MUSIC Group buys TC Electronics and others

Just posted today:

MUSIC Group (the parent company of Midas, Klark Teknik, Turbosound, Behringer and Bugera) has announced that it has acquired TC Group (parent company of Tannoy, Lab Gruppen, Lake, TC Electronics, TC Helicon and TC Applied Technologies).

FULL ARTICLE HERE
http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2015/ ... -tc-group/

Do ya think Behringer is looking to cheap out TC Electronics or maybe they are truthful when saying “TC Group will now equally have full access to MUSIC Group’s extensive resources and advanced automated system platforms in such areas as product development and lifecycle management, engineering, manufacturing, supply chain and finance.”?

I'm not sure if this will really affect anything but interesting to me since I own a TC Electronics Flashback and think it's a pretty darn good delay.

Look to see who they buy next....

I guess we can expect to see some cheesy made products, which is Behringer's speciality. Apart from the Finalizer that was part of every major recording facility years ago, I don't think T.C. Electronics has been able to duplicate its early success. By comparison, companies like Yamaha has an array of successful products apart from its NS10 passive studio monitors. Maybe TC should have followed in those footsteps?

I had to go look up T.C. Electronics and see what they made.

Nothing sticks out as impressive or unique to make a USP. How many guitar pedal producers are there?

Who here owns something from T.C. Electronics? And how is it?

I have a TC Electronic Mojo Mojo Overdrive. Build qualitiy is superb, and the way it sounds is great. But then, that's a personal opinion...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wm0P7WQQhw

and here from the website:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=160&v=tMazo3UXyzg

sounds a lot better in reality than in the videos

I've got a Flashback X4 and a Polytune, they're both great. The variety of delay tones from the X4 is fantastic, and I absolutely love the strobe mode and alternate tuning settings of the polytune. I'd hope that Behringer is hoping to bring some of TC's clever approach to digital tech (Toneprint technology is really clever, as is the toneprint editor) into their own products, rather than cashing in on TC's gear and cheaping them out.

I got the impression that the TC group was pretty big on its own (they own TC Electronic, Tannoy, TC-Helicon and a couple of others, too), so this seems like a big buy-out on Behringer's end. TC Electronic does a pretty good job of communicating with their customers in their own unique style, too (the Danes have a great sense of humour!), so I hope TC can maintain some sort of autonomy that way, too.

TC's got some high quality stuff, and some more accessible stuff, not a company to ignore. Polytune's the pedalboard-friendly replacement to my old-as-dirt Korg chromatic tuner, Corona was my first chorus, Hall of Fame my first reverb, Flashback's still my delay, and Ditto is as top-notch as it gets for simple looper. The toneprint pedals allow you to include a downloaded voicing or even customize your own settings, which has great potential, whether it's the most necessary feature or not. Wouldn't be afraid to replace them (except for the Ditto, probably) in my stuff, but would feel more confident about their future if they were staying away from Behringer.

I have a number of TC Electronic pedals, Hall of Fame reverb, the Flashback delay, and a polytune mini. Oh, and a ditto looper. I'm happy with all of them, the ditto looper is especially fun and easy to use.
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IMHO, TC has hit it really big with their toneprint pedals. I think those pedals have taken them from a company that was... "TC who?" to a real contender to the already flooded stompbox market.

I used to work at Motor City Guitar in Michigan... Marty has IN STOCK about 1,500-2,00o pedals on the sales floor. I've A/B's certain super expensive "boutique" pedals side by side TC pedals... their Corona chorus is the best of any chorus out there. But to me chorus is a "one trick pony" and I don't use it all that much, really. But with the financial ability to buy anything made, and the other manufacturers considered "boutique" available to A/B... the TC chorus won out for me.

Plus, the tone print technology and the free toneprint editor, makes it so any of their toneprint pedals are nearly infinitely adjustable. I can't think of any other manufacturer that has the same technology. Line 6 does modeling, but its not the same.

I love TC pedals. They also keep the price point down and don't get on the greedy side of the stomp box money market.

Case in point... I had the money to buy any chorus, so initially I bought a Red Witch Empress Chorus. A really sweet sounding pedal. But the only position it worked good on in my pedalboard was to be the first pedal. Otherwise it made a funky squeally like sound if you run anything into it... so I took it back, got my money back, and for $129 bought the TC Corona Chorus.

I have 2 of their Flashback delays. For $169 you get 9 different types of delay, one is a reverse delay, plus it is a looper with a genius way to do tap tempo. Inside of standing on your heel and tapping your toe (which to me is never accurate)... you hold down the switch button, and strike your strings to the tempo you want. I bought it on Friday and synced up with our metronome in the ear on the next Sunday morning with perfect results. I had been using a DLS Echo Tap (great sounds with a very easy to read face plate) but it was often not synced in by tapping my toe. And $110 more than the Flashback at $279...

I think I own most all of the TC toneprint pedals. I also have some of their non-toneprint stuff in the same size pedal.

Prior to this TC had the SCF flanger/chorus (dating to either the 70s or 80s)... which to me was sort of "ho-hum" but put them on the map with "something" but they were not known for their pedals. hey were more known for rack gear.

They tried to hop on the all-in-one pedal trend and I don't think they hit it with those, either... even though their sound quality was well above competitors.

The trend in pedals has sort of gravitated toward a smaller size. The toneprint size pedals can be fit handily on many pedalboards... leaving room for more stuff. Some pedals are just too big and too heavy. Now TC is coming out with the chiclet size of pedals. Smaller is better to some folks, and I think it applies to a lot of pedal buyers. I'm not into the chiclet sized pedals, the regular toneprint series does it for me.

