Bugera and NAMM 2011: CHECK THIS OUT! Copying MESA!

Okay... doesn't have anything to do with the Axe-Fx but I'm considering an affordable tube combo just so I have the option if I need it. Well I'd love to get a Mesa Mark IV or a Mesa Recto combo but those are like 3000€ right? Well I guess not anymore now that Bugera is doing both of them. Yes.

Bugera Magician ---> Mesa Boogie Mark IV
Bugera Trirec ---> Mesa Boogie Triple Recto / Dual Recto (dunno which?)

And the combos will probably be around 500€. Here are the clips from NAMM 2011:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx4rNe1y3hA <--- Mark IV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsHDqSuEZck <--- Mark IV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RQVEx3Y6a8 <--- Recto

Now, I've never heard anything good about the Bugeras. I've also never heard that much bad about them so I'd love to hear if you guys have any experience with these amps. I guess there have been reliability issues in the beginning of Bugera but nowadays those issues are far gone.

OPINIONS?

In the second clip, did Jan say he was head of "conceptual engineering" or "back engineering". My hearing isn't what it used to be ;)
 
An opinion? Unauthorized Chinese knock offs of American/European products suck and it's unethical to support the manufacturers that do so financially.

Have you tried them? It would give your opinion a lot more value. :)

Like said before these kind of claims will get threads closed. But playing a modeler and then saying that these knock offs are unethical... it just doesn't make sense to me.
 
An opinion? Unauthorized Chinese knock offs of American/European products suck and it's unethical to support the manufacturers that do so financially.

Ethics is a weird thing. So for you it is ethical that American/European manufacturers produce their products by underpaid workers, sometimes childeren, working 12 hours à day with no weekends. :?:
 
If you were to consider buying one of these, I would wait until it was in circulation for a few months to see if the bugs are all worked out. The Bugera 333XL (which I own) had an issue with a Molex connector melting when it first went to market, which has since been resolved. I bought mine used and fixed it myself.
 
Ethics is a weird thing. So for you it is ethical that American/European manufacturers produce their products by underpaid workers, sometimes childeren, working 12 hours à day with no weekends. :?:

I challenge you to supply proof that this is happening on a significant scale in the US at this point in time. I'm incredibly skeptical that this is happening in the musical equipment manufacturing industry in the US and Europe. Mesa and their child labor sweatshops. LOL. If you can prove Mesa or Roland or Peavey or Engl, et al, are using child labor or manufacturing stolen designs, I will HAPPILY boycott them and consider them unethical, as well.

Even if you could, however, it is COMPLETELY irrelevant to this matter. Somebody else doing something wrong does not make another thing right. So really, your comment is immaterial, a strawman. Compensating a company that is essentially lifting all of their product development R&D from someone else without their permission is unethical, IMHO, regardless of what country it happens in or who they're stealing from. Again Clark's asking for an opinion. Sorry if you guys don't like accountability.

As for modeling, modeling requires a substantial amount of R&D. A lot of new invention occurs when creating models of things (we do it in the semiconductor industry as well for other purposes) and as awesome as the modelers are few would argue that they are the same thing as a complete physical copy of the things they are modeling. They're trying to do the same thing in a similar way and achieve the same results but HARDLY in the same way. The units themselves are significantly nontrivial in new design work and represent a major R&D effort that merits substantial compensation. In fact, they're much more complex than a simple tube amplifier. We also see the modeling companies partnering with amplifier manufacturers' input (Fractal/Friedman/Fryette, Line 6/Bogner, Peavey/Fender/Marshall w/ their own analog designers) and acknowledging other designers and products accordingly.

So, companies like Jet City, who are making the Soldano designs using cheap manufacturing in agreement with Mike Soldano? No issue whatsoever (as long as they aren't doing something ELSE "bad" (using slave labor or something crazy)).

But people lifting other people's designs verbatim and remanufacturing them ala Bugera is BS and should not be supported. If you are so poor/cheap that you are willing to rationalize this away, fine. But you asked for opinions, so take your medicine, son.
 
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You are talking about child slavering just because a company is not from the US/Europe. How narrowminded is that? That kind of prejudice is just as offending as racism if not the same thing. Have you ever been to China? Do you know anything about their culture? Poor children were given a better life with something that seems unfair in other cultures but that was like 20 years ago. Times have changed. And also you are saying that Bugera employees are underpaid. Do you know how much they make money? No you don't. Do you know how many people live in China? And somehow only the children are working these days? What are the grown ups doing then? And what we might think of underpaid is a whole different thing in Asia. These people are glad to have a job in the first place. It could be the best job in the city. My point is simply: You don't know the situation.

Asian people are hard workers. American people are lazy workers. There's a little prejudice from my end. :D
 
Axel - Other than the connector issue, how do you like your 333XL. Do you find it to be comparable to the real thing. I don't own a tube amp (Just Axe Fx, Power Amp, Cab) but would not mind having a half decent hi-gain tube amp at a reasonble price to tinker with. My experience though has been of regretting intermediate level purchases on the way to the best quality (with all the other modellers I owned I could have purchased 2 axefx!!).
 
