Gear Review: Behringer VT999 Vintage Tube Monster

Speaking highly of a Behringer product is often a source of discredit among musicians. After all, their gear is not that terribly expensive, so how could it actually be good? Seeing as I'm in a different camp, where I see products as a jumble of metal and electronics components, I realize that any company or manufacturer is capable of making quality equipment. It's typically quality control that makes for differences in cost, which means you should be wary of inexpensive products, but don't dismiss any gear simply because of its cost.

I've owned a few Behringer pedals and they have all been decent, but nothing compares to my experience with their VT999 Vintage Tube Monster. This pedal completely blew me away as an overdrive pedal, and it took a lot to take it off my board.

This pedal has 5 controls -- Master Volume, Gain, and a 3-band EQ. You can really dial in a lot of tones, from mid-humped rhythm, to treble-enhanced lead, and anything else. There's a lot of tone afforded by running signal through a 12ax7 tube, though I would recommend testing out the stock Chinese tube you get to see if it's workable, and putting in something more recognizable and pre-tested if it doesn't work as well. I put a JJ 12ax7 in with amazing results. Monster of tone. It even has a built-in noise gate which works incredibly well. I had a telecaster with some noise issues in my church (sconce lighting that really was noisy in the grounding) that this fixed in a jiffy.

The pedal is large. It takes up a lot of real estate, and to me, it's fairly unnecessary. Look at this gut shot:

There's a LOT of unused space in there, and while I know tubes tend to warm up and need some space, this seems a bit excessive. This also means it's a great modding platform, and there's a few mod kits out there that help. I've never tried them but I hear they add some additional tonal variety. My biggest suggestion would be to install a second circuit in all that space by re-housing a pedal in there. Something like a boost or compressor would really improve the efficiency of the real estate.

In short, it was the size of the enclosure that eventually convinced me to move on. I had some great tone out of this and would not hesitate to buy it again, if I had the space. It's, quite frankly, the best OD pedal in the sub-$100 area. I had to get 2 boutique pedals to finally take this off the board, and even then, it took the right kind of boutique pedals to make it happen.

If you're on the lookout for a pedal, regardless of your budget, I suggest you check this one out. It's a worthwhile investment. I used mine for over 4 years and it never failed on me.