2600 vs Special Editions // what's the difference // review, and comparison 

I own all of these, as originals. Bought them in London 20 years ago (Grey, Blue and Black). Been toying with synths since the mid 70s when I was a young teenager. Some aspects of today's nostalgia make me laugh (or cringe ?). They were never perfect machines and we found them limited when they were new. Some iconic keyboardists extracted beautiful but rather unvaried sounds from them. The 2600 is a joy to toy with, but I'd argue it is less magical than the Minimoog, which, while finicky, has a surprisingly broad and assertive palette. My Blue is unrepairable, having broken circuits that are potted in resin. The Grey has issues and the Black, while mostly playable, is best used as a semi-modular for the sort of sounds Herbie Hancock got from it in "Sextant". I don't know what people find to spring reverb ; they are crude devices that wobble like a flimsy chair, and sound like the imitation of an imitation. It's the meme territory of reverberation. Behringer is doing everyone a service by both demystifying these instruments (while making circuits that are true-to but cleaner than the originals) and selling them for a song. By the time Behringer is through cloning all of the classics, it will have no choice but to head into hybrid digital/(semI)modular territory. The aversion that younger folks have to digital synths is based on the reaction we had to the clinical sounds of a DX7, for instance. But in a double-blind test, I believe everyone would be fooled by proper digital implementations, like Waldorf, Arturia, Softube, Mutable Instruments et al have shown great skill at. Once you've reproduced pop and fusion sounds of the last 40 years, you have to admit there is more to timbre than folded sawtooths with resonant 4-pole filters. I predict a re-discovery of physical modelling synths and formant filters, for instance. By the way, Starsky, you are have world class synth programming chops. You have a visceral understanding of these architectures, that few are ever able to attain. Kudos to you - I enjoy each and every show you post. Cheers.

A like for not telling me to stick around until the end because "the results will be surprising." That was exactly the info I wanted, regarding these machines.

TBH, anyone wanting amazing spring reverb... buy a Light Pedal. The added optical spring sensor makes the overtone character of spring reverb a whole new ballgame! Much less the onboard envelope and overtone feedback. Buy that black 2600, and buy a Light Pedal, seriously best spring reverb ever made! (& i’ve loved spring since the late 70s)

Amazing review! What a pleasure to see someone talking where every comment distills deep knowledge, and all this without being too technical and making it accessible for everyone. Bravo!

I ordered the Blue Marvin last week and blimey if it did not arrive Tuesday this week. Watched your vids and they have really helped to get my head around the layout and use of. Thank you.

I appreciate the executive summary, it make something very clear - the noise difference. Spring reverbs often are a source of noise and although you don't get the retro vibe with the digital it is not always welcome to have the noise of the spring itself. Thanks.

I watch these videos at night and my wife always says - oh its that guy who laughs whenever he talks :-)

Really good stuff. I'm thinking about getting one and I'm sold thanks to you on the black and orange. I really don't care about a spring reverb something that's going go out or break down pretty quick. Digital reverb is cool for me. Thanks for the info.

Very informative video. One that needed doing. Well produced as usual. So far I have resisted the 2600 as space restriction and really wanting the smaller new monos from Behringer and adding 2 of the promised polys. The Proton and SEM could be better served than a single 2600.

Love them both, I prefer the colour scheme on the Black & Orange though, and i like the spring reverb on the BM, it gives a lovely stereo effect. Great video as always Starsky 😎👌

very cool channel!, love the easy style of complex presentation, well done mate!

Again, Mr Carr, your reviews have "pushed the button" for me, and today I picked up a Blue Marvin for £165 s/h. I have used an original 2600 back in the day, and incorporated many sounds from the VST versions into tracks of late, so am quite excited to get hands on with this.. keep up the great work

Dude, all your $#!+ is utterly forensic! Thanks for all your efforts -- they afford a degree of confidence and freedom from head-scratching that would otherwise be unobtainium, for contemporary synth consumers.

