, while also providing a hard-wired ¼” output to the amp. They don’t affect the player’s tone onstage, but they also don’t give the engineer a surplus of signal to work with and are as low-tech as it gets.

While taking a crap a few months back I was reading my B&H PhotoVideo catalog and stumbled upon a neat little device I had never seen before, the Behringer Tube UltraGain MIC200 Preamp/Direct Box.

Getting right to the heart of the matter, this little box rocks.
It has ALL of the features of the very best direct boxes, then goes to 11 by not only including a 12AX7 vacuum tube in the signal path but also giving the user voicing options and a limiter.
For those who don’t know about such things, a 12AX7 tube is the heart of most of the greatest sounding guitar amps since the 1950s.
If you crank up the input gain and send too much signal into one of these, it’ll get a bit hotter to the touch and might distort a bit, but the distortion will be very pleasing to the ears compared with what happens in a solid state device: even-order harmonics instead of the much harsher-sounding odd-order harmonics.
I already have some speaker cabinets, so all I need now is a power amp to complete my rig.

Glowing Tube = Tone!

For people who have a ProTools-based recording environment, this is an easy and affordable way to get some analog warmth without sacrificing signal integrity.

Using mine in both a recording and live environment I can report complete satisfaction.
Since I only play active basses with 3-band EQs, it was easy to get an amazing tone through the front-of-house system while also enjoying better sound than usual through my borrowed stage amp.
Standing in front of my band Loud Nine’s Crown-powered Peavey FOH speakers (SP4 & FH18) I noticed that my bass tone was far superior to anything I had heard previously. Clean, precise, solid, and I can get it to growl with the twist of one retro-looking knob.

Negative Points are awarded to the 8 voicings that use Behringer’s limiter (right side of the knob).
It is much too slow to respond, so the first 4 notes of a song will be way too loud before it clamps down on the output level.

If you buy one of these I strongly recommend visiting your local Goodwill or other thrift store to locate a spare 9vAC/1.3amp+ wall-wart power supply with the proper connector and polarity.
Because I use several Alesis products I’m very aware of the need to keep spare power supplies with me when they are 9volt AC compared to the more reliable DC units.

I have used many of Behringer's products over the last 10+ years with great results. They do what they're supposed to do and at much lower prices than the competition.
However, their gear doesn't stand up to the abuse of touring very well.
Mixing boards have had multiple channels die, stereo compressors have become mono compressors, and a failed crossover nearly ruined a show.
Bottom line is that the German design is fantastic, while the Chinese manufacturing can be improved.
My MIC200 travels in a padded case and sits on a sticky rubber mat to keep it from vibrating off the amp and hitting the floor.

Price?
Got mine from B&H for $40 with free shipping.
(ART sells a similar unit for more, and plain direct boxes with none of it's features also can cost more).
The MIC100 model omits the voicings knob, and goes for $30.

These units represent a significant value, and I recommend them highly.