My Behringer BDI21 arrived about a couple of hours or so ago, so I figured I would do a demo. Mind you, this is the first time I’ve ever played through it. I threw the 9 volt battery in it, plugged it into my Roland VS-1880, and basically hit record. I took and used the exact same settings from Tech 21’s site for their SansAmp Bass Driver DI.
I am using my new Spector Legend 4 Classic Quilted Purple bass. I have both pickups on and wide open. The treble is wide open, and the bass is at 3/4. I did it that way because that’s pretty much always been my settings with an active bass pre. Now I’m not sure if it’s my new bass or this unit, but it I think there is a ton of bass built into this unit. It also has quite a bit of drive/growl as well. I think it’s great to have both of those. However, I personally like a rather clean bass tone.
I’m surprised at the size of the pedal as well as its ruggedness. From looking at the pictures of it before I bought it, I thought it was going to be rather large, however, it’s around 4″ wide x 5″ tall, and 1 1/2″ thick. I thought it was going to be some cheap plastic, and it is plastic. Nevertheless I don’t think it’s going to fall apart unless you treat your gear like crap and throw it around on concrete.
Anyways, for $30, I just don’t think you can go wrong with the Behringer BDI21. I’m not really blown away by the sounds that I used from Tech21. Still, with a little bit of farting around I think some really good bass tones can come out of this unit. It took me just a matter of few seconds to come up with the bass tones on the last two clips of the demo. I am using a pick, so get over it. I just prefer that sound for what I do. Also, the very first clip is me running through the unit with it OFF. So, that’s just the direct sound of my bass, and it’s louder than hell compared to the other clips.
Once again, here are the settings that I used.
1) 00:00 – 00:41. Straight into the pedal with it off. My direct bass sound.
2) 00:41 – 1:29. Fat Tube
3) 1:29 – 2:25. Bassman Style
4) 2:25 – 3:20. SVT Style
5) 3:20 -4:18. King’s X style
6) 4:18 -5:17. Slap
7) 5:17 – 6:09. Reggae
8) 6:09 -7:04. I put everything at 12 o’clock. I think it has a nice Flip Top type sound to it. I like this tone a lot.
9) 7:04 – 8:02. I did some real quick tweaking, and I came up with a tone that I think is “me” for the most part. This sounds like a tone that I would use a lot for my song stylings. drive 12 o’clock, treble 1:30 o’clock, bass 1:30 o’clock, level 12 o’clock, presence 2 0’clock, and blend at 2:30 o’clock.
Special thanks to guest contributor John Jolly for this review.
