Guitarists probably love to argue about gear more than engineers do and while some will call out the Bluesbreaker and others will insist that it was the JCM800 which put Marshall where they are as the rock and rollest of all guitar amplifiers, we think it is the Plexi Super Lead from 1959 which put them there. We like: Using it as a Unison Preamp with a clean mic like a TLM103 to get some flavour We think that if this plugin’s originator was good enough for the Beach boys then today’s incarnation is good enough for us.

The two band shelving EQ offers +/-9dB at three frequencies each and while that sounds restrictive its actually rather liberating to have just the two bands to get done what you need to get done. Perfect for satisfyingly splatty snares or putting a little fur on basses. The provision of an output trim which goes all the way down to minus infinity means that you can drive this virtual valve circuit as hard as you like and balance the gain within the plugin. It’s the perfect opportunity to explore Unison technology - UA’s clever hardware/software integration which changes the impedance presented by the mic preamp to match that of the hardware being emulated. If you want rigorously vintage then that is available in this plugin’s sibling the 610-A but this modern variant keeps the old fashioned approach but with just a little more on offer.

This unashamedly old-school Unison-enabled valve preamp’s strength is in its simplicity. Here’s a breakdown of what you get: UA 610 B Everything needs to start working while you try to ignore the UAD plugins store… In spite of the improvement in the performance of computers since then, given the choice everyone would prefer to just forget about latency, wouldn’t they? The range of interfaces may have expanded but as well as offering a platform on which to run your purchases of those oh-so-tempting UAD plugins it’s important to remember that whether you buy a Solo or an Apollo x8p, you get a core library of plugins focusing largely on classic vintage hardware and covering all bases from Compressors and EQ through to guitar amplifiers and reverbs. The ability to track and mix with extremely low latency is as liberating today as it was then. The bundling of UA’s DSP into an interface seems unremarkable today but at the time I remember thinking it inspired. The Apollo interfaces from Universal Audio have proved extremely popular since the release of the first Apollo back in 2012. In this article, we are going to look at the plugins which are bundled free when you buy a Universal Audio Apollo.

Uad plugins free