Just came across this video. Ive got an original EDP Wasp. In bits. In a black binbag. I got it 2nd hand in 1980 in good condition obviously😂. I bought the Behringer wasp deluxe and am very impressed. It's captured the sound well. Currently in May 2023 you can pick up a wasp for around 150 quid. It's a bloody bargain for that price.
I love Behringer. Let me say that again. I love Behringer. I have a ton of high end, mid range, and low end gear and i can tell you first hand that behringer gear may come cheap but it doesn't sound cheap.... In most cases. It can be really hard to perfectly replicate vintage hardware especially considering until recently many of the electronic components were completely out of production. Behringer is bringing many of these things back. Some other things that make it hard to accurately replicate vintage synth are modernization of hardware. By some minor miracle of old school engineering many of those vintage synths tended to age like a fine wine and combined with decades of temperature changes, cigarette smoke and DIY repairs giving them their own unique warmth and character. You'd mostly only notice differences in the extreme high and low registers. The wasp however in my opinion is in every way an improvement on it's frustratingly unreliable vintage novelty predecessor. I think most of the hate for Behringer comes from industry plants and fanboys. Sure they're copy cats. personally i think the competition is a fantastic thing for the consumer. Let's remember at the end of the day there is more air inside of a vintage synth than hardware. LOL Driving down the prices of competitors and putting obsolete components back into production so you all don't have to spend as much money as i have to make noise i for one think is a great thing. Bump this guy up the algo. He's got good taste.
@@StephenMcLeod There is alot to love about the wasp and not much to complain about. The sound is fantastic aptly named it's buzz is absolutely endearing. In fact my only complain is they held a little too true to the original in that in spite of dropping the janky ribbon keyboard of the original Behringer limited midi controllers to the same 3 octaves as the original so having a full sized controller leaves you with quite a few dead keys. On the plus side if your controller allows you to split the keyboard there is little reason to question whether it's worth looking the full range. I love that this thing does not have a digital patch bank. It's one of my top recommendations for entry level sound designers. What you see on the panel is what you get in your ears. No confusion, to blindly training your ears. Turn a knob and you get what you get. If you compare that to something like the monologue which has a lot to offer sonically but may leave a new designer wondering what the hell is going on. should you read the manual you'll know going in that if you hit shift + play on the panel you'll be in a similar position to see what you are hearing. the automation is a joy too. But in my honest opinion it's not the best starting point. I mean the envelop generator and LFO implementation while impressive combined with automation. They are needlessly conflated and i can only imagine this is endlessly confusing and down right frustrating for people who have no idea what they are listening for. Not to mention the daunting task of overcoming the fear of messing up some mysterious setting that would theoretically turn your pretty new bass machine into a smoking door stop. If any of you are the person i've just described fear not. I've yet to run into a piece of hardware with menus that doesn't have a factory restore. Now get in there, push some buttons and twist some knobs. For slightly more intermediate sound designers on the other hand don't be shy it's a fantastic synth with a few design quarks that eventually amount to an acquired taste. LOL If you are wondering how the monologue got dragged into all this, it's because this video inspired me to dust off my wasp and put it to use combining the wonderful buzz with some pure tone from the monologue as a lead. I've got to stop writing books on youtube. ROFL.. Korg and Behringer don't be afraid to send us some free gear... Eh? Eh? LOL Another one for the algo homie.
@@taylorst.5131 Hell yeah. Everything you've said resonates. Particularly the straightforward nature of it. I really like that with the WASP the layout is simple enough for you to quickly understand what each knob is doing to the sound. I've had much more expensive synths where I just couldn't figure out the relationship between the bits and pieces, and it meant it wasn't as useful (though of course that is also largely down to my own lack of knowledge...)
@@StephenMcLeod Looking at you mininova. The freaking mininova is capable of some really beautiful sounds it's pretty good an pretending to be analogue and has vast sonic potential. The only problem is how the hell do you do you figure it out! That menu is eye cancer, not only that trying to create a custom patch in the thing feels like guess which card is in the middle of a deck. But actually completing a custom patch on the thing feels like pulling off a magic trick. LOL Or the DX7 right? Possibly the most notoriously unintuitive synth ever put in the hands of hardware lusting consumers. Shame that. It really is a gem if you are willing to put in the literal work to program it.
