Fascinating posts; especially the pedalboard. I've been thinking about the G3 and B3 myself so it's interesting to hear you tried the same route and moved on. How was the sound with those units?

/rick

Rick - I wasn't a fan of the reverbs. That and the many modules I couldn't use led me to move on.

Hi Randy,

I've also been following your posts with interest. A few thoughts:

After several weeks and a second gig test, I have as yet not heard any distortion from the Behringer MPA. I could only get it to distort slightly by running a cranked signal from my audio interface... What happens when you just plug the instrument in direct with a 1/4" cable (no effects, preamp etc.)? My gut feeling is that something in your signal chain is running too hot for the channel inputs. Coincidentally, I heard someone using one of these amps on the street yesterday (acoustic guitar and vocals); it was very loud and clear.

I've never been a fan of anything Behringer in the past, although their single channel DI boxes turn up everywhere, and seem OK. But I like these speakers a lot; I think they punch way above their weight.

I'm curious what you mean by "many modules you couldn't use" on the Zoom pedals? Do you mean the preset sounds? I would agree that a lot of the "out of the box" sounds aren't very useful, but I actually think the Zooms are very well optioned for creating custom patches (FWIW most of the reverb on my recordings and videos are slightly tweaked Zoom G2/G3 pedal sounds).

Cheers,
Andy

Update: I dropped the TC Hall of Fame reverb as I can get all the types of reverb I desire from the Trinity 2. I swapped the Analogman compressor for another Keeley. This will add consistency and save a bit of pedalboard space. I've added a Morley stereo volume pedal, 2 JHS Little Black buffers at the front and replaced the Boss LS-2 for a Loop-Master ABY unit. All fits into a Pedaltrain 2.

It's a nice looking board Randy. Any luck with the distorted speaker problem?

Yes, Andy. Channel is at 9 o'clock and main is at about 10:30. My board is overdriving the gain a bit, maybe +2 or +3. Bass on Behringer is set at 11 and treble set at 1 o'clock. I'm going to play a bit over the weekend with higher settings on the Behringer and lower on my board to see how that works. But I am really pleased with the tone.

OK great

I can run both channel and master controls at "12" without distorting my MPA, but mind you that's without any preamping, eq or boost in front. Can't foresee any situation where I'd want to push these speakers any further though... I find that almost any 1M Ohm (or higher) pedal works as a significant buffer; it's quite noticeable on the melody side of the Stickup.

Cheers,
Andy

What I want to try this weekend is to adjust the Behringers to the optimal setting without any pedals on. Then adjust pedals to work with those settings. I'll probably need to adjust both PA and board to get to ultimate tone, but that's the goal. The settings I have now are just what I landed on without much thought. At least I'll know what to fall back if my tests fail.

I didn't add here the JHS Little Black buffers that I added to both the melody and bass sides. These really improved the tone of the un-effected Stick. Opens up a lot of possibilities of compressed/uncompressed, overdriven/un overdrives or plain tone. Prior to the buffers, the unaffected tone sounded weak.

StepAbout might be great. Wouldn't know as it's in too limited supply. But I do know I can combine buffers, compressors and overdrives and get similar results. And these units are readily available.

Hi all, I'll ask this here since I know some in this topic have a Behringer Europort MPA40BT, as I do.

I've been using it for practice without any kind of DI box or other stage in between the stick and the speaker. I've been slightly surprised that even to compete with an air conditioner in the same room I need to turn the channel gain to about 80% max and the volume to the same 80% max. If I do that in a quiet room you can hear a lot of extra noise too.

Is this normal? I somehow expected to be able to crank a little more volume out of the speaker. I have a railboard.

I also am concerned that I don't get much volume through my Allen & Heath Zed10fx on headphones without turning up the gain/volume to the point where I hear additional noise. In that case I'm mostly using headphones, but I barely even light up the leds on that box. Granted I probably have a soft touch at this point as I learn the instrument (and don't have a guitar background). At some point I'll spend more time with the Zed10 and Europort MPA40BT together, but right now they're often in different locations.

The Zed10Fx is supposed to have excellent preamps, You'd think I'd be able to knock my socks off volume-wise through headphones, but such doesn't seem to be the case.
(and while better with phantom power, not *that* much better).

Just want to check if my expectations are out of line.

Thanks

Dave