#univox guitar amplifiers

[stone-cold-groove]

Univox amplifiers ad - 1973.

[ifelllikeastar]

Kurt was described as a happy and excitable child, who also exhibited sensitivity and care. His talent as an artist was evident from an early age, as he would draw his favorite characters from films and cartoons, such as the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Donald Duck, in his bedroom. He was encouraged by his grandmother, Iris Cobain who was a professional artist.

Cobain's family had a musical background, and he developed an interest in music early and began singing at the age of two. At age four, he started playing the piano and singing, writing a song about a trip to a park. He listened to artists including Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), and, from a young age, would sing songs including Arlo Guthrie's "Motorcycle Song", the Beatles' "Hey Jude", Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun", and the theme song to the Monkees television show.

On his 14th birthday Kurt's uncle offered him either a bike or a used guitar; Kurt chose the guitar. It was an electric guitar from Sears and he took guitar lessons long enough to learn AC/DC's "Back in Black".

Upon forming what would be Nirvana, he was playing a Fender Champ amplifier and a righthanded Univox Hi-Flier guitar that he flipped over and strung for lefthanded playing.

Kurt Donald Cobain died April 5, 1994 at the age of 27. ~He is highly recognized as one of the most influential alternative rock musicians.

[ifuckinglovestvincent]

ST. VINCENT’S GEAR 2020

Live Rig

(8) Music Man STV Guitars

Shure AD4Q Four-Channel Wireless Receiver

RF Venue Diversity Fin Wireless Mic Antenna

Radial JX44 Switcher Radial SW4 Switcher

Sound Sculpture Switchblade 8F

RJM Mastermind GT Controller

Korg Pitchblack Pedal Tuner

(2) Eventide H9 Multi-Effects Pedal

ZVex Mastotron Effects Pedal

Boss PS-5 Super Shifter Pedal

Bixonic Expandora Pedal

Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2

iConnectivity Midi4+

Kemper Profiler Rack Guitar Amplifier

Supro 1610RT Comet Combo Amplifier

Home Studio Setup

General Studio Gear

12 Channel Custom Op-Amp Console

Apple MacBook Pro

Avid Pro Tools HD Native Interface

(3) Lynx Aurora 16 Channel Converter

Hear Technologies Headphone Distributor

Coleman MS8 Switcher

Dangerous Monitor ST Monitor Controller

PMC twotwo.8 Active Studio Monitor (pair)

Subwoofer Pros 12" Subwoofer

Yamaha NS10 (pair)

mio10 Midi Interface

Keyboards

Electro-Harmonix Mini Synthesizer

Sequential Prophet 6

Juno-106

Moog Mother-32

Moog Grandmother

Moog Minitaur

Moog Minimoog

Teenage Engineering OP-1

Korg MicroKorg Roland Vocoder VP-03 Mellotron M4000D Rheem Organ

Korg Rhythm 33 Yamaha DX7

Microphone Preamps

BAE 312A 500 Series API 3124+ (4-channel)

Shadow Hills Industries Mono GAMA

Chandler Limited TG2 (2-channel)

Focusrite Scarlett OctoPre Dynamic (8-channel)

BAE 1073MP

Microphones

AKG C414 XLII (4) Shure SM57 Audix D2 Audix D4 Audix D6

AKG C451B

(2) Mojave MA-50 Royer R121

Rode NT5 Beyerdynamic M160 (2) RCA 44DX

(2) Reslo Ribbon

Coles 4038

Neumann TLM102 Neumann Vintage U87 (2) Neumann KM84 Shure SM7

Wunder Audio CM7 S

Outboard FX

JDK Audio R24 EQ Teletronix LA-2A

Empirical Labs Distressor

Korg SDD-3000 Digital Delay

Highland Dynamics BG-2

Space Case TE-1 2016 Delay

Roland SRE-555 Chorus Echo

Univox EchoChamber EC-80A Tape Echo

Watkins Copicat Tape Delay

Grampian Spring Reverb

JHS Colour Box

Tubecore 500 Compressor

(2) Purple Audio Action 500 Series FET Compressor

API 525 Compressor

DigiTech Vocalist Live Pro

Eventide Eclipse

[ Source: MasterClass: St. Vincent teaches creativity and songwriting ]

[taperwolf]

How old technology stays around, part 8: Design for repair.

Here's a gorgeous item from my collection.

