Yamaha UD-Stomp - any experience with this?

revsorg

I learnt about the Yamaha UD Stomp for the first time last night.  One of those FX units that appeared and disappeared without me noticing it.  The connection with Allan Holdsworth.

Apparently "...there is no pedal that can reproduce, or come near the sound of the UD's modulation".  This seems odd to me - I would have thought that if there's something amazing that it could do that someone would have digitally emulated it by now?

I just wondered whether anyone has any experience of this unit?  What it was like?  I'm mostly interested in what it could sound like.

guitarmangler

It's mental . Basically 8 separate delays in one box, with the ability to have them running in any combo of series or parallel. It's all digital, and I would suspect you can emulate the signal path with an axefx or helix. Or several plugins on a computer.
It sounds amazing, big huge keyboard pad like sounds . Has a really nice preamp sound, definitely best in front of an amp. Nightmare to program. I own two , and love them. A cheaper way of getting that sound is a Yamaha magic stomp.

revsorg

In the interests of science could you record some examples? 

Heartfeltdawn

revsorg said:

In the interests of science could you record some examples? 

Already did. Every preset played through. No amp, direct into the PC.

TimmyO

Paging @Sporky  - he turned me on to these years ago and I had one for a long time. 

8 identical delays that can be combined in series or parallel to achieve combinations of delay, chorus and other modulation effects. 

Sporky

I still have one - I should check it works.

Marvellous bit of kit; so, so hard to programme but there was an unofficial PC editor that made it much simpler.

For "just" 8 modulated delays there are some astounding sounds that can be conjured from it. One of the presets is an amazing modulated reverb, and you can do through-zero flanging and more. Stunningly good, stunningly complex.

They were daft money originally, then sold off at a more sensible rate, but never cheap. Wonderful things. As guitarmangler says the MagicStomp can (in theory) reproduce any UD Stomp patch, but that must be even less fun to work with.

Heartfeltdawn

revsorg said:

I learnt about the Yamaha UD Stomp for the first time last night.  One of those FX units that appeared and disappeared without me noticing it.  The connection with Allan Holdsworth.

Apparently "...there is no pedal that can reproduce, or come near the sound of the UD's modulation".  This seems odd to me - I would have thought that if there's something amazing that it could do that someone would have digitally emulated it by now?

I just wondered whether anyone has any experience of this unit?  What it was like?  I'm mostly interested in what it could sound like.

It's a giant multitap delay system with 8 delay taps. Each tap can be tinkered with. Run them in series or parallel. Mess around with each tap's phase, modulation, delay time, panning, and so on. 

Complex? Yes. RTFM! It's worth it. Once you get your head around the Yamaha way of working, it's fairly easy really. 

I like the unit but I'd rather have an H9 with the UltraTap algo.