Universal Audio has added some unicorn tube amp tone to its UAFX lineup with the launch of the Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special Amp, a compact amp in a stompbox that emulates the holy grail tones of a Dumble – or as Universal Audio puts it, “the heavenly guitar sounds of Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mayer, Robben Ford, Joe Bonamassa, and Carlos Santana”.
If this compact amp modeller is as successful in emulating the ODS as the UAFX series has been with other classic amps, then this could be the bargain of the century.
Let’s face it. Most reading this and all writing this will never be able to afford a Dumble, and most of us will have come to terms with that fact. Besides, spending six figures on an amp seems a little OTT unless your day job involves headlining the Royal Albert Hall or Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
But the prospect of having that tone in a pedal format, with some modern functionality that the UAFX house style offers us is tantalising. This is a D-style amp pedal for the 21st-century, with nine onboard classic mic/speaker emulations, deep edits via the app, Jazz, Rock and Custom modes at the touch of a switch, and an intuitive control layout that is, yes, just like an amp.
You need not be in deep with pedalboard culture to get to grips with the Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special Amp’s charms. Before you touch the knobs, the Jazz presents these D-style tones as “cloud-like cleans” with scooped mids for tightness, while Rock is all about “blooming overdrive”.
Custom is where things can get very interesting; that’s where you design your own ODS, tweaking the circuit to your liking. Choose between Classic and Skyline tone stacks, add the “Hot Rubber Monkey” preamp mod. This is as close to an open-source Dumble in a box as you’ll find.
As for manual controls, we have dials for Volume, Overdrive, Output, Bass, Middle and Treble. Like the others in the UAFX series, the Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special Amp is eminently tweakable, with many of these dials having secondary functions. It’s worth noting what they do here because it gives you an idea of just how much tone-shaping control is at your disposal here. There are a lot of electric guitar tones in this compact package.
In Amp mode, the Volume control adjusts the first gain stage of the amp circuit, which then cascades into the second. In Alt mode it is used to dial in Room ambience when you are using the amp with a speaker cabinet. UAFX advises starting with Room at noon and then adding or subtracting to taste.
Overdrive controls gain when in Amp mode, and Ratio when Alt mode, whereupon it sets the level of the Overdrive channel. Besides dialling in your low-end response in Amp mode, the Bass knob also selects the Deep setting when choosing the Classic Tone Stack, and the Mid setting when using the Skyline Tone Stack, both of which can be selected from the UAFX App.
Middle doubles as a Presence control while the Treble knob’s Alt mode setting allows you to choose from four bright cap settings that have been modelled on original Dumble amplifiers (150 pF, 196 pF, and 300 pF, in ascending order of brightness).
Cabs can be selected via the onboard toggle and you there are artist presets to explore via the app. All in you are looking at 30 years of Dumble tones, in a small box priced £379/$399 street.
“We wore out the rolodex to find Overdrive Special amps spanning three essential eras,” says UAFX. “From the 1970’s Santa Cruz models that brought the amp into the spotlight, to LA iterations from the ‘80s and ‘90s used on legendary sessions, Enigmatic ’82 gives you the sound of the most wildly expensive and coveted guitar amps in history.”
Yes, at just shy of 400 bucks, the Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special Amp is not cheap but then it does present you with over a million dollars of gear reproduced with UAFX’s dual-engine modeller. That, for many, is the holy grail. The Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special Amp is out now. Find out more over at Universal Audio.
