The block-logo Peavey 5150 was the workhorse for an entire generation of musicians. You could always spot one at hard-core, metal, punk, or even rock and roll shows back in the day. They re-defined what high-gain tones were.
If you ever played through one of them, you’ll know there’s a virtually endless amount of gain coming up from the depth of Mount Doom. Also, you’ll know it’s a powerful 120-watt beast capable of rocking any room.
Well, fitting that iconic amplifier designed by one of the greatest guitar players to ever live, Mr. Eddie Van Halen, into a box the size of your palm is not an easy task.
This is the fifth time Universal Audio has attempted to capture timeless tones into a well-made, awesome-sounding, reliable, and easy-to-use pedal.
Four of them have been a groundbreaking success, but what about this one?
Hang on to your chair because this thing is loud, menacing, and proud.
Table of Contents
What is the Universal Audio ANTI 1992?
(Check Current Price: Sweetwater | Amazon)
The UAD ANTI 1992 is an amp modeler that recreates the crushing tone of one of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s most iconic high-gain amps, the Peavey 5150.
This means that you can use the UAD ANTI to go into a regular amp, a power amp, or straight into your PA system or audio interface.
But beyond the technicalities, this pedal is the closest you can get to unleashing hell. It really is an endless source of heavy tones, and it does what it should do, chug, scream, and kick.
Just like the amp it’s modeled after, the UAD ANTI 1992 isn’t for the faint of heart, and works more like a single-trick pony than a platform to build your tone over. Yes, until now, the UAD collection of amps was based on the classic, timeless tones that you can use to build your tone over.
Amps like the VOX AC-30, the Deluxe Reverb, the ’55 Fender tweed combo, or the ’68 Marshall Plexi are some of the most sought-after, replicated, and played amps in rock history.
Yet, none of them offers a solution to those playing metal or seeking high-gain tones. This is truly a one-stop solution to play heavy music if you don’t need too much of a clean tone.
Just like the 5150 head was a take-no-prisoner approach to heavy tones, the ANTI 1992 is a similar one-trick pony kind of platform. Also, just like the 5150, the one thing it does, it does it amazingly well.
I had so much fun playing through this thing, it’s one of those pieces of gear you just don’t want to turn off. It had me entertained for hours and I was able to get all kinds of heavy, nasty, great tones out of it.
Connections and Controls
Stereo In & Stereo Out
Just like all the other pedals in this collection, the ANTI 1992 is stereo in and stereo out.
This means you can use it as the last piece of your signal chain and come in and out with a truly stereo signal. This is great for playing straight into the front of house because then the sound engineer can split your signal left and right.
Also, it works if you want to use this pedal with no cabinet emulation to go into an amplifier. Although you can do that, using the ANTI 1992 as a distortion pedal is like jumping on a Ferrari to drive your grandma around at 15 mph.
USB Type-C
The other input (besides the obvious power) is for a USB Type-C cable to connect the pedal and load or save presets, update firmware, and also use the other functionalities of the app (more on that in a couple of paragraphs).
On-Board Controls
The pedal offers six knobs that are very similar to what you’d find on any metal head. These are gain (called pre-gain here), presence, output, low, mid, and high.
As you might expect, the pre-gain adjusts the gain level. Depending on the channel you’re in, this control is very responsive and can change drastically from almost clean tones to face-melting, chugging-ready sounds.
I never had it post-noon, because just like the original amp, it’s too much.
The presence control gives your tone a little more brightness and helps a lot when playing with the rhythm channel (more on that in a bit). The output level, as you would expect, is the overall volume knob for the entire pedal.
Below that row of knobs, you have the three-band EQ which works wonders to get that old-school menacing scooped-out sound. It can also be great to dial in a piercing, high-gain, edgy sound to play soaring leads on a maple-neck guitar.
And boy my maple neck Ibanez RG550 screamed with that tone dialed in.
Besides the knobs, you also have three selector switches covering cabinet types, channel selection, and a center one to access more controls or store your current tone as a preset.
More Features in the Alt Mode
Before going into the Alt mode, let me tell you that you can get a plethora of usable sounds without knowing or touching any of what comes ahead. The knobs are enough to get the quintessential block-logo sound.
That said, the fine-tuning layers this pedal offers are uncanny in the market.
The Alt mode, accessed from the center toggle switch, unlocks another layer of controls that are very useful to tweak the sound further.
The gain knob (first of the top row) transforms into a “resonance” control. What it does is add some low end to the overall sound but differently than the bass control in the EQ. It’s like turning the bass up before it hits the preamp because it builds it with a different timbre, a different flavor of low. It can be described, in my opinion, as a heavier low-end, if that makes sense.
The middle knob controls the gate’s threshold allowing you to go from a mild setting to full-on choppy sounds to play insanely gainy settings with zero noise between your notes.
The lower three controls turn into the three controls you would expect in a Tube Screamer. Yes, this pedal also has a TS-style overdrive built into it. Any self-respecting, chug-praising, metal guitarist knows a Tube Screamer tightens up the low end and propels the guitar forward. It’s the secret sauce on most metal tones.
Even More Features with the App
Did you think two layers of controls were more than enough? Well, think again, because this is a UAD product, this is the big leagues.
Yes, this pedal has Bluetooth connectivity and can pair with a very responsive, streamlined app available for free for Android and iOS.
First off, you’re greeted by a myriad of presets. You have some user slots to save yours, a generous number of factory presets, and presets created by artists the size of Jeff Loomis.
Once you hit the edit button on one of the presets, new options load up.
