UA add emulations of three iconic Marshall amps to their acclaimed UAFX amp pedal line‑up.
When Universal Audio launched their amp‑ and speaker‑emulation pedals in 2022 with a Vox and two flavours of Fender, there was a notable omission: surely there had to be a Marshall — the iconic sound of rock guitar — in the works? Well, it’s here now, and it is stunningly good! The Lion ’68 Super Lead Amp, to give it its full title, models three flavours of 100W Marshall valve amps: the classic Super Lead, a Super Bass (not just for bass players!) and a Super Lead running on a reduced mains voltage (using a Variac) for extra distortion. Each can be paired with one of six speaker‑cab and dual‑miking combinations, with a further option of ‘no cab’ for use with an external speaker‑sim or, indeed, with a real speaker via a power amp.
The form factor remains the same as for the other amp modellers, with six control knobs and two footswitches. Audio is stereo in and out on unbalanced jacks, and an external PSU capable of at least 400mA is needed; like UA’s other large‑format pedals, this is a power‑hungry, dual‑processor device. Once again, a USB‑C connector is used for registering the pedal and firmware updates (you get three additional speaker cabs when you register), and deeper editing and preset handling are only possible using a mobile app that connects over Bluetooth.
I’ve owned and used most of the iconic Marshall models over the years, but ‘the one’ for me, which saw me through countless gigs in the ’70s and ’80s, was a 100W Super Lead, and that just happens to be what most of the Lion ’68 is based on. Not that all 100W Super Leads are the same: they are very much not! Despite being a relatively simple design, the circuit received a number of revisions, components were changed, their values drifted, and indeed their original values varied just enough to make a difference given the component tolerances of the era. By 1968, the Super Lead model featured a massive 5000pF ‘bright’ capacitor as a fixed element (ie. not switchable like on most Fender amps). It’s a big part of what made a Super Lead sound like a Super Lead, provided you could turn the volume up far enough to mitigate its effect — say, somewhere above six, by which time it was very, very loud! Anywhere much below that, it would make the amp sound unusably thin and harsh. It was a common and easy mod, even when these amps were new, to swap out the 5000pF cap for a smaller value, and UA have taken the pragmatic option of pre‑modding their virtual Super Lead with a 100pF bright cap, a value used in some earlier Marshalls. Enough, but not too much, though there’s the option also to disable the bright cap altogether in the app. The Super Bass model has no bright cap, and for many players it was a preferable amp for cleaner sounds, or to use with the harsher‑sounding fuzz and distortion pedals of the day. (Jimi did OK with one!)
Input Options
All the Marshalls of this period were non‑master‑volume amps, of course, but had two Volume controls — one for each channel, marked Volume I and Volume II (high‑treble and normal). Each channel also had two input jacks, offering high or low sensitivity. The two inputs on the Lion ’68 pedal don’t replicate that setup — they are for connecting a stereo input source — but most users will probably be just using a single input to connect a guitar, given that most things that benefit from being stereo can be patched post‑amp. The app allows a choice of virtual high‑ or low‑sensitivity inputs, and the pedal itself defaults to replicating a ‘Y’ connector setup, feeding the guitar into both channels, so you can just turn up whichever one you want, or mix them, which was usually the point of using a ‘Y’ connector. The app also supports a virtual ‘jump lead’ option replicating the use of a small link lead between the channels, which has the secondary effect of slightly reducing the input sensitivity. The input routing choice is saved with each preset, and includes the clever ‘four‑cable’ option of the other UAFX amp pedals.
The two channels of I/O mean that mono or stereo sources and destinations are supported.
The lower row of knobs features the classic Marshall Bass‑Middle‑Treble tone control line‑up. Located later in the circuit, after two preamp stages, in theory the Marshall tone stack has a harmonically richer signal to work with than a Fender tone stack, but it can often seem to be less effective because so much of the bass has already been removed before the signal reaches it. It was not at all uncommon amongst players of my generation to always turn all the tone controls to 10 on a Super Lead and just fine‑tune the top end with the Presence control. The latter is accessed on Lion ’68 in the Alt mode that’s common to all the UAFX amp pedals: the Middle control becomes Presence, the Bass control determines how much virtual room ambience you have, and the Treble knob gives you a variable boost. What the Boost control actually does changes according to where you set it: just above minimum it adds the slightly smoothed out sound of an Echoplex EP‑III preamp; raised a little more it adds clean gain, and further up, you are into mid‑boost territory to push the amp into a focused, singing sustain.
