Electric Guitars - Customer reviews - Behringer GPK836BK Metalien Guitar Pack

Manufacturer: Behringer USA

List Price: $199.99
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Average Customer Rating: -

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Spotlight customer reviews:

Name: J. Anderson
Location: Clinton, MD USA
Date: 2009-01-07
Customer Rating: -

Summary: The perfect starter
Comment: I bought this as a Christmas present for my father. He looked like a kid with a new toy. The kit arrived quickly and packaged well. It included everything to get started, even an electric tuner. The guitar and amp are of great quality. Suprisingly great quality considering how inexpensive it was. I would recommend to anyone for anyone as a gift.

Name: A. Erick
Location: Connecticut, USA
Date: 2010-07-05
Customer Rating: -

Summary: It gets the job done-- if you don't mind a broken amp
Comment: Summary: A decent guitar with junky accessories, yet overall affordable.

I ordered this kit while I was overseas so I could have something to play while deployed. The [huge] box arrived in fairly good condition, some tape reinforced the corners and integrity wasn't compromised.

Amp: Defective
The amp worked on clean for a few days and the overdrive/distortion feature worked for only a few seconds and then never worked again. If it weren't for Behringer's reputation for poor quality electronics I would have shrugged off the defective amp as the result of intercontinental shipping, but alas, this is Behringer here. There are plenty of small amps in the 10 watt range that you can get to replace this. (These days you can get a kids one at Walmart or Target, or get a Roland Microcube for a little more if you want a quality mini amp.)

Tuner: Fragile
The tuner is simple and works well, but I had to bind it with duct tape because the device kept splitting apart in half when handled or when replacing batteries.

Guitar: Satisfactory
The action was very high so I lowered the strings with the allen wrench (included) and I was good to go. The pickups might need to be raised also, but you need a Phillips screw driver. The tremolo is a nice feature but I've gone ordered some GFS tuning locks ($30) so the tremolo can actually be used. This has a rosewood-inlaid fretboard so if you're daring you could go ahead and upgrade the pickups and take advantage of that.
In any case, it did what it had to do as my travel guitar and it's grown on me enough that I'm going to put some new components on it.

Misc: Never touched the dvd, and I think my order included pics. The chord poster was nice of course.

A word on Behringer:
Many, many of their products are junk, to include some of the equipment in this kit. Make sure this is the version of the Metalien that you want; there is now a USB version of the Metalien called the iAxe something-or-other. This is the version with the 1/4" jack, probably the only version of the two that you want. If you really want to into the computer then get a Soundtech lightsnake or something separately and maintain your 1/4" cable capability.

Name: SeekayFilms
Location:
Date: 2010-07-01
Customer Rating: -

Summary: For the long run: Don't buy it
Comment: I got this guitar for Christmas in 2008, I believe. After having it for about a year and a half now, I'm having nothing but problems with fret buzzing. Almost every fret buzzes a little, and several are unusable because they buzz so badly. Yeah, it was a good guitar for a while, but I always had complaints with it. The week after I got it I brought it to my guitar teacher and he said the neck was warping already. He put a metal rod down the neck or something, but apparently that didn't fix it for very long.
Whammy bar: Cool, yes. Fun to use, yes. An instantaneous way to make it so you have to retune your guitar after using it, yes.
Amp: Nothing too special, but it comes with a starter kit, so you shouldn't be expecting it to rock your socks off.
Bag: The only thing in this bundle that I don't have a complaint about.

All in all, for the price of like $160, I'd suggest going to musiciansfriend, finding a $150 Epiphone guitar, and then buying a better amp for any place.
But yeah, I wouldn't buy this guitar. Unless by some unfortunate chance I got the only crappy one to be shipped out, it'll annoy you in about a year or so.

Name: Mark Smoke
Location: Marengo, IL
Date: 2010-09-04
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Decent Amp, Low Quality Guitar
Comment: As a beginner, I figured this was a great deal when the kit came on sale for $99. The Amp was indeed pretty decent, but I found the guitar difficult to tune. Come to find out though, now that I have progressed a bit in my skills, the frets are actually poorly placed so that as you go up the frets the notes are out of tune. For example, tune all your strings (I used an electronic tuner to make sure it was accurate), then play the 5th fret on the low e-string and it should match the open A-string... but it doesn't, it's a bit sharp. So loosen the low e-string a tad to get it to match the open A-string, and when you play the low e-string open, it's now flat. The problem is not so much with holding it's tune (changes in humidity can affect that), but it's more that the frets are poorly placed, resulting in sharp notes as you progress up the neck (and ultimately poor/off-key sound). The only solution is to tune the guitar as a compromise of the chord/note range you will be playing. Regular chords sound off, depending on where the root notes land, and power chords sound sloppy as you move up the scale due to the tuning change from the inaccurate fret placement. Bascially, the amp has great sound for such a small device, the humbucker coil sounds great too. But once you start to progess even just a little in your skills, you realize the guitar is nothing more than a glorified toy. As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for.

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