This is the Korg Tuning Standard, model WT-10A, from back before Korg sold their own stuff in the US; the manual is dated 1976 and says it was distributed by Univox, a brand of Merson Musical Products, a division of Unicord Inc., a Gulf + Western company. (Merson was a big distributor of guitars and their amplifiers, effects, and accessories going back to the 1940s, and there's more story there, but I digress.)

It's a tuner; it can generate tones in the chromatic scale across three octaves, and also take an instrument's output and compare its frequency against the reference. So, y'know, like a tuner does. It's portable — running on batteries and coming in a carrying case — but while earlier tuners were larger still, this one's pretty big; it's roughly 8" high by 4" wide by 2" thick (20cm x 10cm x 5cm). Here it is next to a more modern tuner I have, which also displays common guitar chord patterns.

So, since sometimes objects can not be in perfect shape 45 years from their date of manufacture, I turned it on today and nothing happened. I poked at it for a bit, and figured out what was wrong very quickly.

This is the tuner's battery holder. The part of it that has the connector that snaps into the battery clip, and which also holds two of the four AA batteries in place, has snapped off. Judging by the glue coating parts of the holder, it's not the first time, either; it looks like both ends of this thing have cracked off at some point, but got epoxied back into place.

Now, I could do that again. But given the shape the holder is in, it'd be better to replace it entirely. But where am I gonna find something like that?

In my bin labeled "Battery Holders and AC Adaptaplugs", that's where. I almost certainly bought this one at Radio Shack back when there were Radio Shacks. I've got a number of AA holders in varying sizes, supporting 2 to 8 cells, both with and without this kind of 9v-battery-style clip. I moved the batteries over, clipped it in, and closed up the battery compartment, and it works like a charm. Elapsed time for repair: maybe two minutes. I could do this because the designers used standard parts — and parts that'd stay standard for decades.

If I'd managed to break the battery holder on the smaller tuner above, it'd be a break in the actual outside casing of the thing; perhaps I could glue it back together, or possibly solder an external battery holder on, but either way it'd be very messy. Then again, I'm sure it was much cheaper than the Korg unit (when adjusted for inflation); I personally found it at a thrift store and spent maybe $5 on it. So there are tradeoffs.

[toms-amps]

1966 Univox U75 Amp

The final installment of Univox’s 1960s great small tube amps, along with the U45 and U45B (which we also have). Twin original 10″ Jensen speakers driven by 2 EL90 (6AQ5) tubes for 10 watts. A great clean tone and stunning tremolo, gets politely dirty when cranked. Jackson Smith on the demo.

[doutlereijba]

via Vintage Univox Tube Guitar / Bass Amplifier w/ Matching 810 Cab! Holy Grail Amp!

[s3rtx]

Vox Stomplab vs. Zoom 505

This may look like a weird post, comparing an ancient pedal with a relatively new one. The Zoom 505 was sold as the “THE WORLD'S FIRST MULTI-EFFECTS SYSTEM IN A COMPACT PEDAL “ back in the early 2000s. I just had bought my first electric guitar and my guitar teacher advised me to get one of those, my amp would “sound like a Marshall”. So I did. This pedal back in the day was extremely complete with amp simulators, distortions, delay, echo, acoustic simulator, flanger, etc... Some time later I also bought an expression pedal that would work with it.

This pedal I have used for about 15 years with a single guitar. That means that basically I got it extremely well tuned to my needs + taste + gear. In fact, I would still be using it if it weren’t for the plastic switches. Unfortunately, everything wears off, and pedals do too. So the Zoom 505 started missing my button presses and had to try and try, and became very annoying to use. For this reason I bought a replacement, the Vox Stomplab.

The Vox Stomplab would not be my first choice if it weren’t because I leave in a remote place and the local dealer only had a single compact multi effect pedal. Nonetheless, before buying a did some research and I knew more or less what I was getting into. I have had it for several months, and I think I can provide a useful review for those considering it.

Let’s start with the form factor. This is a really small pedal, a little wider than the 505 but shorter. The Stomplab can, as well as the 505, run off batteries for few hours. This pedal comes with an integrated expression pedal, a quite small one in fact. The expression pedal is usable, mostly for volume and altering effects that do not require you to mess with it continuously. For wahwah, using it becomes a bit of a challenge since just getting your foot on it the right way is not easy. Still on the features, the Stomplab is very very basic. It just has an input and an output. No USB connection, no external expression pedals, no ANYTHING! This is not quite ok by today’s standards. It was ok on the 505 15 years ago, but you should not expect that we will enter effect patches manually, and back them up by literally writing them on a sheet of paper. The are other pedal in this price range that do provide a USB port. Both the 505 and the Vox come with onboard tuners. The Stomplab works quite well, using the intensity of  the light (left or right LED) to provide feedback while the 505 would use a set of 4 leds for the same purpose. I marginally prefer the Stomplab approach.

