Let’s talk budget gear

LiveeviL2000

LiveeviL2000

Ambassador of Pentagonal Pentatonics
Country flag
With the influx of new members, I’d like to resurrect this topic.

A couple of years back I went on a budget gear kick. I demoed budget amps, pedals, and whatever else I found. At times I would do a shootout between the budget item and its more expensive counterpart. I even put together a budget pedalboard from soup to nuts for under $300 and it was surprisingly good.

I shopped companies like Joyo, Behringer, Donner and some real no names. There were some real surprises and some duds.

Before I comment on my findings through that journey, I’d like to get some feedback and experiences from everyone else.

I know quite recently @Headache bought a budget guitar and he was generally pleased.

What if any budget gear or even parts have you had experience with? Good or bad.
 
My first electric was bought used in 07. This after being an acoustic only player since 1973. It’s an Epi G400 and over the next couple years I swapped pieces and parts and learned how to set up a guitar. Only the wood and plastic is still Epiphone. Plays and sounds great.

The SAGA kit Tele was truly a budget piece as I got it off eBay. Already built. Ugly as sin, so it got sanded down to bare wood. Stained and cleared. Only upgrades I’ve done to it is a 4-Way switch and new bridge for thru body strings. It turned out okay. Not equal to a true Fender…. But good enough for how I play.

Now… other gear. That’d have to be the Bad Monkey pedal. Bought new for 49 bucks. I see in eBay and Reverb people are trying to sell them for twice or more than what I paid. Guess folks found out what a bunch of us did when they were originally sold. It’s an awesome pedal.
 
In my humble opinion, of course...

The Donner Noise Killer is actually really good.
A mini sized noise suppressor pedal that really works well for less than $20

The Donner dt-1 tuner pedal is a mini korg style tuner that I have found works just as good as my korg, and they are only like $30

The Jackson js series can be really good guitars for really cheap, but can be hit or miss on fretwork.

If I were rocking a completely budget metal amp here are 3 absolute winners:
Joyo Bantamp - Firebrand/Zombie
Peavey XXL
Boss Katana

Joyo makes a wireless guitar set for very cheap off Amazon and I think they work wonderfully.
I haven't had great luck with their branded pedals though.

I've gone cheap on a lot of pedals and they were just crap.
 
Going cheap on the pedal board, I found some winners and a couple losers.

Winners: Behringer EQ700 ( Boss EQ-7 Clone)
Probably the single best pedal I have honestly. Very precise, well made despite being of hardened plastic and in the FX loop, it can turn any amp into something completely different, actually working as a boost even better than my overdrive.

Donner Yellow Fall Analog Delay
Mini pedal, solid metal housing, takes up no room, incredible amount of clean delay and simple. Awesome pedal

Joyo Ultimate Drive (OCD Fulltone clone)
Metal housing, rigid built, great overdrive but also doubles very well as a distortion unit. Best used in High Mode vs its Low Mode.

Donner Noise Killer
Another solid metal housed mini pedal that is amazing at canceling out unwanted noise and hissing especially at high gain settings.

All were less than $45 and I regret none of them

The Losers:
ENO EQ-7 Mini
Not terrible but not great. The sliders are too tiny and close together, so accidentally bumping them is really easy and thus ruining your sound in the middle of playing. It's not very wide ranging in its EQ settings either and it's Gain boost is nearly non-existent. But it was only $25

Lekato Looper/Tuner
It's basically good as a tuner lol I figured out how to make it work but it's a pain in the ass: the loops will just muddy up your sound into a jumbled mess if you use it into the same amp your playing in. So, you need to record your loop and then dump it into another amp by itself while you're using your main amp. Aggravating and costed about $48

Amazon Basics Compressor Sustainer
What did I expect for $15? Not much and that's what I got. It's cool for cleans, getting that chicken pickin' sound but in high gain it's useless EXCEPT to hold notes longer for soloing which it does work good. However, it is noisy as hell and the Donner Noise Killer basically is a necessity with this thing
 
I have a monoprice 15w tube Amp that I picked up for 199$ last black Friday. These are a good deal at the 279$ regular price
15w/5w power switching an on board reverb, and a 3 band eq, about as simple as it gets.
It is all I need.
To be fair I also have a zoom gx1 pedal for headphone play and when I play over a track, I think that was 99$.
 
Somebody gave me 2X Behringer mixers, I cleaned one of them up and gave it to the church.
The other one has a dead switching power supply which I now should try to rebuild.
I tapped into the speaker wires of a Behringer bass amp, and run the church main speakers off of that.
It has a built-in 8 band EQ which is all I have...just enough to keep the feedback under control.
They have another Behringer amp which I now use as a keyboard monitor....
So, the church has all that (3 Behringers) which is all we could get for free.
I should really spend some money and buy a decent 31 band EQ....I wish I had that, but maybe somebody will give us one.
I also was given a 6 channel power amp for free, gave it to the church, but that's not hooked up yet.
 
I'll start with pedals and wireless

I agree with @Clockworkmike and @Headache , the Donner Noise Killer is a great noise suppressor. Although it has gone up in price since I bought it by over 30%.
The Behringer 7band EQ is a monster deal. Sweetwater had a sale on Behringer pedals when I bought mine at $20. My only knock on it is that the sliders dont have a "bump" when you get to unity. But that is just nitpicking.

