Universal Audio guitar pedals

stickyfiddle

For me it’s just that they’re a pretty straightforward UI with very high quality sounds. I don’t care about MIDI or analog dry-through as long as something sounds good and is easy to use.

I haven’t found anything that is genuinely the full banana, so to speak…
The Echosystem is the best sounding delay I’ve heard but honestly it’s a pain in the arse to use beyond very simple patches. 

The Timefactor is great but big and you need another external switch to use it live with multiple presets. 

I *love* the DIG for rhythmic stuff but it doesn’t do the nice vintage tubey/tapey sounds.
The Mako D1 is wonderful - especially the Attack control - but doesn’t do rhythmic stuff well and I can’t remember how to save presets
The Volante is amazing but huge and maybe a bit over-complex if anything. 

I’m guessing I’ll end up with a Starlight at some point in the next few months and work out exactly what’s wrong with it

WiresDreamDisasters

The Golden is the one I'm more impressed with just listening to the Youtube videos. The Astra isn't really my cuppa so far. I'm not much of a modulation kinda guy.

stickyfiddle

Yeah, I’ve never really got mod pedals beyond a smidge of trem. The reverb sounds amazing but I know I won’t use it much

WiresDreamDisasters

stickyfiddle said:

For me it’s just that they’re a pretty straightforward UI with very high quality sounds. I don’t care about MIDI or analog dry-through as long as something sounds good and is easy to use.

I haven’t found anything that is genuinely the full banana, so to speak…
The Echosystem is the best sounding delay I’ve heard but honestly it’s a pain in the arse to use beyond very simple patches. 

The Timefactor is great but big and you need another external switch to use it live with multiple presets. 

I *love* the DIG for rhythmic stuff but it doesn’t do the nice vintage tubey/tapey sounds.
The Mako D1 is wonderful - especially the Attack control - but doesn’t do rhythmic stuff well and I can’t remember how to save presets
The Volante is amazing but huge and maybe a bit over-complex if anything. 

I’m guessing I’ll end up with a Starlight at some point in the next few months and work out exactly what’s wrong with it

I really wanted to love the Echosystem. It controlled well and I liked how simple it was to dial in versus a lot of these other delays out there, but I didn't think it sounded that good really. A bit bland and a bit of jack of all trades. But not in the same way that DD500 is, because the DD500 has some special features to it where you can really craft the delay. The Echosystem was like "this is what I got... if you dig it... great... if you don't.... sell me on Gumtree, you hack fraud!!"

Which is exaclty what I did.

stickyfiddle said:

Yeah, I’ve never really got mod pedals beyond a smidge of trem. The reverb sounds amazing but I know I won’t use it much

The mod effects I like are the really glitchy pattern tremolos and the very deep phasers and flangers. The subtle stuff... meh.

monquixote

I think the echolution 2 is still the best sounding delay I've ever had but it was quite annoying to use and the midi implementation was poor.

icu81b4

So if you just wanted these three pedal, which is the smallest pedal board that  could be used to house them that included isolated power supply? (By that I mean can also house something like a voodoo labs power supply underneath) for simplicity. 

mal1971

icu81b4 said:

So if you just wanted these three pedal, which is the smallest pedal board that  could be used to house them that included isolated power supply? (By that I mean can also house something like a voodoo labs power supply underneath) for simplicity. 

Probably get by with one of these nano boards but need plenty power, something like a cioks dc7 might be slim enough and powerful enough.

stickyfiddle

icu81b4 said:

So if you just wanted these three pedal, which is the smallest pedal board that  could be used to house them that included isolated power supply? (By that I mean can also house something like a voodoo labs power supply underneath) for simplicity. 

I think they’d fit on a PT Nano with a little of overhang and a CS6 underneath (the PSU definitely fits). You might need a current doubler adapter but it should work fine.

mal1971

Of the three, the starlight is the least interesting to me.  I have a small board that has amp on it so that I can travel to practice/gigs with only a board and I can squeeze on two of the three uafx alongside my h9.  My h9 stays as I use the tuner, love the micro pitch and find it handy as a utility pedal. The h9s big weakness is modulation in my view so will likely go for an Astra.  The ce1 and phase 90s are the closest clones I have heard.

stickyfiddle

Can anyone confirm the dimensions of these? Pedal Playground suggests they'll just fit on a PT Nano without any overhang - would be good to know if that's right.

WiresDreamDisasters

Ohhhhhh I forgot to say.... I tried the Starlight.

Very polite sounding. Like they've modelled it on the brand spankingest newest tape machine. Very hard to get decent cruft and shit out of it.

I didn't buy it.

shaunm

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Ohhhhhh I forgot to say.... I tried the Starlight.

Very polite sounding. Like they've modelled it on the brand spankingest newest tape machine. Very hard to get decent cruft and shit out of it.

I didn't buy it.

How did you think it compared to a Volante? I really enjoy the Volante and think it’s hard to get a bad sound from it.

WiresDreamDisasters

shaunm said:

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Ohhhhhh I forgot to say.... I tried the Starlight.

Very polite sounding. Like they've modelled it on the brand spankingest newest tape machine. Very hard to get decent cruft and shit out of it.

I didn't buy it.

How did you think it compared to a Volante? I really enjoy the Volante and think it’s hard to get a bad sound from it.

Volante has much more character in my opinion. A far superior pedal IF you want tape distortion, crinklies and cranklies, all the mechanical mess that the Volante does really well.

Supportact

Seziertisch said:

bencowling81 said:

Bet these are lovely. With these and the Automatones I reckon once we finally get back to gigs we'll need to also factor in the cost to hire a guy from G4S to carry the pedalboard in and out of venues in a secure case handcuffed to his arm. 

Is you pedalboard worth more than your car? Discuss.

Yes. I have a rubbish car though.

RaymondLin

I seen a lot of videos for this the past few months, not once it held my attention.  I think the Strymon stuff is better.  I also don't think they are that good looking as a pedal.  It's like someone took a CBA pedal then made it flat and fat.

EricTheWeary

 I read the Guitar magazine review on Monday then looked at a couple of videos after. Lots of damming with faint praise going on, lots of things that could have been done slightly different, lot of faith required in UA to do the updates and what those will be. The TPS video is an example, they devoted an hour to pretty much giving free advertising for The Ox when UA brought that out but struggled to be wowed by that delay. 

mal1971

I have both the Astra and the golden reverb.  I think they are great.  I have an h9 on my board and it does delays and pitch brilliantly but let down by its modulation.  The Astra models these vintage effects better than anything else I have heard at phenomenal quality

Wazmeister

pedalo said:

Still feeling pretty underwhelmed by the Golden. Might knock together a wet dry set up to see if I can see what the fuss is about. 

I felt exactly the same,and I so wanted to like the Golden... just 'ok', unless there was something wrong with my unit.

However, I purchased the Starlight this week, and that is a very special delay

shaunm

@Wazmeister so the one to go for is the delay in your opinion? 

How does the Starlight compare to the likes of the Volante?

mgaw

I tried the Astra for about 20 minutes, it went back..