#TweedTone: UAFX Woodrow vs NUX Sixty-Five For Stratocaster Tones

I’ve just finished writing up both my First Impressions of the NUX Sixty-Five and my look at Universal Audio’s UAFX Woodrow Tweed Deluxe amp simulator pedal. Seeing as both are on the board at the minute, I thought: why not get some Strat tones out of both, and see how they compare?

I think this is worth doing. As much as I love tweed tone, there might be times where something else is a better option for me. And clean-ish Strat tones just might be one of those times.

Read on to find out what I think (with audio demos!).

Table of Contents

• tl;dr
• What Are You Doing Today?
• My Rig Today
• How Does The Woodrow Sound?
• How Dos The NUX Sixty-Five Sound?
• Which Do I Prefer?
• How Do The Prices Compare?
• Final Thoughts

tl;dr

SOMETHING HERE

What Are You Doing Today?

I’m indulging my curiosity.

I want to look at how the UAFX Woodrow does for clean-ish Strat tones. Can it do this job, or should I be thinking about picking up the UAFX Dream 65 instead for this role?

Now, these UAFX amp simulator pedals aren’t cheap, and they can’t run off cheap power supplies either. The NUX Sixty-Five Overdrive definitely is a cheap pedal. Can it provide nice clean-ish Strat tones? Are they good enough to mean that there’s no real need to go and grab a Dream 65 in the future?

My Rig Today

Today, I’m playing:

• my USA Silver Sky (aka The Fox)
• into either:
  • the UAFX Woodrow Tweed Deluxe amp emulator, or
  • the NUX Sixty-Five Overdrive
• into my Axe-FX 3

and out into my DAW.

The Axe-FX 3 is providing the amp and speaker cab emulations for the Sixty-Five Overdrive. These are bypassed when I used the Woodrow.

The Axe-FX 3 is also proving the delay and reverb that you’ll hear on the audio demos below.

How Does The Woodrow Sound?

First up is the Woodrow:

When I was making the recording, I was worried that the Woodrow was lacking a bit of top-end. Listening back, I’m hearing the exact opposite. If anything, I think this would benefit from turning down the Woodrow’s tone control a bit!

I wish there was a little more low-end from the Woodrow. I’m not really able to add that on the pedal itself. Yes, I can turn up the Normal gain, but I find it becomes muddy and too overdriven if I do.

Other than that, I think it’s a great sound, with plenty of detail and expression. It’s also a Strat tone that’s a little different to what people are used to from the blackface Fender amps (and emulators like the UAFX Dream 65). At the very least, it provides a great option for clean-ish Strat tones.

How Dos The NUX Sixty-Five Sound?

The challenge with the NUX Sixty-Five is that it isn’t a straight-up Deluxe Reverb amp-in-a-box pedal. It’s chasing the tone of a Deluxe Reverb amp at specific settings. That limits my ability to chase those classic mid-scooped blackface amp tones.

On top of that, the speaker cab emulations in the Axe-FX 3 seem to have a lot more mids than the speaker emulation in the Woodrow. That’s also going to make it harder to chase blackface amp tones without post-processing. (I’ve chosen NOT to post-process here.)

Here’s my first attempt with the NUX Sixty-Five Overdrive:

Why share this with you? I want you to hear how the Sixty-Five Overdrive’s top-end can end up being a little too sharp and cutting at times. I’ve got this pedal dialled in for my Les Paul and my Telecaster. Even the neck pickup on my Silver Sky is too bright for this setting.

In my experience, the best way to adjust the top-end on the Sixty-Five Overdrive is to take a screwdriver and adjust the trim pot that’s on the top of the pedal. That’s not a practical thing to do at a gig if you’re swapping guitars.

I’m also hearing some low-end boom going on too, towards the end of the demo. The NUX Sixty-Five is basically a Timmy, and the bass control comes before the overdrive circuit. If I turn the bass control down, I end up changing the character of the overdrive. I happen to really like the overdrive that I’m hearing.

So instead, I’ve gone back and tweaked the amp controls on the Axe-FX 3 to tame both the high-end sharpness and the low-end build up. Here is the tone that I settled on:

I think that’s much better. The top-end is no longer taking my head off, and there’s still plenty of detail and character in the tone.

With more time, I’d adjust the speaker emulation on the Axe-FX 3 to dial out that low-end boom completely. It’s not that noticeable when playing.

Which Do I Prefer?

I’m leaning towards the sound of the NUX Sixty-Five Overdrive … but I can’t help but notice that I do keep going back and playing through the Woodrow too.

I prefer the Sixty-Five Overdrive because I’m able to get a bigger sound from it. It’s thicker, fatter, and filling the mid-range very nicely indeed. Might be a little much for a busy mix? If so, I’m sure it can be adjusted to fit.

Got to say, though, that I think the Woodrow sounds great too. I suspect that the Woodrow is giving me a more mix-ready tone than I’ve dialled in for the NUX. Might have to put that to the test before too long!

How Do The Prices Compare?

At the time of writing, the UAFX Woodrow + Friedman Power Grid 10 power supply retails for £608 in the UK. You might be able to find the Woodrow cheaper (I’ve seen retailers offer it in sales), and you might be able to find a cheaper power supply that will do the job.

The NUX Sixty Five Overdrive + Horseman together retails for £110 in the UK. You might be able to get the Horseman cheaper on the second hand market. The Sixty Five Overdrive is very new; I haven’t seen those turn up on eBay yet.

That’s £608 vs £110. It might appear that the NUX pedals are the way to go. But that only tells part of the story. If you want to record them at home, you need a way to get the sound into your DAW.

• With the Woodrow, all you need is an audio interface, because it’s a complete amp simulation. There’s no extra cost at all.
• With the NUX pedals, you also need an amp of some kind, or a suitable amp plugin for your DAW. If you’re using a real amp, you probably also need extra equipment (like a Two Notes Captor X) to get the signal into your DAW.

So, depending on what you want to do and what equipment you already have, the Woodrow might still be cost-effective for you.

Final Thoughts

This started out as a bit of fun, while I had both pedals on my pedalboard for other blog posts. But you know what? I think I’m leaving this little experiment with two very interesting and very useable Strat tones.

And that seems like time very well spent.