The Golden Sound of Reverb : The UA Golden Reverberator
Universal Audio Golden Reverberator
I confess. I am a reverb junkie. I love the sound of great reverb. I hate the sound of crappy reverb and I have found that most digital reverbs make my teeth hurt. There are exceptions, such as those from Strymon and Source Audio, but in general, I am not a fan. Today, I will tell you about my 100%, absolute favourite, no question, digital reverb.
By the way, while this is categorized as a review, as such it is entirely my opinion, without a whole lot of science behind it. It is more qualitative than quantitative and I make no claims about complete objectivity. It’s based on what I like and don’t like. You may agree or vehemently disagree and you will be right. Also, if I do “review” something, either I bought it with my own money, or was provided the piece on a loan with no requirements that I adhere to a script or have my post approved. I don’t do that and will never do so. I could probably make good money as a paid influencer, but they all set off my proven analog bullshit detector and I cannot afford to keep replacing bent needles on the dial resulting from a cascade of mcmarketing BS.
Back to the article…
Universal Audio - Quick Intro
Universal Audio is an audio effects company. They have been around for decades and became first known for their studio effects processors. By effects processors, I am speaking of compressors and limiters, the tools used by a skilled studio engineer and producer to make great sounding records.
As we moved into digital recording, it was determined that some feel was lost in the all digital world, so UA began to build plugins to Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) such as ProTools and Logic that could impart the analog feel to all digital recordings. Moreover, digital recording opened up recording to a whole new group of recordists who wanted to self-record and self-produce, perhaps not in an expensive studio but with a desire to achieve the sound and feel of great studios and classic gear. Check out the documentary on Sound City that you can find online to learn about the lengths that Dave Grohl went to, to save the recording desk (a Neve system) when Sound City shut down. There is a sound to these old analog desks and analog processors such as the UA 1176 that was missing in all digital recordings. Plugins allowed application of parameters to the raw digital recordings to give them the sound and feel of classic analog kit.
UA also built high performance recording interfaces with excellent microphone preamps, that could be coupled directly to classic preamp plugins for those classic sounds. While there are many recording interfaces in the marketplace at varying levels of audio quality, the UA units are well respected, and while more expensive than most, are also amongst the most widely used. In my own recording space. I use UA Apollo interfaces. Whether I use microphones, or outputs from a Kemper or Quad Cortex, the sound coming in is pure and via the use of UA plugins, I can get the sound of a Neve console or EMT 140 plate reverb, neither of which I could afford in dollars or space.
UA Stomps
Earlier this year UA announced that they would be bringing to market three stomp box style effects pedals but built with UA tone and processing. There would be a Reverb, a Delay and a Modulation pedal. I confess I ordered all three that day.
Golden Reverberator
It took a while to get this far, but I wanted to give you all a sense that this is not just another reverb pedal, because it is not just another reverb pedal.
From the factory there are three reverb modes, a spring reverb, a plate reverb and a digital reverb. When you register your unit, you get a fourth mode which is a Chamber style reverb.
User Interface
There are lots of ways to interact with a pedal. I am a constant tweaker, not really a preset person and not one who needs banks and banks of options. I like controls that my sausage fingers can easily manipulate and that I can easily see. I hate micro buttons and having to hold down multiple buttons whilst spinning on my head to access functions. I believe that there is a special place in hell for folks who build UIs like that. Check out the image of the Golden Reverberator. It is beautifully simple. Six knobs, three mini-switches, although you will likely use only two most of the time and two well spaced stomp switches. If you click on the image at the article head, you will go to the UA site to see their introduction video which is an excellent summary of the pedal and its sounds.
The Controls
You have very functional tone controls along the bottom row of Bass, Middle and Treble to allow tuning of the reverb trails. These tone controls have no impact on the dry signal.
