UAFX Dream ‘65

[Alex Cattaneo]

Has anyone tried it with steel? It apparently breaks up early, but I’m wondering if the master volume can mitigate that, kinda like running a Quilter with the master dimed and the gain as low as possible. The speaker cabinet options feature an EV12 and a JBL D-120f, which should be nice for pedal steel.

[Justin Shaw]

I have not tried it but in my experience it is usually impossible to get a very clean sound out of a pedal that has a gain knob when using a pedal steel. The high output of the PSG's pickups is usually enough to drive the pedal.

Also, having tried a bunch of UAFX pedals I must say I've been pretty unimpressed with both the tone and the build quality. I couldn't believe how physically hot to the touch the Golden Reverberator reverb pedal got after an hour of playing.

[Alex Cattaneo]

Interesting. Their fx pedals are not really in my radar for some reason. But I might get the Dream 65 anyway for guitar duties. For pedal steel, I always ended up with a Quilter one way or another.

[Ron Forrest]

I have two of these on my guitar pedal board and love them. The trick to the pedal is running it in four cable mode and patching it through your amps effects loop. In this mode, when you turn the pedal on the preamp in your amplifier is bypassed and the pedal only uses the power amp section of your amp. You are able to retaining crystal clean sounds at high volume this way. I have tried it with my steel and it holds up well and really acts like and behaves like a Fender amp. With that said i don't think there are many Fender amps that don't break up at mid to high volumes. Even the 135 Watt Twin will breakup with a steel. Overall its a great pedal!!

[Alex Cattaneo]

Thanks Ron! Have you tried it in an ampless setup, with in-ear monitors, or recording straight from the pedal? And why do you have two? One for steel and one for guitar?

[Andy Vance]

IIRC, Jim Cohen uses one for all of his fly dates for both tele/steel, he may be able to give you some insight/feedback. I tried one and didn't care for it so I sent it back.

[Mitchell Smithey]

I have one and it works just fine, no problem getting clean sounds. I use it it for all my church gigs now and at home in my studio. Somehow it feels like you are playing through a real amp.

[Jim Cohen]

IIRC, Jim Cohen uses one for all of his fly dates for both tele/steel, he may be able to give you some insight/feedback. I tried one and didn't care for it so I sent it back.

Yes, I have been using one for all of my fly dates for both Tele & Steel and have been very happy with the results. I have not found the steel guitar pickups that I use to overdrive the amp and as far as I can tell, the sound is clean. Now this might not be the case if you’re using it to drive speakers in a club setting, but these are theater gigs for me and the output goes to a DI and then to the board. I get the signal back in the wedge. I’m about to convert to using IEM’s, however, so I have not yet tried it with them.

[Justin Shaw]

This is all good to hear I might have to check it out sometime too.

[Ron Forrest]

Alex,

I have used the pedal in the studio with out an amp and just leveraged the internal speaker sims. It sounds great for steel and guitar both. In my opinion its is about as close as you can get to a 65 Deluxe without forking out 3-4k for an original Fender. [/quote]

[Carey Hofer]

I have the Dream on my pedal board and run it directly to FOH-no amp, just in ears or headphones. Signal chain is: guitar, pedalboard, '65 Dream, direct box, PA system. It's the best sound I have gotten through a PA including real Fender tube amps, for a lot of years. I have only recently felt like I could start using a preamp pedal (starting with the Iridium) without an amp. Since the Dream has a pre set plus a live setting, You could use the pre set for guitar and the live setting for steel. It works great with my pedals (including overdrives) also.

Of course it goes without saying that you already need to like the sound of a Fender Deluxe Reverb, which I do. I originally had a Strymon Iridium but now use the '65 Dream. I thought the Iridium sounded more like the normal channel of a Deluxe Reverb. Only thing I noticed about thr Dream is that it can be a little bright with single coils but then so do Deluxe Reverbs.

I have also listened to recordings of the band numerous times and thought the Dream sounded great.

[Matthew Tierney]

I’ve been using the dream 65 with my keyboard+pedalsteel+lapsteel rig for about 6 months now. Loving it for live and studio use.

GFI ultra p-steel e9 into the “live” channelon the dream with a small tweak of the factory preset called Jerry’s Twins gives a great slightly broken up clean tone that suits my needs perfect for pedal steel (country and some Americana stuff). Feels amazing and sounds great through my keyboard amp (motion sound kp612s in stereo)

Asher electro Hawaiian jr into the preset channel with more grit gives me any of the delta and distorted sounds I need for playing blues and rock. (Again through my keyboard amp)

i sometimes run my Hammond skx pro’s Rhodes/wurli or the real deal of either or key scape’s amazing sims through the dream in the studio and it really brings keys to life as well while still having silent recording ability.

Overall - I think it’s a great pedal and can do so many things really well. I was hoping that they would come out with an early 70’s twin reverb pedal but after getting used to the dream I can get pretty close! Keep the “volume” down really low, crank the output and you get that twin sound. Start with “Jerry’s twins” preset and tweak to your liking from there

[George Seymour]

Thanks Ron! Have you tried it in an ampless setup, with in-ear monitors, or recording straight from the pedal? And why do you have two? One for steel and one for guitar?

Alex, not to rob the thread… just get a Quad Cortex… so many options.. will take up to four instruments.. got every thing