One of the things that motivated me to buy it the casing. I wanted to avoid again plastic pedals. Not only they look cheap, the wear off more and are less rugged. The Somplab has a metal casing and 2 nice switch metal buttons that I doubt I can break even if trying hard. Another thing that is visible is that it shares the look and feel of single purpose pedals with 3 potentiometers to regulate the values of the effects. That can be very good at times, and a pain the rest of the time.

The good thing of the potentiometers is that makes editing the effects a breeze. By switching the leftmost switch you can access 9 effect banks with 10 effects each, organized by genre (jazz, metal, hard rock, etc...), and 20 user defined ones. 120 effects in total. You navigate up and down through the 10 effects of each bank using the pedal switch buttons. When you are on an effect, you can change the gain and level directly with the potentiometers, and if you press edit, you can change virtually anything very efficiently. This method is much more effective than the used by the Zoom 505, that you have to press the plus and minus buttons repeatedly instead of simply rotating the potentiometer to the right value. On the other hand, the fact that there is a physical potentiometer causes some trouble. Why is that? Because because when you switch effect, the configuration values of the effect change, but the potentiometer remains where it was. Meaning that you do not know at a glance what the gain, level or any other value for an effect is, and thus, you do not know to adjust it.

In this pedal you can combine 8 simultaneous effects, amp, pedal, cab, delay, reverb, etc... which is not bad. The truth is that I like simpler sounds, so I won’t use so many effects at the same time. One thing that really shocked me was that something that was already solved in the Zoom 505, it was not here. The 505 had this very nice way of either 1) instantaneous effect switch, or 2) you could navigate with the foot switches to the effect while still playing the previous one, and only switch to the new one when both switches (right and left buttons) were pressed simultaneously. This can not be done on the Stomplab, and I think is a killer. That basically means you can not use it for gigs, since you can only switch between adjacent effects. The only alternative you have is to use the user defined presets and quickly navigate up and down. You won’t be able to do so with the factory presets, since for those you need to rotate a switch and that is not very practical while performing in the middle of a song.

Sound wise, I appreciate improved effects on the Vox. More “analog” like and less transistor based. In fact, it provides simulators of known amps and cabinets. I can not tell the quality of those since I do not own any of the simulated devices. However, I can tell the difference from the 505. On the other hand, effects seem overcomplicated. It is not just like choosing a distortion and that is it. You have to decide on the amp, the equalizer, cab, effects pedal, delay, rev, nore reduction and yet some fancy effects that I will never use in my lifetime. This makes it a little complicated to find the right sound. I have spent the whole afternoon today configuring some user presets and I’m not yet satisfied. I compiled some information that will help you decode what each effect is and what each simulated amp is.

So, to conclude. The Vox Stomplab is a very versatile, cheap and well built pedal for the price. I would have liked the usb port, and the option of navigating through effects without switching (just like my old Zoom 505). Despite these limitations, I think I still have a lot to learn with/of it. When I had one guitar and one pedal... everything was very linear. Now with 3 electric guitars and this new pedal, I am aware it is very difficult to get the exact sound I want. So I will go slowly and try to learn how the get the best of each guitar and each effect.

Now, if you have got one of these tiny pedals, you have few great resources to explore:

1-  Metastable’s spreadsheet. A comprehensive document containing all effects and parameters, settings and more: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wj5YnBIp9_IAtypoiKEjm4f1bcqY83UMDN3VR0Zu8dQ/edit#gid=0