I tried a few more of Donner Mini pedals, but I found them to be hit or miss.

Another offering from Donner is their DP-1 Power supply. I was so impressed I bought 3! No noise, can handle 9v/12v/18v. It gives you 6 ports at 9v-100mA, 2 ports at 9v- 500mA, 1 port at 12v-500mA and 1 port at 18v-500mA. Includes all the DC wires you need to connect your pedals and it's compact. The DP-1 has been discontinued and replaced with the DP-2 which now goes for $45. Is it truly an isolated power supply ... no. But it's a hell of a lot cheaper than everything else thats out there with that many ports. and lets face facts, if it doesnt introduce noise, isnt that what counts?

Another Behringer pedal that is also REALLY good is their Super Fuzz. It was made as a clone of the old Boss FZ2 Hyperfuzz ... and it is! Again I bought it for $20, I think they go for $30 now. Go on line and check out some of the shootouts between these two pedals. They sound about the same.

As @Headache mentioned, the Joyo lunchbox amps are great. I own the Zombie which is a 20w hybrid Mesa recto clone and it is the little amp that could! I took it out with me to test the cabs I've bought and the people I was buying from were floored by that amp. I think they go for around $170 now for the first version and a little more for the version with the footswitch $190-ish?

Also from Joyo I bought the Vintage Overdrive which is a TS-9 clone. It has much the same characteristics as a TS-9 with a slightly different midrange bump. At $35 it is built like a tank and if you are looking for a TS-9, it will get you there for almost a third of the price.
I also tried a few of Joyo's "R" series pedals and was not impressed Especially at the price point which is drifting from "budget" at about $90 but still cheaper than the name brand counter parts that they are cloning. One pedal from that series did make me say wow. The R-12 10band EQ. At $90 it does what the MXR M108 does at $60 less. It also looks pretty with all the LED lights (bonus!)

The Joyo Wireless set is good and bad. The good, at a price point of $40 you cant beat it. They last around 9 - 10 hours on one charge. The bad, they produce a fuzzy hiss when you play. You don't notice it right away, but when you do, you cant unhear it. I do own 2 sets of Xvive wireless which costs three times more than Joyo and lasts less than half as long.

Lastly, Pedalboard ....
GhostFire offers a great simple solution to organizing your pedals and they have various sizes. They all come with a sturdy carrying case with handle and shoulder strap. They include all the velcro you'd need. The top of the board itself is already covered with the fuzzy side of velcro so it's ready to go. They sell them on Amazon.
 
A $600 guitar is not a "budget" instrument, it's pretty close to the average guitar price. Completely middle of the pack. I'd call $500-900 mid-range; anything above that is luxury and anything below that is budget. Most of my guitars are budget. My #1 guitar is a Yamaha classical that I bought second hand for $100 in 1996. I've got Squier, I've got Epiphone. They're fine; some people may find a Squier that fits their hands just right.

Pedals should be cheaper. There's what, 5 bucks worth? of electrical components. I'm sitting here at a computer and I have my mouse--it's got usb wireless connectivity, it's got a laser in it, 5 buttons and a scroll wheel--it was $10 retail. There aren't any guitar pedals as complicated as this $10 mouse. Seriously, what are we paying for? Not the intellectual property, the term of patent is quite short--if a guitar pedal qualifies for patent protection at all. It's only the fact that the "brand name" pedals cost over $100 (sometimes a lot over $100) that makes us think a $50 pedal is a bargain. And there are pedal copies of just about every pedal circuit you can think of, for sale in the $15-50 range. If the circuit is the same, the sound will be the same (with some minor variation for tolerances).

I have a Mooer Rumble Drive, it's a "dumble" style pedal, a copy of the Hermidia Zendrive but in a green box. $40. It sounds good to me and it's lasted about 10 years (so far).
 
I'd agree with you about the pedal prices. Vendors, in general, know about branding and how to make the consumer part with their hard earned cash. You could say the same thing about guitars and what makes a $5000 guitar worth more than a $500 one.
But that is a discussion for another thread, because if we start down this path a derailment will soon follow. Although this is something I'd love to discuss at some point.

Edit: I'd also like to add, pricing goes far beyond the cost of building an item. I'll bet that $10 mouse has sold way more units than a guitar pedal.
 
Seamus OReally said:
I am getting real nice clean and edge-of-breakup tones from my $200 Boss Katana MKII. It's an amazing bit of kit for the money.
Click to expand...
That is something I have been wrestling with for about 2 years now and I havent pulled the trigger. I have seen them used for pretty cheap. But then I see how many are being sold on FB market just in my area and I start thinking, why are people selling then off?

Which MKII do you have?
 
Budget is good...
Reverse engineered ripoffs, not so much.

Some budget manufacturers/marketers simply acquire a "thing" to take apart and then start knocking out copies without ever compensating the original designers. Sometimes they get shut down, but that requires court intervention, which is expensive. Plus, nearly all of this is coming out of a large Asian country that could care less about our stupid rules.

One whom I think of as a brother has a quotation which I think sums it up...
"Friends don't let friend's buy Behringer" Fezz Parka
 
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