The top row has Decay (length of reverb trails), PreDecay (time before the reverb trails start) and Mix which allows you to mix the dry and wet signals to suit your needs. Cranking the Mix all the way clockwise invokes a Kill Dry function if you work in Wet Dry environments.
Inputs and Outputs
The Golden Reverberator works in Mono or Stereo at your choice. The unit is powered by an external 9 volt power supply that you must provide. No power supply is included in the box. There is also a USB-C port to connect the unit to your computer for registration and to download updates. It pissed me off that for the price of this unit, indeed all the UAFX pedals that while you must have a USB-C cable to register the pedal, there is not one included in the box. Bad UA! Leaving out a cable that would cost you a dollar is pretty lame and you need a smack for that.
You will note that there are no MIDI inputs or outputs on the pedal, so if you are MIDI adept, you won’t be able to use MIDI programming for this pedal. As you can imagine, this has resulted in either much love or much hate with little in between. I admit to not caring either way.
The Reverbs
The Spring reverb selection brings you the sound of tube driven real spring reverbs. Think Fender Deluxe Reverb as an example. Unlike most digital spring reverbs, this one actually sounds like a tube driven spring, with all the overtones and additional dimensionality that you get from a real tube driven spring reverb, without the size, the weight and the penchant to get damaged in transit. By manipulating the controls you can go from gentle barely there to full swamp twangy reverb and it all sounds completely natural. You also get three different spring reverb tanks to choose from via the right side ABC mini-switch. The first is based on a normal Deluxe reverb tank in traditional mode. The second is based on a Fender Showman reverb tank and the third is based on a different Deluxe tank modified for much longer delays and tuned for ambient style work. While I use the names of Fender reverbs, UA does not explicitly do so, I am making inferences to things that I have read and heard in interviews. In my opinion, this is best digitally created spring tank reverb that I have ever found.
The Plate selection is based on recordings of the EMT 140 Plate Reverb from The Plant recording studio in California. I must admit that my favourite reverbs all come back to the sound of an EMT 140 plate system. This is a massive piece of kit, so I will never own one, and you would never take one on the road. The plate setting in the Golden Reverberator is truly awesome. UA has a stunningly good EMT-140 plugin for DAWs and their own DAW called LUNA, that I love, and this tonal quality and character is built right into this pedal. In this case the ABC switch allows you to choose between three variants of plate reverb. A is an older plate that has a shorter decay and quicker rolloff while remaining bright. B is an older plate that has a longer decay but is warmer and a bit more rolled off in the high end. C is a new plate with all the expected brightness plus a natural warble tone.
The Digital selection is based on the Lexicon 224 digital reverb. While one of the earliest digital reverbs, Lexicon made a name for itself with this tool. It is clean and pristine, but has a studio quality flavour that other digital reverbs never achieved. The effect in the Golden Reverberator is taken from the UA Lexicon 224 plugin and is really quite lovely. The ABC switches set size, with A being room sized, B being a small concert hall and C being a large concert hall. There are lots of tweaking opportunities here, and while you can certainly twiddle the knobs as you wish, reading the manual will provide you with some clear directional opportunities.
The fourth mode also uses the Lexicon 224 model for Plate and Chamber style reverbs. Position A is for percussion plate, suited perfectly to percussive tones. Position B delivers a traditional plate sound but with constant density so the density of the reverb does not increase over time. Position C delivers the sound of an acoustic chamber with lesser initial density and works best with short reverb times.
Conclusions
I love the sound and tonality of this pedal. In my view it’s the best sounding digital reverb out there right now and is a breeze to use. That is not to say that I don’t like the sounds of my Strymon and Source Audio digital reverbs, but I think the spring and plate on the UA sound better and the user interface is more intuitive for my use cases
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Best sounding digital reverb |
Oer $500 CAD |
| Accurate tube driven spring reverb |
Missing USB-C cable |
| Superb EMT-140 plate reverb |
No MIDI support |
| Nice Lexicon 224 sounds |
Thanks as always for reading and until next time, peace!