Thank you for this. I preordered the Blue Marvin a few months back here in the states. Waiting on it now. I will say I enjoy the more open and bright tone on the Blue marvin as well.

Hey Starsky - very interesting and very revealing. Why can't Behringer simply tell us what the differences are like any other manufacturer? A comment on another video suggested that the capacitors (or something) were a higher quality (or something) which seemed to make the filters better. Sorry for the techy description :-) So you're essentially spending another 1/5th on a spring reverb. Doesn't seem like the usual Behringer value. I have a Moog Grandmother with spring reverb and you can't turn it on too much, as you say, without it getting, er, springy. Good for taking the dryness out of a sound but otherwise I think a DSP reverb is more useful. Anyway, everyone knows the ARP 2600 is brown and orange, not grey or blue :-)

I think I‘ll go for the classic black & orange. The UI is much clearer; the coloured LEDs do make sense IMO.

Outstandig review again! Oh mate, your videos ‘kick ass’. :)

Thanks for this video and all the rest. Fantastic! I am missing a ms-1 one....

Can you tell from the read panel how large the reverb tank is ? (The FS tank screws are 21 cm apart )

The original Arp 2600's are all 40 years old with 4 versions and god knows how many tweaks in a production run. Add in most have had new parts in so its possible that 2 consecutive Grays will sound more different to each other than Behringers versions. Which B you choose will be more down to the reverb and colour. I got a Gray because i preferred the colour :)

Hi, great detailed review as allways :-) I'm interested to hear if the spring can be over driven, to create the classic spring rattle ? I haven't heard it in any reviews so far.

I don't really care much for spring reverbs anyway, so for me it was up to the general sound of the models. As far as I'm concerned the difference is so small that I decided to go for the black/orange, since I like the colour scheme much more than the blue or the grey. And that saved me enough money to get a rack stand for it as well. :D

I just ordered a Electro-Harmonix Ocean 12, that minic spring reverbs quite well :-) That way I can pick Behringer's first version later on, with all the multi colored LED's, and get a stereo reverb without any stereo phase issues ;-)

Top work mate

Just got a Blue Marvin cheaper on sale than a regular 2600 for about 600 bucks, really looking forward to it

Wonderful. Thank you for this!

You can probably differences even between to of the same color, I think, then being analog. I think the filter work they did might have had more to do with the filters not closing properly with certain setups in the black units. I definitely prefer that spring reverb. I ordered a great meanie yesterday.

They are both amazing!!!

I've seen the guts of both. The main parts differences is a few caps in the filter section and the reverbs (spring vs digital). All the SMD parts are the same.

Taste really is a funny thing. I prefer the standard with its darker reverb, but if I wanted to do a cover of Kraftwerk's The Hall of Mirorrs dropping that spring reverb is essential. I'd probably change my mind if it was a Red Shankly though, Starsky. YNWA. Top drawer examination of the 2600 Mr Carr.

Thank you for your reviews!! There,s something I don,t understand. It seems that you,re running the BM throw ADSR up to 13:40, then chance to AR. Black&Orange always throw AR. Wouldn,t be better to compare then with the same envelope? Did you found antes difference in the envelope circuits? Thanks

24:40 to hear him slam the spring reverb against the table (^:

They sound so close that the differences do not matter musically. However the one exception is with the spring reverb, which I do like the sound of. Do you find one panel/light combo to be more intuitive to follow more than another from a UI perspective?

Are the leds on the black editions color coded with any purposes or just randomly assigned?

very nice work really. sometimes when I want to compare things I use the phase out of phase trick. did you try that although it's probably tricky as the fader are small?... Anyway handsome video

this guy's good at hearing reverb tails

Can you link to your patch cables on the Blue Marvin? Mine arrives this week

Very Cafe Del Mar in the intro song :-D.

