Behringer Bass Overdrive BOD 400 Review – Affordable Yet Practical Choice

Controls:
Features:
Performance:
Value:

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Behringer is a huge name in the audio industry. In terms of effects pedals, their products are often praised as affordable and practical. Behringer Bass Overdrive BOD 400 is one of the most cost effective bass dist boxes you can find on the market right now. Lets check it out.

Features

Trying to put together a pedalboard on a budget means that you will have to sacrifice a few things in the process. When it comes to Behringer Bass Overdrive BOD 400, the biggest sacrifice is the chassis. Where most pedals out there feature a die cast chassis, Behringer went with a plastic one. This can be very easily explained by the unit price for one of these. After all, you have to cut down production costs somehow. Even so, the build quality is fairly decent. BOD 400 isn’t a pedal you would want to stomp on indiscriminately, but it is perfectly capable of taking the usual wear and tear. In terms of aesthetics, it is not much to look at. Behringer went with a purple finish that does a great job at hiding the plastic body underneath. Overall, BOD 400’s design, build quality and aesthetics are sufficient.

Controls

When you look at the controls, you will see a pretty practical layout. Behringer has followed the industry standard in this aspect, which is always a good thing. Going from left to right we first have a Level knob. Then there is a two-band EQ with High and Low knobs. Next comes the Gain and finally the Balance knob. Needless to say, Behringer Bass Overdrive BOD 400 features a fairly simplistic control interface. Even so, everything you see on here is more than enough to dial a decent tone. You won’t find voicing switches or similar stuff, but that is perfectly fine considering the price of this pedal and how it performs. Since it is usually the choice of beginners, Behringer pretty much chose to keep it as simple as possible. The footswitch is better than expected. It doesn’t pop nor is there any creep when you use it.

Performance

So far we have shown where Behringer did their best to cut down production costs. Now it’s time to focus on performance. Despite its ridiculously low price tag, plastic chassis and lack of advanced features, Behringer Bass Overdrive BOD 400 sounds very good. As a matter of fact, it sounds better than some pedals which are far more expensive. It is an overdrive in nature, however when you start pushing more gain into the signal, it reaches that distortion threshold quite easily. What we were interested the most was optimization for bass guitar use. Behringer has definitely done their homework in this regard as BOD 400 works flawlessly even with hotter bass pickups. The sound is balanced and well defined even if you push lots of gain into it. Whether you are looking for a fuzzy rock tone or a full on dist metal vibe, this pedal will deliver.

Conclusion

In a world full of triple digit boutique pedals, Behringer has managed to build a dirt cheap workhorse. Behringer Bass Overdrive BOD 400 delivers a tone that's much better than we have expected. On top of that, the pedal is consistent and easy to use. It's a solid budget choice.

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