UA Lion '68

ejecta said:
That sounds fantastic. I’m going to try one… a big reason is my amps loaded down into the UA Ox Stomp has upped my direct tones to a point where I’m really liking it. Kind of a first for me to be this happy playing direct.
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Let us know how you like it! They seem to be out of stock most major places for the next couple months but maybe you can snag one local or through a lesser known site
 
Got to try out the UA Lion today, through a pair of Genelec 8040 studio monitors which are similar to the Genelec M040 models I use at home.

The good: The UA Lion sounds like a good Marshall amp sim, responds nicely, good cabs. Soundwise not much to complain.

The bad: To me it does very little you can't get out of a Strymon Iridium + 3rd party IRs. While the Strymon does not have the individual channel volume controls or a boost and its room reverb is a bit different, the end results can be very similar. So I'd rather buy the more flexible Strymon.

The ugly: All the usual UA stuff, like the mobile app, lack of MIDI, single preset etc.
 
norminal said:
Ridiculous for a $399 pedal. The UAD guys must be using the money they saved by not adding these features to buy the crack they’re obviously smoking.
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Or spending it on adding even more pedals. They have put out 18 pedals within 3 years, which is a lot.

It seems their current MO is "take the algorithms from our plugins and package them into a pedal, do the absolute minimum to make this happen."
 
laxu said:
Got to try out the UA Lion today, through a pair of Genelec 8040 studio monitors which are similar to the Genelec M040 models I use at home.

The good: The UA Lion sounds like a good Marshall amp sim, responds nicely, good cabs. Soundwise not much to complain.

The bad: To me it does very little you can't get out of a Strymon Iridium + 3rd party IRs. While the Strymon does not have the individual channel volume controls or a boost and its room reverb is a bit different, the end results can be very similar. So I'd rather buy the more flexible Strymon.

The ugly: All the usual UA stuff, like the mobile app, lack of MIDI, single preset etc.
Click to expand...

Interesting! While I think it sounds good from video demoes I heard, I still think it's the least impressive sounding of the UA amp pedals. . . but I'm surprised it's that close to the Iridium in practice. I mean, I think the Iridium Punch channel sounds nice as its own thing, but I've never thought of it as nailing the Plexi sound completely (I don't think it was trying to in the same sense as something like this though).
 
synthpenguin said:
Interesting! While I think it sounds good from video demoes I heard, I still think it's the least impressive sounding of the UA amp pedals. . . but I'm surprised it's that close to the Iridium in practice. I mean, I think the Iridium Punch channel sounds nice as its own thing, but I've never thought of it as nailing the Plexi sound completely (I don't think it was trying to in the same sense as something like this though).
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To be fair, I haven't tried them side by side so this is just based on what I get out of the Strymon vs what I got out of the Lion.

I was honestly expecting a bit more out of the Lion than what I heard.

The Strymon's Punch model sounds closest to the 1959SLP (Marshall Superlead reissue) model in my Axe-Fx 3, which has less gain and "hair" than some of the Fractal vintage Marshall models.
 
laxu said:
To be fair, I haven't tried them side by side so this is just based on what I get out of the Strymon vs what I got out of the Lion.

I was honestly expecting a bit more out of the Lion than what I heard.

The Strymon's Punch model sounds closest to the 1959SLP (Marshall Superlead reissue) model in my Axe-Fx 3, which has less gain and "hair" than some of the Fractal vintage Marshall models.
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Yeah, that's super interesting! And yeah, I was expecting more from the Lion than that too.

That said, I personally think the Iridium is a bit underrated these days, at least online. I was really close to buying one instead of an HX Stomp because the ease of use is really attractive to me, and part of me still wants one even though it would be hard to justify now haha. But so many reviews of it now are it vs x or y in the sense of "what is closest to the real thing", but I think all of its channels are really good as their own things, even if the Chime doesn't match an AC30 as closely as a Ruby does, etc.

They just need Iridium v2 that is exactly the same except with better stock IRs lol. They can adding a soft clipping stage before the IRs and call it speaker modelling :p
 
synthpenguin said:
They just need Iridium v2 that is exactly the same except with better stock IRs lol. They can adding a soft clipping stage before the IRs and call it speaker modelling :p
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I think a V2 could also use a presence control for the Punch model as a secondary control. And a few higher gain models, which to be fair have never been Strymon's forte. The Riverside + Iridium does a pretty good high gain tone with the right IRs.
 
ejecta said:


Both most definitely can sound good or bad. :rofl
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Especially if you compare them poorly. Not using the same cab sims (which would mean 3rd party IR loader), not understanding the Strymon Drive knob.

Manual literally says:

Setting the DRIVE control at around 2 o’clock gets you the maximum gain the original Plexi design allowed. Turn the DRIVE beyond 2 o’clock to access custom hot-rodded Plexi highgain tones.

So yeah, just setting the knobs at the same direction just doesn't work. I don't really like the Strymon Punch model if the gain is turned too high, I think it sounds much better with gain max at about 2-3 o'clock and using a pedal to boost it further. With the Drive knob it gets too compressed and fizzy.
 
Mongillo19 said:


At the end he compares to the helix Plexi jumped. I preferred the helix, the lion sounded dull.
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Definitely sounded that way to a degree. I’ll still try one to compare on my own because it did not sound dull in other clips.
 
Mongillo19 said:
I thought volume 2 was the treble? But I haven't watched too much
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I'm 99% sure it matches the 4-hole Plexi controls where Vol. 1 is the High Treble input and Vol. 2 is the Normal (Bassy) one.
The conventional wisdom says to use higher Vol. 1 setting for the "main" sound and then bring in a little of Vol. 2 to thicken / warm things up. Too much Vol. 2 will be flub city.
 
hemmelight said:
I'm 99% sure it matches the 4-hole Plexi controls where Vol. 1 is the High Treble input and Vol. 2 is the Normal (Bassy) one.
The conventional wisdom says to use higher Vol. 1 setting for the "main" sound and then bring in a little of Vol. 2 to thicken / warm things up. Too much Vol. 2 will be flub city.
Click to expand...
Yes that's how it is on the pedal as well.

Turning vol 2 above halfway and treble below halfway does work just fine though. The Strymon Iridium uses what sounds very much like this setup and it's not flubby in the least. So of course I tried that setup on the Lion as well and it worked fine.
 
I sent mine back. I should have known. But, I tried it anyway. It does sound pretty good. Not as good as my Kemper Marshalls though.
Not even as good as my GE250 Captured Marshalls.

The app would not stay connected via bluetooth either. Such a great idea, but poorly executed by UA, which seems the norm
from what everyone says about their pedals.
 
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