I'm getting the wasp soon. If have to do the diy fix so be it.. I've done trickier fixes on pcb boards.. Anyway, big thanks on the wasp info, it's a must have for dark, industrial!!!!
Behringer may be cheap crap (I don’t think so), but at least it’s making Analog synthesis more economically accessible to the poor and unfortunate ones. People talk crap about the volcas too. The volcas are ugly but at least they’re accessible.
These videos are really helpful, I appreciate the sound-only videos but I also need to learn more about these synths, their pros, and cons, etc. Your videos are great for that! So I just picked one of these up, love how it sounds! I immediately noticed I only get 3 octaves at a time using a keyboard midi controller, and the mod wheel is also nonresponsive. is this a hardware limitation of the wasp or user error? I just plugged midi from my Deepmind 12 to the Wasp. Also, I've seen you test the other Behringer synths, do they have the same limitation? I wanted to get a 2600 and a model D but I'm curious if ill be able to use the full range of larger midi keyboards and utilize the mod wheel!?
Thanks for watching! The Wasp is limited to a few octaves as per the original design, yeah. Others have a wider range I believe, but don't quote me on that. The 2600 definitely should as it doesn't work in the same way. For the mod wheel... by default I believe that sends MIDI data out on a particular CC value. A lot of the classic Behringer remakes don't respond to MIDI CC for the parameters (the originals didn't either for obvious reasons) - which is why there's no mapping specifically for the mod wheel. I would double check with the Model D before you get it to see if you can control the parameters over MIDI, but I suspect not.
I think I have this issue and also a problem with the attack envelope. If I set a long attack, the succeeding notes after the first have a fast attack.
Interesting. I'm not 100% sure on how that's set up, but it might just be the way the retrig is configured. I've not noticed the same thing on mine yet.
Iv just started collecting hard wear iv not got much as it's expensive iv got a Yamaha DJ x a mixer and a multi track Tuscam thing couple of pedels and few more shitty things and got a couple of random daws iv been recorded my tracks on mini disc .
@@StephenMcLeod it's just a wee Numark thing but iv got a usb mixer too that iv never used but will soon..my friend has all the synths and mpcs so he lets me borrow them as he doesn't know how to use them he just buys shit hoping to use it but out of all his gear the guitar is the only thing he can use...he should just give it all to me .ha ha
wish you were over here in the states Steve, id repair that wasp for nothing at all. I have a pretty strong background with electronic repair, so I was prepared for whatever mine came to me. thankfully,I was fortunate enough mine didn't have any issues when it arrived. I understand the double triggering issue is a pretty easy fix, and I'd think anyone who's have any soldering time could get it done.
@@StephenMcLeod yeah the touch pad was pretty nasty but it packed a punch it apparently originally belonged to one of the guys out the human League what is pretty cool
Mine should arrive by Friday!!😁😁 I'm kinda pissed, I ordered it last Thursday and the place I got it from didn't ship until Monday evening.... If they'd have shipped Fri I'd probably have it today 😕 But I can't complain too much, most are selling for almost $300 and the ones that are only $200 are waaaaay backordered..... I found ONE AVAILABLE for $200 brand new 😉
Cheers! Unfortunately the double trigger fault is a hardware issue, so they cannae fix it with firmware updates. They need to recall them for in person fixes!
It depends. If you are using it as a pretty glitchy weirdo synth then you might be able to get away with it. It's present in all the videos I've done so far. The double trigger is pretty low, but it's definitely present, and it muddies things up. But... it's not stopped me using it. If you're after one, keep an eye out for a WASP with an S20 serial, as they are apparently less likely to have the issue.