If anything, IMHO, TC is going toward a way to market their stuff more easily. I don't think the pedals will cheapen, instead, TC will have a better way to market what great pedals they already make.

Let's see... do I like TC?... Well... I own their:

Flashback Delay (my favorite TC pedal by far)
Corona Chorus
Shaker Vibrato
Vortex Flanger
Spark Booster
Hall of Fame Reverb
Ditto X2 Looper
MojoMojo Overdrive

I'm chomping at the bit for the Helix Phaser to get in the stores. I am always looking for an awesome phase shifter and I'm most always disappointed. I love that old vintage Mutron Phaser II swooping sound. But the Phaser II is way too huge for a modern pedalboard, unless you're willing to let it hog all that space.

I'm not "TC-Only" for pedals, I am just simply a gear addict for pedals.

I think of TC like this... they are the G&L of stompboxes. Everything I've bought from them is awesome quality, makes more than expected tones, and is better than many other name brands. Same thing with G&L. I'd rather have a G&L than a Fender for many reasons. I just think G&L makes better guitars, even if you throw in Fender Custom shop stuff. If there were a Fender Custom shop anything or a regular anything G&L on two music stands, and you told me I could have either one for free... it would be the G&L coming home with me.

Another favorite pedal maker for me is Fulltone. Their Clyde Deluxe wah is the best wah I've seen, and their SupaTrem Tremolo is buttery and mouth watering and versatile all at the same time. I'm not so hip on Fulltone's distortion and overdrives... to my ear, he dials in too much high frequencies... but the Fulltone OCD has a great real-amp feel with pick attack. The lighter you pick, the less overdrive you get, reef on the strings and you get more... but (this is just me) its still kinda harsh and trebly sounding to my ear. But I won't sell it. I'm addicted to them all, I can't part with them.

I even kept the MXR Carbon Copy Analog delay that I bought when they first come out and made a huge stir... after I bought it and went "ho-hum" in disappointment (compared to all the gear talk hype)... to me its not "all that" for analog delay... its just another MXR pedal... nothing fancy. And what I didn't like about it is that it starts to roll off even after the first regenerated echo. I would have preferred a way to adjust the regeneration so it could have maybe 2-3 clean delays before it goes into analog fritz. Not. In comparison (yes, I love TC)... the analog delay on the Flashback switch nails what I like to hear.

I never got sucked into the TC Polytune trend. They sort of "did it" with the "strum all your strings and tune them all at the same time" thing. Now other pedal makers are mimicking the TC Polytune.

My tuner you won't be able to pry out of my cold dead hands is my KORG Pitchblack tuner. The one selling factor for me is the HUGE LCD display. My crappy old eyeballs have no problem seeing the display standing looking down at my pedalboard. Plus... I gave guitar lessons for many years and part of lessons is "tune it or die"... haha. I had a tuner on hand during all lessons... some folks wonder why their "G" chord doesn't sound like mine until they tune their guitar. Something that bugged the crap out of me was the VU meter style tuners I went through before finding the KORG Pitchblack. Ugh... I could not position the VU meter tuners anywhere convenient during lessons to make it easy to have students tune their guitar without trying to balance the tuner on their knee cap. When I discovered the KORG Pitchblack, my eyes and my students eyes were in heaven looking at the almost inch-tall LCD display... so I never bought a TC Polytune... the light thingies are too tiny for my eyeballs.

I think what TC will eventually phase out are their NOVA line of pedals. Most of them are programmable, but the footprint size is too big for the small pedal trend. They take up the space of 2 toneprint size pedals. Kind of almost the size of those Digitech and BOSS double pedals (like the JamMan looper that was/is double size, and the BOSS DD-20 GigaDelay. I had a JamMan in that size and it was the biggest pedal on my board. And heavy as hell. I replaced it with the single pedal size JamMan Solo XT. The Solo XT uses mini SD cards, and this generation of JamMans uses the free Looper Manager software. Makes it easy to put loops into the pedal. My old double JamMan was a real bitch to add loops to from your computer. You have to create mono WAV files, which took FOREVER to convert 68 backing tracks to solo WAV. Plus the older JamMan used the Compact Flash cards, which was the only thing on earth that I owned that used those cards. My digital camera and my JamMan Solo XT use th same sized SD cards... and they fit in my cell phone, LOL.

All that said, I'm just glad TC didn't get bought by Peavey. I can't stand anything Peavey, and have boycotted their company for over 30 years. I had a Peavey Classic 50 wat 2x12 combo in about 1980... it never even made it out of my bedroom... and I had it back to the dealer four times for repairs... both chincy speakers blew, and both tube sockets blew out... I'm still pissed after all these years. After 28 years of that boycott, I bought a Peavey amp for my guitar students. It was toast in two weeks. The input jack gave out. I took it back and got my money back and bought a different brand. If Peavey had bought TC I'm sure it would mean the product line would go to <censored word>.

I cringe that they are associating themselves with Berhinger. Berhinger seems to be on the "we're gonna copycat everybody" binge... like being Mackie mixer look alikes, etc... sort of like "Suave does what theirs does for a whole lot less..." in the world of hair shampoos... but inside is cheap-assed components that aren't going to hold up for much... or you might get lucky and get one that does... sort of like "Behringer = Russian Roulette for electronics" -- haha... let's hope they don't <censored word> up TC Group...