- Overdrive – You can choose between the classic TS and a TC overdrive, which sounds a little tighter, and more aggressive.
- Bright Switch – This is great for the rhythm channel but virtually unusable for crunch and lead tones. It does add another layer of high-end to your tone.
- Noise Gate – Here you can access the full noise gate controls for threshold, attack, release, attenuation, and hold.
- Input Routing – The traditional block-logo 5150 had high and low inputs. As a rule of thumb, if you’re running a scorching hot guitar, go into the low input, otherwise go for the high option.
- Rhythm Mode – The so-called clean channel of the amp allows you to choose between clean, punch, and punch+. These options go from clean to pushed.
- Bias Mode – The bias in a tube amp controls how much current valves get and decides their behavior. You can pick from cool, warm, cool choke, and warm choke. This is not so much a tonal thing, but it affects mostly the way the pedal reacts to your picking hand.
- Post-Gain – Tube amps have two stages, the preamp, and the power amp. When you push the power amp section, power tubes tend to saturate. Well, this will give the pedal a push of volume and make the low-end bigger and more compressed as well.
- Room – This option allows you to dial how much of the room the amplifier was captured at ends up into your resulting tone. It adds a little naturality to the sound and helps in not missing the sound of a live amp so much.
There’s another cool feature in the app that allows you to choose what the pedal’s dual footswitches do and even what colors they’ll turn while doing so.
My favorite combination was toggling the overdrive on and off with the left switch and changing between presets with the right footswitch.
A 3-Channel Pedal?
This is, perhaps, the only drawback I could find in this pedal. The three channels aren’t just voiced very differently, they’re also different stages of gain; it gets closer to molting lava as you get closer to the lead channel.
When you save a preset that you want to recall from the preset footswitch, it can only be in the channel you’re currently playing. So, you can’t recall a rhythm preset and a lead preset with the press of a button, it also requires the flick of a switch.
So, although it’s a great, super-tweakable, studio-ready high-gain machine, it’s somewhat limited in that sense for a live situation.
Available Cabinets
The unit offers six cabinets from the factory. You can select them by flicking the cab switch and moving from the three red options to the three green options or turning it off in the seventh position.
The red cabinets are:
- UK V30 – 4×12 with UK-made Celestion Vintage 30s
- CA V30 – 4×12 with California-made Celestion Vintage 30s
- WHITE 75 – 4×12 with Celestion 75s
The green cabinets are:
- D65 – 2×12 with Celestion vintage G12-65s
- SUPER 80 – 4×12 with Celestion Super 80s
- BROWN JB – 4×12 with JBL Speakers
This is, perhaps, the most dramatic change in sound after the channel switching. Just make sure you play with the knobs and these options until you find the one that suits you the best. Beware though, it’s not only a tone thing but also it changes the pedal feel-wise, like a real cabinet would.
I have to say my favorite was the CA V30 setting, by far.
Noise Gate
The unit has a real, high-grade built-in noise gate that you can control from the pedal and from the app.
At first, reading about it, I thought it was kind of a useless approach for a pedal, but it can get seriously noisy if you push the gain. Therefore, it’s a must.
This noise gate not only works musically, but you can also fine-tune it from the app to fit any scenario.
Trying Out Some Sounds
Did you think I was going to just nerd about it without having some fun plugging this beast? Well, think again because this was a hell of a ride. It’s painted Ferrari red for a reason, you know?
To begin the test, I pulled out my Ibanez Studio, a double-humbucker guitar made in 1981 with the hottest pickups I’ve ever played through. As soon as I plug it in, I usually turn everything off.
Well, these two pieces of equipment made quite a pair because as soon as I dialed in some more resonance and took some of the mids out, the riffs to any Pantera, Metallica, and Slipknot songs sounded heavy and real.
I’m talking about the windows vibrating from the chugging sound.
Yet, the best way to play through this pedal, in my opinion, is with a maple-neck super Strat. My Ibanez RG550 was at its happiest plugged into this thing.
There’s nastiness and nasal dirt to maple necks you just can’t get with rosewood. That’s exactly what this pedal (and parent amp) was designed for.
Suddenly, the entire rig felt sharper, more aggressive, I felt as if I could rip the fabric of the world apart.
Engaging the TS boost can take you into solo territory easily if you set the volume of the pedal a little higher than noon. It also compresses the overall sound more and gives you a perfect tone to shred or chug at will.
Yes, I normally start the other way around, but I left the clean sounds for the last and I have to say I was very impressed, especially dialing the volume back on my guitar and setting the rhythm channel to the clean setting.
With the channel in punch mode, you can get some decent rock and roll tones as well. That was especially true when I plugged a guitar with single-coil pickups into this amp.
That said, I don’t think anybody reading this would want this pedal for the clean sounds (UAD covered that with the Dream ’65 already), so it’s not a deal-breaker.
UAD ANTI 1992 Verdict
I would definitely use this pedal to play shows, make recordings, and have fun playing along with my heroes late at night before going to bed.
The sounds are real, versatile, and usable in a variety of scenarios. That said, buying this pedal for playing anything other than metal is to take a Shelby Mustang to a rally race in the mud.
It was made for being outstanding at face-melting tones and it does just that perfectly well.
Yes, friends, UAD did it again, the fifth groundbreaking success in a row. Happy chugging, I mean playing!
UAD UAFX ANTI 1992 – Check Price on Sweetwater | Amazon.
I am wanting to try the 68 and the Mesa rectifier model as well. I think the Marshall with the EVH setting would be my fav though of all of these modelers they make ..Regards..
Tim….