There is an assumption that when something is cheap it is poorly made, so far the only gear that I’ve known to be cheap and awful is the guitar pedals, they are deffo not to be stomped on. I think what people need to bear in mind is that R&D costs a lot of money, with these clones many of the design decisions have been made already, to a certain extent they don’t need to advertise as these synths already have legendary counterparts so they can be sold on reputation alone, this drives the cost down a lot
@@StephenMcLeod I've never broken mine either but I don't actually stomp on them I gently press them when on my desk I have a bassist friend who reckons he has broken a few, its worth noting that he still uses them so they can't be that bad
the differences you hear between synths is almost heretic;-) it should be able for anything if its for real. and i have the roland jd-xi which is fantastic.
I don't care about Behringer copying products really - It's more so their harassment of journalists, and that rather antisemitic "cork sniffer" ad they made. Either way, I wanted to see what they sounded like and your video was quite well done (I just still think Behringer are a bit ethically dubious - Benn Jordan's vid is what convinced me of this). I also can relate to loving synths but not really knowing (or at least not really caring about) "that roland sound", "that moog sound" etc. For me, it's cus i just plain couldnt afford any hardware synths for a long time, between disability and some addiction issues. I only was able to produce music during that time thanks to free vsts (and maybe the odd bit of piracy - i try to make up for it now lol) and a cheap midi controller. Now that I can finally buy some hardware (albeit a modest amount of it - I got a Korg Minilogue XD and an Arturia Minibrute 2 so far), I just sorta go synth by synth and know what I like the sound of.
What's the journalist harassment stuff? I haven't seen that. There's plenty of things to talk about on the ethics question for sure - I just wanted to head off the inevitable comments as those debates have been had at length elsewhere, and I didn't want to end up replaying them here.
@@StephenMcLeod Here's an article about that controversy: www*vice*com/en/article/wxe7qx/a-major-synth-company-created-this-fake-product-to-attack-a-journalist (don't know if youtube will allow me to post a link or not, so replace the "*"s with "."s) Basically this journalist, Peter Kirn made criticisms of Behringer and the company started harassing him on twitter, even claiming to have trademarked his name "Kirn" (dunno if there was any truth to this),and making a fake ad that featured a caricature that many took to be antisemitic (the image seriously did look like it came off freaking Stormfront or something. Even if it was ignorance, you'd think someone in the company would catch it - especially a _German_ company, you'd think would wanna be careful there lol). That Benn Jordan vid I mentioned earlier (it's called "Behringer: The Edgelords Of Music Production") goes into a few other controversies, including the copycat stuff (which mostly doesnt bother me, especially for old gear that isnt made anymore - but their rip off of the Arturia Beatstep is a bit more iffy for sure) and them sewing random people online for criticizing them. Anyhow, again, I quite like your channel from what i've seen. Subbed.
Just came across this video. Ive got an original EDP Wasp. In bits. In a black binbag. I got it 2nd hand in 1980 in good condition obviously😂. I bought the Behringer wasp deluxe and am very impressed. It's captured the sound well.
Currently in May 2023 you can pick up a wasp for around 150 quid. It's a bloody bargain for that price.
Definitely. It's one of my favourites of the series!
I love Behringer. Let me say that again. I love Behringer. I have a ton of high end, mid range, and low end gear and i can tell you first hand that behringer gear may come cheap but it doesn't sound cheap.... In most cases.
It can be really hard to perfectly replicate vintage hardware especially considering until recently many of the electronic components were completely out of production. Behringer is bringing many of these things back.
Some other things that make it hard to accurately replicate vintage synth are modernization of hardware. By some minor miracle of old school engineering many of those vintage synths tended to age like a fine wine and combined with decades of temperature changes, cigarette smoke and DIY repairs giving them their own unique warmth and character. You'd mostly only notice differences in the extreme high and low registers.
The wasp however in my opinion is in every way an improvement on it's frustratingly unreliable vintage novelty predecessor. I think most of the hate for Behringer comes from industry plants and fanboys.
Sure they're copy cats. personally i think the competition is a fantastic thing for the consumer.
Let's remember at the end of the day there is more air inside of a vintage synth than hardware. LOL
Driving down the prices of competitors and putting obsolete components back into production so you all don't have to spend as much money as i have to make noise i for one think is a great thing. Bump this guy up the algo. He's got good taste.