2- His list of equivalence Stomplab simulated <-> real equipment

AMPLIFIERS

AC15 - Channel 2 of a 1962 Vox AC15 AC15TB - 1990's Vox AC15TBX ('top boost' channel) AC30 - Vox AC30 (normal channel) AC30TB - Vox AC30 ('Top-boost' channel) BLACK 2x12 - Fender 'Blackface' Twin Reverb (clean channel) TWEED 1x12 - 1958 (Vox describe as 18w but this is more likely 15w) 'narrow panel' Fender Deluxe (NOTE: following an interesting post from JoeM and some digging around of my own, I'm now convinced this is the Deluxe & NOT (as described in the article below) the Princeton, due to the power rating, 2x6V6 valve complement in the power stage, & 1x12" speaker size!) TWEED 4x10 - 1959 Fender 4x10 Bassman UK BLUES - 1960's Marshall JTM45 head (high treble channel) UK ’70s - 1969 Marshall 100w Plexi head (high treble channel) UK ’80s - 1983 100w Marshall JCM800 head UK 90's - 1990's 100w Marshall JCM900 head (lead channel) UK MODERN - Marshall JCM2000 DSL100 head (Hi-gain channel) RECTO - 150w Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier (modern high gain channel) US HIGAIN - 1991 100w Soldano SLO100 Head (hi-gain channel) BOUTIQUE OD - Dumble Overdrive Special 100w head (overdrive channel) BOUTIQUE CL - Dumble 100w head (clean channel) PEDAL MODELS COMP MXR RED COMPRESSOR ACOUSTIC ORIGINAL VOX WAH VOX WAH U-VIBE UniVox Uni-Vibe OCTAVE ORIGINAL TREBLE BOOST VOX TREBLE BOOSTER TUBE OD Ibanez Tube Screamer BOUTIQUE KLON CENTAUR KENTAUROS ORANGE DIST BOSS DS-1 METAL DIST BOSS HM-1 FUZZ DALAS Fuzz Face MOD/DELAY CLASSIC CHORUS MXR CHORUS MULTI TAP CHORUS ORIGINAL CLASSIC FLANGER MXR FLANGER PHASER MXR Phase90 TEXTREM Tremoro on Fender Combo Amp ROTARY Rotary Speaker PITCH SHIFTER ORIGINAL FILTRON Mu-TRON Filter ECHO PLUS Echo Plex DELAY ORIGINAL 70's Analog BBD Like Delay CHORUS+DELAY ORIGINAL COMBI FX

and 3) this resource with some (not yet many) patches. I have tested the Metallica patch and is really good: http://guitarpatches.com/patches.php?unit=StompLabG

Enjoy your Vox!

[jeuvso-veexwu]

Univox Amp U-155R guitar amplifier http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=2&toolid=10044&campid=5337410320&customid=&lgeo=1&vectorid=229466&item=302342453725

[qeefga-veohpe]

Univox Amp U-155R guitar amplifier http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=2&toolid=10044&campid=5337410320&customid=&lgeo=1&vectorid=229466&item=302342453725

[dauwza-laalno]

UNIVOX U-45B TUBE TYPE GUITAR AMPLIFIER 1960'S WITH JENSEN SPEAKER RESTORED https://t.co/A9oqUShSuq https://t.co/V7rTQEQUBD http://twitter.com/Dauwza_Laalno/status/865778971916607488

[vaorfa-cueqtu]

UNIVOX U-45B TUBE TYPE GUITAR AMPLIFIER 1960'S WITH JENSEN SPEAKER RESTORED http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=2&toolid=10044&campid=5337410320&customid=&lgeo=1&vectorid=229466&item=112407615746

[yaayye-baepne]

UNIVOX U-45B TUBE TYPE GUITAR AMPLIFIER 1960'S WITH JENSEN SPEAKER RESTORED http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=2&toolid=10044&campid=5337410320&customid=&lgeo=1&vectorid=229466&item=112407615746

[vaerte-feovro]

UNIVOX U-45B TUBE TYPE GUITAR AMPLIFIER 1960'S WITH JENSEN SPEAKER RESTORED http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=2&toolid=10044&campid=5337410320&customid=&lgeo=1&vectorid=229466&item=112407615746

[naocpo-xaumma]

UNIVOX U-45B TUBE TYPE GUITAR AMPLIFIER 1960'S WITH JENSEN SPEAKER RESTORED http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=2&toolid=10044&campid=5337410320&customid=&lgeo=1&vectorid=229466&item=112407615746

[twirgri-garagi]

UNIVOX U-45B TUBE TYPE GUITAR AMPLIFIER 1960'S WITH JENSEN SPEAKER RESTORED http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=2&toolid=10044&campid=5337410320&customid=&lgeo=1&vectorid=229466&item=112407615746

[jiacm-kiowyi]

UNIVOX U-45B TUBE TYPE GUITAR AMPLIFIER 1960'S WITH JENSEN SPEAKER RESTORED http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=2&toolid=10044&campid=5337410320&customid=&lgeo=1&vectorid=229466&item=112407615746