Is the spring still live to the output even though the faders are down? If so its amp circuit may still be active and contributing to the mains slightly. How they implement the wet/dry mix may be that your signal is always going through the reverb circuit - and it will need top be a different design for the analogue circuit as opposed to one that has an ADA?

I got the Blue to match my Grans blue rinse, I think she likes it with the funny looks i get.

Ahhhh mate!!!!!!! so nice, so jealous haha!!

i know you must have seen this but the fine tune of the filter raises a lot of ground, the BM is always a lot lower than the BO - matching sounds and not positions doesn't show the extra the BM had in its pocket , maybe side by side when fine tune is maxxed you will hear more change? top vid as always bud - i do love my GM and i know some don't like the spring but i really like it, horse and courses

Hey Starsky, how do they compare soundwise to the odyssey?

the grey is a wunner dearer than the xmas version but i prefer the look of it even if it sounds 99% identical.

I got tired of waiting from Sweetwater. I bought mine from Europe for about one hundred dollars more for shipping and taxes. I rather pay a little more and get it now. My order for Blue Marvin is on my way already. Bought it at Reverb.

The big thing i like, is the real springreverb, otherwise they sounds the same,...

Just a little one. Can the Spring Reverb be used externally by another instrument?

..the review I have been waiting for thanks professor you are a hero.. turning your head does make a difference.. the hand picked components are the ones they pick up off the floor at night before they sweep..

how about running a drum machine thru the preamp, env follower, ring mod, filter? original 2600 was amazing for running other sounds thru

Spotted deadmau5's "Circe" melody from his Chimaera pack in the intro!

The reverbs sound out of phase, disappear when summed to mono. Is this the same on the original 2600? Great video as usual.

I own a black and orange yet want a blue marvin, but I have heard said that the spring pickup creates ambient noise while the Halloween model make no noise, probably do to multi-stage amplification if this rumer is even true.

A guy on here named Bjorn Giesler took the original 2600 and the Gray Meanie apart and the Gray Meanie has thru hole capacitors in the filter section where the black and orange has SMD capacitors.

I really enjoy your videos you make me laugh because you say it doesn't matter if they are a wee bit different who is going to notice very very true 👍🎼

is it a Analog Reverb inside the Behringers?

Any idea how they compare with the Karps?

I now have the orange, and tbh I don't like either reverb. Bit stunned there's no mod wheel control.

I want to add larger spring reverbs to both my gray meanies

If you're interested, Rob Keeble from AMS Synths, the main engineer behind the 2 models of Berhinger 2600, wrote a bunch of comments under this video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tAN5rXQpJ5I.html. I will repost one of the more explicative (all credits to Rob obviously): "The brown/orange B2600 is the first and has some mods from a stock 2600 to remove the bugs, and take it back to the vision of 1970. But has a digital reverb and standard filter caps. The Marvin and Meanie have PPS caps in the filters as they were in the supply chain for the Poly D, so that all helps the price point. The Manchester team may have made further mods but the only things I wanted to improve was the filters as I knew the spring reverb was in, and we had sorted the noise source on all B2600’s. Filters rely on matched components and the best caps, so going with 1% PPS in SMD gets as close as I can to perfection. As a musician you will hear improvements in resonance when in self oscillation and a better prescene. I will refresh my You Tube channel so we dont distract from Ralphs amazing music!"

What was the intro music? Is that a deadmau5 chord progression?

So the most interesting thing is that they rebuild (in case of the orange „emulate“) the weak part of the original, when you listen at 21:31 (Reverb) in MONO you will hear...NOTHING. But these extreme out'o'phase-reverb is exactly what you get from the original... Great Video by the way, as always! :-)

I'm inclined to say that patch cables can make a difference too- this can vary depending on the age/quality of the cable but also the socket it's plugged into. If no two units are exactly the same though, this is quite like many classic analogue synth...

so, do cars fly yet or not?

