Universal Audio is a polymath brand, to say the least. They’ve captured the hearts of myriad audio engineers with both iconic analog hardware and pristinely-modeled software; their interfaces have brought “studio quality” to the masses; and now, quietly, their guitar pedals are amongst the best digital effects available. You might not have a UAFX pedal on your board yet, but with Guitar Center knocking $50 off a shedload of them for Black Friday, you probably will soon.
Universal Audio’s effects-pedal arm is young, having launched to much fanfare in 2021. It trucks in the same attention to detail as the brand’s digital efforts elsewhere – UAD plugins being industry-standard for a reason, bringing attentively-modeled effect emulations to the masses and rendering many a producer’s outboard racks somewhat obsolete. With a humongous range of amp modelers, cab sims, and faithfully modeled analog effects, Universal Audio is hoping to do pretty much the same thing for guitarists.
Now, despite the number of deals flooding the internet already, Black Friday hasn't technically started yet, so we totally understand if you aren't quite ready to shop just yet. In that case, be sure to bookmark our Black Friday guitar deals page, where we’ll be posting the best offers from this year's Cyber Weekend sales when they officially land in the next couple of weeks.
The UAFX range started in 2021 with a trio of time-based effects workstations: the Golden Reverberator, the Starlight Echo Station, and the Astra Modulation Machine. These aptly astronomically-named pedals return on their promise to deliver authentic emulation of analog effects, each boasting three iconic analog-modeled presets to explore – as well as some nifty preset-saving options, Bluetooth connectivity, and stereo I/O. All usually retail for $399, but you can pick them up for just $349.
The twin-stomp form factor of these workhorse multi-effects has also been put to great effect in a suite of newer UAFX amp- and cab-modeling pedals, including the Ruby ’63 Top Boost Amplifier – a Vox-ish tube combo emulation with some additional pre-amp-boost-y tricks up its sleeve – and the Dream ’65 Reverb-Amp – the black face of which should tell you all you need to know about its spring-verb and tube-saturation qualities.
The UAFX range also extends down to some more austere single-stomp effects via a range of four mini-yet-mighty affairs that bring unbelievable emulation to the gigging pedalboard. We were particularly blown away by the steady performance of the UAFX 1176 compressor pedal in our review of them. Still, all are uniquely excellent in their own way – and all are 15% off in this epic Black Friday pedal deal.
With such sweeping discounts, the burden of choice falls to you; whether you’re expanding an existing collection or taking your first dip into the world of UA emulation, you can’t really put a foot wrong.
