_                   _     ___   ___ 
 _   _  __ _ _ __ ___   __ _| |__   __ _   _   _| |__ / _ \ / _ \
| | | |/ _` | '_ ` _ \ / _` | '_ \ / _` | | | | | '_ \ (_) | (_) |
| |_| | (_| | | | | | | (_| | | | | (_| | | |_| | |_) \__, |\__, |
 \__, |\__,_|_| |_| |_|\__,_|_| |_|\__,_|  \__,_|_.__/  /_/   /_/
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 _ __   ___  __| | __ _| |  _ __ _____   _(_) _____      __      
| '_ \ / _ \/ _` |/ _` | | | '__/ _ \ \ / / |/ _ \ \ /\ / /      
| |_) |  __/ (_| | (_| | | | | |  __/\ V /| |  __/\ V  V /       
| .__/ \___|\__,_|\__,_|_| |_|  \___| \_/ |_|\___| \_/\_/        
|_|                                                              

A review of the Yamaha UB-99 Magicstomp BASS amp simulator Fx box send in
by Ali Berger


A while back, maybe in 2007 or so, I was in high school and into playing
bass and wanted to get an effects pedal. My dad and I did a bunch of research
and came across the Yamaha Magicstomp series. There's not a lot of official
info available online these days: the Magicstomp had its own site,
www.magicstomp.com, which no longer exists, and there are manauls on the
Yamaha site but no actual product page. Google Trends shows some searches
for "Yamaha Magicstomp" being made as early as 2004 (that's as far back as
Google Trends goes) and "Yamaha Magicstomp II" starting in January 2005. So
it's from around that time.

Basically the Magicstomp is a very smartly-designed, versatile, powerful
digital guitar/bass FX box. Mono input with low/high level switch (for
instruments vs line level input), left and right outputs, a two-line
16-character LCD screen, 3 control knobs & "STORE" button under the
screen, 3 footswitches and a volume knob. There are 3 models--the UB-99
(for guitar), the UB-99A (for acoustic guitar), and the UB-99B (for bass).

As far as I can tell the only difference is what presets come on them and
the color of the casing. There are 99 factory presets and 99 user-editable
presets. Every preset has the 3 knobs assigned to 3 different parameters,
so there's some control already. But then it gets crazy...

By pressing STORE and then tapping the ON/OFF footswitch you can enter
"DEEP EDIT MODE" - this allows you to page through all the parameters of
a preset and modify them. Some of the effect types have 19 pages x 3
parameters per page = 57 parameters!! And you can change the effect type
for any preset as well--there are standards like distortion (which everyone
online says is bad on this pedal, they're mostly right but sometimes bad is
good), several types of phasers/flangers/choruses (inculding dynamic ones
which follow how loud your playing is, pretty cool), and then some wild
stuff--symphonic + reverb effects from expensive Yamaha rack units,
8-line multitap delay, amp simulation mega FX with 5 bands of parametric
EQ, and my favorite, a dual pitchshifting delay which sounds like Ableton's
Grain Delay. All this in a pedal that now costs like $150 on eBay. If you're
mostly a hardware person this is a cheap way to get yourself into some freaky
sounds outside of the standard stuff.

Bonus features include "NAME EDIT MODE" where you can name your patches
with capital & lowercase letters & special characters. Or hold down the ON/OFF
switch to activate the tuner mode, super handy if you have analog or modular
synths around--or if you're doing advanced maneuvers with a sampler. There's
also a software editor for it but it's not online anywhere now and I don't
have the CD that came with the pedal (maybe my dad does).

I can't recommend this thing enough, I've been using it steadily for 10 years,
from my funk bass days through to my current house/techno obsession. Pro tip,
it doesn't have a power switch, so make sure you unplug it when you're not
using it. Mine got too hot at some point and loosened the solder around the
power connector--luckily it's very easy to open up and resolder, I did it once
and haven't needed to since. Now go hit those auctions, and if you get one
with the CD please host the installer files somewhere!

                 _____    _____            _____
                 |   |    |   |            |   |
  _______________________________________________
/                                                 \
|  AC IN        L/MONO-OUTPUT-R            INPUT  |
|                                                 |
|                                                 |
|                                                 |
|     (|)  \  /  /\  |    |  /\  |   |  /\        |
|    (\|/)  \/  /  \ |\  /| /  \ |__ | /  \       |
|    (/|\)  ||  |--| | \/ | |--| |   | |--|       |
|     (n)   ||  |  | |    | |  | |   | |  |       |
|                                                 |
|       -----------------------------------       |
|       | < E D I T - P R M : 0 3 / 1 9 > |       |
|       |                                 |       |
|       | E   E Q 1 Q   E Q 2 F   E Q 2 G |       |
|       -----------------------------------       |
|          ___          ___          ___          |
|         /*  \        /  *\        /   \         |
|         |   |        |   |        |  *|         |
|         \___/        \___/        \___/         |
|                                                 |
|                      STORE-O                    |
|\                                               /|
| \-----                                   -----/ |
|    __ \                                 / __    |
|   /  \ \-------------------------------/ /  \   |
|   \__/                                   \__/   |
\                      ON/OFF                     /
 \   -                   __                  +   /
  \                     /  \                    /
   \                    \__/                   /
    \                                         /
     \_______________________________________/