That deadmau5 midi goes hard though

I have to wonder if it's just natural part tolerances that you're hearing here. Standard parts have a 5-20% variance for values.

All I can say is that I bought the Blue Marvin because I hated the multicolored light show on the 2600.

Who is listening on headphones too? Besides being brighter, the Blue Marvin has... "fatter" low end, as it also (and even more blatantly) does in another comparison video (Ralph's). This makes me suspect that it's not simply common differences between the same synths, and that I should never buy the orange one. The waveform of the Marvin looks more curved in the low end, too. A long attack filter-sweep might make the difference more clear? Er... pretty please? ;) :D

I like the Blue, but if i see it every day i would take the black one. It is so a nice toy.

You might find the same similar differences in testing two Black & Orange units side by side. But you said that in the video after I posted this comment :)

Why all the reverbs on 2600 videos are OUT of PHASE???

Mr Carr how come there’s no love for behringer neutron! Please Synth Lord have mercy on us plebs! 🙇‍♂️

Perhaps better components mean they will live longer. We'll see it in 40 years.

I’m going with the Christmas tree

The talk of high-end hand picked components. Could this mean they have more longevity or some other quality that doesn't even have any bearing on the nature of the sound? I'm not hearing any appreciable difference beyond the reverbs.

I think the black & orange sounds better - but in any case the difference is not worth the extra £££s for the blue one.

with headphones on..Blue Marvin all day long imo.

The only difference I am hearing is the two oscillators phase a little bit indicating that they are ever so slightly out of tune against each other. By themselves, no real difference. My guess is you would find similar differences between two of the oscillators on the same machine. I really do not like spring reverbs, it's the tail that I don't like, that beating you get in the tail of the spring has always bothered me going all the way back to when I was a kid; long before I knew what a revered even was, just did not like the sound.

I would call that novice developers mistake.. To make this early after release similar product that is actually better (that real spring reverb simply sounds better for me) for almost same price. :) I do also prefer single color faders (and Grey Meanie's overall color should work even better for me).

I assume the hand picked components are the spring reverb the blue paint & the new leds ! Nothing more ! Not really a complaint ! 😁✌️

The rapid echo in the spring is not nice.... prefer the digital

Holy shit thats CME mkey midi controller! I thought i was the only one that has it till today 😂😂😂

Sine wave is so different.Blue one is almost a square while black one is almost perfect Sine wave.

And that brightness difference could well be with EVERY unit....

reverse the polarity on one of the outs /in your interface/mixer and feel the verb change ;-)

The difference in reverb sounds minor to me in any case other than playing a single note and listening to the reverb tail...

Gray Meanie, £516 free delivery from Andertons :D

And I can tell you there is also a difference between EVERY original unit, literally every unit.

24:38

Behringer pulled the same trick on both units to simulate stereo reverb. Both reverbs are mono with left and right in opposite polarity. When you play this video in mono there is no reverb. I heard this in other review video's too. That's about all that behringer could have done better.

@20:13, you've stumbled across the sound of Klingons decloaking! Wonder if they used any Arp 2600 for that sound effect? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ze3dRODgAiA.html

Man are you related to Simon Le Bon?

i hate the b&o colour so grey like the original is best for me 😁

Those things can not be found in the U.S.

deadmau5 midi?

From a sound designer view Marvin Isnt good too much noise

Sometimes I hear "Yanni" on the Blue Marvin while the Black and Orange says "Laurel". See what I did here?

What does ‘hand picked’ even mean here? It’s meaningless marketing bollocks that is obviously impossible to prove one way or another. That’s why they used those particular words - they are unchallengeable.

Thank you for your videos! In case this is useful, or intereresting, there's apparently a cheap/simple way of making a spring reverb using a headphone output and a reverb tank: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-vIryyi3bp-c.html

So the difference is the awful reverb?

Hmmm, so just by Behringer putting a different color face plate on the synth means it has a different tonal quality?! That is pure voodoo, nothing else!