Yeah. I love the WASP. Being able to get hands on with vintage synth sounds for cheap money is amazing.
@@StephenMcLeod There is alot to love about the wasp and not much to complain about. The sound is fantastic aptly named it's buzz is absolutely endearing. In fact my only complain is they held a little too true to the original in that in spite of dropping the janky ribbon keyboard of the original Behringer limited midi controllers to the same 3 octaves as the original so having a full sized controller leaves you with quite a few dead keys. On the plus side if your controller allows you to split the keyboard there is little reason to question whether it's worth looking the full range. I love that this thing does not have a digital patch bank. It's one of my top recommendations for entry level sound designers. What you see on the panel is what you get in your ears. No confusion, to blindly training your ears. Turn a knob and you get what you get. If you compare that to something like the monologue which has a lot to offer sonically but may leave a new designer wondering what the hell is going on. should you read the manual you'll know going in that if you hit shift + play on the panel you'll be in a similar position to see what you are hearing. the automation is a joy too. But in my honest opinion it's not the best starting point. I mean the envelop generator and LFO implementation while impressive combined with automation. They are needlessly conflated and i can only imagine this is endlessly confusing and down right frustrating for people who have no idea what they are listening for. Not to mention the daunting task of overcoming the fear of messing up some mysterious setting that would theoretically turn your pretty new bass machine into a smoking door stop.
If any of you are the person i've just described fear not. I've yet to run into a piece of hardware with menus that doesn't have a factory restore. Now get in there, push some buttons and twist some knobs.
For slightly more intermediate sound designers on the other hand don't be shy it's a fantastic synth with a few design quarks that eventually amount to an acquired taste. LOL If you are wondering how the monologue got dragged into all this, it's because this video inspired me to dust off my wasp and put it to use combining the wonderful buzz with some pure tone from the monologue as a lead.
I've got to stop writing books on youtube. ROFL.. Korg and Behringer don't be afraid to send us some free gear... Eh? Eh? LOL
Another one for the algo homie.
@@taylorst.5131 Hell yeah. Everything you've said resonates. Particularly the straightforward nature of it. I really like that with the WASP the layout is simple enough for you to quickly understand what each knob is doing to the sound. I've had much more expensive synths where I just couldn't figure out the relationship between the bits and pieces, and it meant it wasn't as useful (though of course that is also largely down to my own lack of knowledge...)
@@StephenMcLeod Looking at you mininova. The freaking mininova is capable of some really beautiful sounds it's pretty good an pretending to be analogue and has vast sonic potential.
The only problem is how the hell do you do you figure it out! That menu is eye cancer, not only that trying to create a custom patch in the thing feels like guess which card is in the middle of a deck.
But actually completing a custom patch on the thing feels like pulling off a magic trick. LOL Or the DX7 right? Possibly the most notoriously unintuitive synth ever put in the hands of hardware lusting consumers. Shame that. It really is a gem if you are willing to put in the literal work to program it.
I'm getting the wasp soon. If have to do the diy fix so be it.. I've done trickier fixes on pcb boards.. Anyway, big thanks on the wasp info, it's a must have for dark, industrial!!!!
I think they should have sorted most of them by now hopefully!
Behringer may be cheap crap (I don’t think so), but at least it’s making Analog synthesis more economically accessible to the poor and unfortunate ones. People talk crap about the volcas too. The volcas are ugly but at least they’re accessible.
I love cheap crap! Some of my best music is made on cheap crap! The WASP definitely isn't.
These videos are really helpful, I appreciate the sound-only videos but I also need to learn more about these synths, their pros, and cons, etc. Your videos are great for that! So I just picked one of these up, love how it sounds! I immediately noticed I only get 3 octaves at a time using a keyboard midi controller, and the mod wheel is also nonresponsive. is this a hardware limitation of the wasp or user error? I just plugged midi from my Deepmind 12 to the Wasp. Also, I've seen you test the other Behringer synths, do they have the same limitation? I wanted to get a 2600 and a model D but I'm curious if ill be able to use the full range of larger midi keyboards and utilize the mod wheel!?
