Behringer has seemingly responded to the lawsuit that Klon Centaur creator Bill Finnegan recently filed against the firm's owner MusicTribe by implementing a series of changes to its $69 Klon clone.
The German budget gear firm launched the Centaur Overdrive, its $69 take on the Klon Centaur's famed overdrive flavors, in November 2024.
Finnegan, who first created the Klon Centaur, filed a lawsuit against the pedal maker earlier this month. He deemed the Behringer Centaur “not just another clone but instead a blatant counterfeit”, highlighting a series of issues revolving mainly around its trade dress.
The overdrive pedal market is littered with Klon copies – Guitar World even has a page dedicated to helping players choose the best one for them. But they usually do enough tinkering and renaming to stave off any potential copyright infringements. Finnegan felt this wasn’t the case here.
Indeed, Behringer has a reputation for its affordable gear imitations, which led to an social post from Musitronics last year after its hallmark stompbox was copied. It believes the “$2 billion company has assimilated the history of Musitronics as if it were their own”, but no legal action was taken.
The Centaur Overdrive, however, was singled out by Finnegan for legal action, with the Klon’s original mastermind criticizing its use of Klon’s trade dress – mainly its coloring and the use of its trademark Centaur logo – and “exploiting” his firm's reputation.
Notably, the Behringer logo was also nowhere to be seen on the stompbox – something previous Behringer copies, like the Fuzz Bender, have never done.
Before the pedal’s listings could be taken down, droves of players rushed to order the $69 pedal, which soon found itself on the second-hand market for up to $2,000.
Now, Behringer has seemingly addressed Finnegan’s points of contention. However, it hasn’t changed things too dramatically. The newly renamed Centara Overdrive still bears the Centaur’s gold colorway, and though its artwork has been replaced, it still features a similarly styled centaur figure in the same position. The Behringer logo has also been added to the mix.
Though the changes are minimal, it remains to be seen whether enough has been done to cool the heat surrounding the case.
It seems that Finnegan’s very public legal action has prompted Behringer to take action, as even the website wording has been altered. At the time of his original post, Finnegan called out Behringer’s promotional video for “extensively” discussing the original Klon while “deceptively and continuously showing [the Behringer] counterfeit pedal”.
The newly updated website says of the Centara, “It’s a pedal as legendary as the many mythological creatures it’s named after,” simply alluding to centaurs and using similar semantics.
The pedal has also been reduced to $59.90 on the official Behringer site. Finnegan had stated that his revered design could never be as good at such a low price, saying he spared no expense with the parts he used.
It remains to be seen whether these changes will be enough to stifle Finnegan’s case or if more there will be further developments.
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