I know it's Bugera. I've heard the reliability issues but they claim to have fixed all of those. I mean it's not good for their business if they get customer returns so in a way I do believe them. They have a good customer service through Thomann so I don't see any risks. And none of us have had the chance to try these out unless you were at NAMM? So I don't think you can say that "it won't sound the same". It's basically a copy of these amps. Sure Mesa is a quality amplifier but 3000€? Really? And I've owned 3 "real" Mark IV's and a Roadster and a Dual Recto... the list goes on. Not all Mesas sound the same either but if it's in the same ballpark then I might buy it. I guess I'll go to a music shop here and check out some of the other Bugera amps and see how they sound. The Peavey copies can be found under a mile away from my home so that's where I'll be in an hour. :) I'll report back to you guys what I though. And if I find a real Peavey I'll A/B them.

Just listen to this Marshall/Bugera comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFv-VBRrtlA TBH they sound surprisingly alike to me.

If I were in Europe, I'd be buying European amps. Heck, Diezel costs $3.5K here, too. I wouldn't buy one, but if I did, I'd most likely have bought the "real deal" on the secondary market. I tend to get bored of the same thing after a year or two, and I nearly always make a couple of hundred bucks when re-selling, because I don't overpay when buying.

When you buy a house or a car, for instance, you always consider the resale value. Why not do the same thing with amps and guitars? In aggregate, they're pretty expensive, too. This means that the cheapest option is not necessarily the best long term. Case in point: a few years back I bought a Mark IV off Craigslist for $950. Played through it for a couple of years and sold for $1200. Now consider the Bugera: buy one for $700, get bored of it, sell for $350. That kind of math just doesn't work for me.
 
This will all depend on how much the Bugeras will cost. You can get a Mark IV combo used for like 1400€ here in Europe IF you can find one for sale which is very rare. If the Bugera will be around 500€ then I'd rather get that with customer service and in 100% *MINT* condition etc. The first thing I'll do is rip off the Bugera sign though.
 
This will all depend on how much the Bugeras will cost. You can get a Mark IV combo used for like 1400€ here in Europe IF you can find one for sale which is very rare. If the Bugera will be around 500€ then I'd rather get that with customer service and in 100% *MINT* condition etc. The first thing I'll do is rip off the Bugera sign though.

Hope you have better luck than me, I got a faulty (damaged in transit) V22 and now Thoman' do not have any , so I am switching to 100w Fender Mustang 3 , they do a 1V with 2x12 and 150w but too big for my needs , hell of an amp for the price.
 
My wife is made in China (Hong Kong), and she's the best quality I've ever had... and she 'aint cheap either, what with all those Gucci handbags and Rolex watches!

;-)
 
My wife is made in China (Hong Kong), and she's the best quality I've ever had... and she 'aint cheap either, what with all those Gucci handbags and Rolex watches!

;-)

I got a MIK one. And it's nice to see I'm not the only one getting stuck with Gucci or Louis Vuitton purses. :-x We go to the local market and it's like it's required dress code or something. :mrgreen
 
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Aren't patents only good for 17 years? Then it's fair game, right? Not to mention that the patents that Mesa applied for are probably only U.S. Patents. I'm a huge Mesa fan btw. I'm just saying...

I'm all about buying made in the U.S. but if someone somewhere else has something as good or better for cheaper... C'mon how do you resist?

I wouldn't mind jamming through the Bugera MKIV copy.

shotgunn
 
My $0.02
I'm all about buying "Made in USA" stuff too.. the problem with that is many "US made" products are not actually made in the US.. merely "assembled" here - some not even that! There are numerous retail products delivered to consumers in that manner.. predominantly in the textile and electronics industries (AFAIK - there may be others).
Do they come from foreign "sweatshops" employing children... very possibly in many cases, but try [as a consumer] to prove it, and avoid that product/brand. When US labor wants to live like "kings" a la $30+/hr.. its no wonder companies go to places like Mexico, Vietnam, the Phillipine's, etc. where people are happy to work for $10/day!!

With "globalization" it has become a VERY murky delineation.. perpetuated by the "bottom line" and global competition. There are well known "copyright" violaters, companies that reverse-engineer and re-brand someones original work. A certain German company comes to mind.

Copyright infringement and enforcement (or lack thereof) has been an issue overseas (specifically from far east sources) for 30+ yrs. I could buy a "genuine" cassette tape (yes, I'm that old) in the middle east when I lived there for about 60 cents - versus the $8 or so (back then), complete with cover that mirrored the original album. No inserts, but hey.. waddya expect for $0.60 ?? I would watch them load up a master in a duplicator and ta-da! 5 mins later 4 clones.

One can espouse ethics all day long, but what it really boils down to is personal choice. I say that because has become so difficult to sift thru what is really "US Made" and what is not. Then of course, to buy US Made, one has to open one's wallet - WIDE !
 
Well I deleted a huge post in here in order to not go off on a tangent, but there is one thing that I wanted to say in regards to amp sims vs copyright infringement that's nothing more than my POV.

Remember typewriters? Their sole purpose was the take a piece of paper and allow you to print words on it. It did it very well for the most part and it did it in a manner that worked at the time.

Remember word processors? (yes, I know that I am showing my age a bit) They gave you the same result and the input method was even very similar to a typewriter; keyboard to input your data and a piece of paper came out. But the process to get from input to final product was completely different. I don't know if anyone had a patent on typewriters, but even if they did they wouldn't bother filing a suit because it's two completely different technologies and processes to get similar results.

Trying to claim infringement of a modelled amp would be about the same as someone complaining about a font type or character spacing.

It's just my take on it.

As for the globalization/ethics discussion I'll just pass on that one.
 
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