Thanks for watching! The Wasp is limited to a few octaves as per the original design, yeah. Others have a wider range I believe, but don't quote me on that. The 2600 definitely should as it doesn't work in the same way.
For the mod wheel... by default I believe that sends MIDI data out on a particular CC value. A lot of the classic Behringer remakes don't respond to MIDI CC for the parameters (the originals didn't either for obvious reasons) - which is why there's no mapping specifically for the mod wheel. I would double check with the Model D before you get it to see if you can control the parameters over MIDI, but I suspect not.
@@StephenMcLeod Thanks for the insight! Maybe I can get pitch bend with Midi control software over USB or something, ill have to experiment!
@@ElyJennis Good luck!
@@ElyJennis usb is just midi instructions over usb connection. There's no pitch bend or mod wheel over midi and no CV for it either.
I think I have this issue and also a problem with the attack envelope. If I set a long attack, the succeeding notes after the first have a fast attack.
Interesting. I'm not 100% sure on how that's set up, but it might just be the way the retrig is configured. I've not noticed the same thing on mine yet.
Iv just started collecting hard wear iv not got much as it's expensive iv got a Yamaha DJ x a mixer and a multi track Tuscam thing couple of pedels and few more shitty things and got a couple of random daws iv been recorded my tracks on mini disc .
Nice one!! What DJ mixer!?
@@StephenMcLeod it's just a wee Numark thing but iv got a usb mixer too that iv never used but will soon..my friend has all the synths and mpcs so he lets me borrow them as he doesn't know how to use them he just buys shit hoping to use it but out of all his gear the guitar is the only thing he can use...he should just give it all to me .ha ha
Actually thinking about it now, there definitely is a hole in my arsenal. Maybe just enough to fit a wasp.
Room for a wee yin surely...
wish you were over here in the states Steve, id repair that wasp for nothing at all. I have a pretty strong background with electronic repair, so I was prepared for whatever mine came to me. thankfully,I was fortunate enough mine didn't have any issues when it arrived. I understand the double triggering issue is a pretty easy fix, and I'd think anyone who's have any soldering time could get it done.
Thanks man! I mostly didn't want to void the warranty since it was brand new! They replaced mine with a functioning unit since and it's great
@@StephenMcLeod Good deal dude! Happy to hear that! I love mine and plan on creating a lot with it.👍
Is your dog's name BMO as in BMO from Adventure Time?
It is! I think you are the only person to get that first time. Hah.
@@StephenMcLeod I loved that show! Explains a lot in hindsight 🤔😄 BMO was my favourite character.
@@CaptainPikant hahaha. It's a great show. Just bizarre enough to be great.
I was lucky enough to play an original wasp around 15 years back as my friend had one
Oh nice!!! I hear the touch pad thing was rubbish but it sounds cool. I know that signal sounds in Glasgow has an original too which is coool
@@StephenMcLeod yeah the touch pad was pretty nasty but it packed a punch it apparently originally belonged to one of the guys out the human League what is pretty cool
@@leewightman8619 That is awesome!!!
I like your moduals btw! Keep on keepin on.....!!
Cheers!
Thanks man. You have talked me out of this synth.
Haha not sure if that's good or not.
@@StephenMcLeod it is.
I listened to your jam with it first. I must say you look and sound nothing like I expected :)
Surprising people since 2013!
Visually the midi mirrors the dinsynk on the original.
Good to know!
Mine should arrive by Friday!!😁😁 I'm kinda pissed, I ordered it last Thursday and the place I got it from didn't ship until Monday evening.... If they'd have shipped Fri I'd probably have it today 😕 But I can't complain too much, most are selling for almost $300 and the ones that are only $200 are waaaaay backordered..... I found ONE AVAILABLE for $200 brand new 😉
Nice one! It's crazy how cheap they are. Hope you enjoy it. It's my favourite of the bunch.
@@StephenMcLeod lol I wish they'd make the "Spider" sequencer or at least a tricked out/more universal version of the original to match!
