UNIVERSAL AUDIO PEDALS

UA UNVEIL A TRIO OF AMP-REPLACEMENT PEDALS

The amplifier industry is on a mission, and it’s one that involves you not using an amp at all. Just recently, we’ve seen pedal-based amp replacements ready to take you direct into a cab or PA system from Blackstar, Hughes & Kettner, Victory, IK Multimedia, Boss and many more. The latest brand to join the pedal amp party is analogue modelling/studio legends Universal Audio with its trio of UAFX pedals.

Now, we say pedal amp, but that’s something of a misnomer, as these (along with most of the other pedals in this category) are essentially preamps with cab emulation – they don’t contain power stages so you’ll still need some way of actually amplifying your sound. But, what we have here are three pedals based on classic valve amps. UA doesn’t mention any names, but their titles do the suggesting for us, with the Dream ’65 Reverb (Black-face Fender Twin), Ruby ’63 Top Boost (Vox AC30) and Woodrow 55 (Fender Tweed Deluxe). Each pedal features six rotary controls, three three-position toggle switches and a pair of footswitches, with the functionality varying between each pedal. On the Dream ’65, the controls are used for volume, output, bass, treble and boost plus a master output control. The first toggle switch remains the same on each pedal, offering a choice of speaker emulations while the middle toggle features positions for bringing in the pedal’s vibrato circuit controls, ‘live’ control mode, or storing a preset. Finally, the third toggle is home to three variations on modded versions of the amp – in this case a Dumblestyle OD Special mod, preamp boost or SRV mod.

The Ruby ’63 follows a similar story with faithful volume, cut (high frequency cut), bass/treble/boost and output controls, with the treble, bass and boost controls doubling as knobs for reverb and vibrato. The mods on the Ruby include an Epiii-boosted brilliant channel, treble-boosted normal channel and a vibrato channel.

Finally, there’s the Woodrow ’55 which has the original’s instrument and mic channels running in tandem, with separate gain controls for both. The Woodrow operates slightly differently to the other two due to the lack of ‘alt’ controls, so it’s arguably going to be the simplest to operate. There’s the two gain controls, a boost level, tone, room (ambience) and master output, and you still get the triple-speaker modelling plus three amp modifications to dial in (an 80s rack delay preamp boost, stock clean boost and EPIII boost).

All three pedals can hook up to UA’S UAFX mobile app for deeper editing and downloading presets, and each pedal can also run in stereo, supporting the four-cable method for hooking up more flexibly. They’re £345, and will be shipping shortly.

Stuart Williams