OX‑type Speaker Modelling
There are six OX‑type, dynamically modelled speaker/mic combinations on offer (assuming you’ve registered to get the extra three): Celestion, JBL and Electro‑Voice speakers, in 4x12, 2x12 and 1x12 cab configurations, are matched with a selection of modelled beyerdynamic M 160 and Royer R121 ribbon mics, an AKG C414 capacitor model and Shure SM57 and Sennheiser MD421 dynamic mics. You can’t pick and choose your preferred speaker and mic combinations, unlike in the OX software, which will let you pair any and all combinations, but the choices work just fine for me. There always seems to be one cab that’s just perfect for whatever tone you’ve dialled up.
There always seems to be one cab that’s just perfect for whatever tone you’ve dialled up.
The Lion ’68, like all the UAFX amp pedals, has two modes: Live and Preset. In Live mode you are hearing the result of all the current physical controls and app settings, while Preset mode recalls a pre‑saved setup, which, unlike on many amp modellers, includes the master Output level control. Although the presets are stored in the pedal, not the app, you can only ever access the most recently loaded one from the pedal itself: to change it you have to use the app. The two footswitches are user‑configurable using the app, and can select Live or Preset mode, engage Bypass (buffered), or toggle the boost on and off. Edit mode in the app is essentially unchanged from the original release, so there’s still no way to examine the settings used by the presets. If you think of these pedals just as virtual amps and only use Live mode, as I tend to do, this really doesn’t matter, but if you want to start from a preset and tweak it, you never know how far each control is from its stored position. By the time you’ve speculatively moved a couple of them and perhaps got it a bit wrong, the preset no longer sounds like the thing you liked, so there’s little point continuing to tweak it. All it takes to improve on this is some way of nulling the controls, such as blinking one of the footswitch LEDs — an indication used in other UA pedals to warn that the control you’re adjusting doesn’t do anything in the current mode. To store a Live‑mode sound you’ve created, you just hold down the Store switch until the Preset footswitch LED blinks.
The infamous Marshall ‘ghost notes’ caused by intermodulation between the audio and power supply noise and ripple are fully present and correct, but you can choose to switch them off in the app. I like the effect on distorted leads — it is simply part of the character — but prefer it gone for cleaner, especially chordal playing. There’s also a noise gate in the app: effective, if that’s something you want, but I can’t say I perceived any reasonable settings as noisy enough to use it.
A ‘Real’ Marshall
Until UA launched their ‘one‑amp‑per‑pedal’ range, there was probably no modeller made that didn’t include some Marshall presets. It’s quite easy to do ‘generic Marshall’: plenty of distortion and a bit too much upper midrange and you can call it done. But Marshalls are more than that. You can’t fully know, unless you’ve played one at sweet‑spot volume, quite what the real experience is. Sure, hot‑rodded and Variac‑ed Marshalls are all about distortion, but most of us didn’t hot‑rod back in the day, and Marshalls were prized as much as anything for their ability to slide seamlessly between clean and driven tones just by riding a guitar volume control. Marshalls can actually do beautiful cleans and, especially, semi‑cleans and, to me, that’s what is so special about this pedal.
This isn’t ‘generic Marshall'. This is ‘real Marshall’. And as a long‑term Marshall user, I recognise so much of what those amps meant to me in the touch response and sonic performance of the Lion ’68. This feels like it was a labour of love for the design team, and I’m sure that love will be reciprocated by those who know the real thing, and indeed those now able to experience something of the Marshall magic for the first time.
Audio Examples
So you can hear the sonic qualities for yourself, I've created several audio examples of the Universal Audio UAFX Lion ’68 Super Lead Amp stompbox here:
www.soundonsound.com/reviews/universal-audio-lion-68-super-lead-amp-audio-examples
Summary
The full range of classic Marshall tones available at any volume level, to DI for recording or drive a power amp and speakers on stage. Look elsewhere if you need sophisticated switching and preset handling — but for sound and feel, only this does what this can do!