Love ure accenet man, good video
Cheers! Unfortunately the double trigger fault is a hardware issue, so they cannae fix it with firmware updates. They need to recall them for in person fixes!
It does sound good. But the double triggering stuff… Can you work around it for the most part?
It depends. If you are using it as a pretty glitchy weirdo synth then you might be able to get away with it. It's present in all the videos I've done so far. The double trigger is pretty low, but it's definitely present, and it muddies things up. But... it's not stopped me using it. If you're after one, keep an eye out for a WASP with an S20 serial, as they are apparently less likely to have the issue.
@@StephenMcLeod
Hmm... I like glitch but I don’t necessarily like my kit to be templated with it, haha
Doesn’t the Cat have a similar problem?
@@asynchronicity I hear ya! Nah, the CAT had some other glitch I believe, but it wasn't the same problem.
There is an assumption that when something is cheap it is poorly made, so far the only gear that I’ve known to be cheap and awful is the guitar pedals, they are deffo not to be stomped on.
I think what people need to bear in mind is that R&D costs a lot of money, with these clones many of the design decisions have been made already, to a certain extent they don’t need to advertise as these synths already have legendary counterparts so they can be sold on reputation alone, this drives the cost down a lot
It's funny, because even though I'm of the same opinion with the guitar pedals... I also haven't met anybody who's actually broken one.
@@StephenMcLeod
I've never broken mine either but I don't actually stomp on them I gently press them when on my desk
I have a bassist friend who reckons he has broken a few, its worth noting that he still uses them so they can't be that bad
the differences you hear between synths is almost heretic;-) it should be able for anything if its for real. and i have the roland jd-xi which is fantastic.
I am indeed a heretic
@@StephenMcLeod 🤣😂
Fockn Gerry Rafferty!!!😜😜😂
I wish
Great review man, thanks!
@@ryananthony4840 Cheers for watching!
I don't care about Behringer copying products really - It's more so their harassment of journalists, and that rather antisemitic "cork sniffer" ad they made. Either way, I wanted to see what they sounded like and your video was quite well done (I just still think Behringer are a bit ethically dubious - Benn Jordan's vid is what convinced me of this).
I also can relate to loving synths but not really knowing (or at least not really caring about) "that roland sound", "that moog sound" etc. For me, it's cus i just plain couldnt afford any hardware synths for a long time, between disability and some addiction issues. I only was able to produce music during that time thanks to free vsts (and maybe the odd bit of piracy - i try to make up for it now lol) and a cheap midi controller. Now that I can finally buy some hardware (albeit a modest amount of it - I got a Korg Minilogue XD and an Arturia Minibrute 2 so far), I just sorta go synth by synth and know what I like the sound of.
What's the journalist harassment stuff? I haven't seen that. There's plenty of things to talk about on the ethics question for sure - I just wanted to head off the inevitable comments as those debates have been had at length elsewhere, and I didn't want to end up replaying them here.
@@StephenMcLeod Here's an article about that controversy:
www*vice*com/en/article/wxe7qx/a-major-synth-company-created-this-fake-product-to-attack-a-journalist
(don't know if youtube will allow me to post a link or not, so replace the "*"s with "."s)
Basically this journalist, Peter Kirn made criticisms of Behringer and the company started harassing him on twitter, even claiming to have trademarked his name "Kirn" (dunno if there was any truth to this),and making a fake ad that featured a caricature that many took to be antisemitic (the image seriously did look like it came off freaking Stormfront or something. Even if it was ignorance, you'd think someone in the company would catch it - especially a _German_ company, you'd think would wanna be careful there lol).
That Benn Jordan vid I mentioned earlier (it's called "Behringer: The Edgelords Of Music Production") goes into a few other controversies, including the copycat stuff (which mostly doesnt bother me, especially for old gear that isnt made anymore - but their rip off of the Arturia Beatstep is a bit more iffy for sure) and them sewing random people online for criticizing them. Anyhow, again, I quite like your channel from what i've seen. Subbed.
@@TheLokiBiz Thanks. Will take a look!