David Gilmour’s Univox Uni-Vibe

This pedal was used by David in the 70s. It’s hard to find any direct information from David regarding which songs he used this guitar specifically. so all the info there is on this comes from people trying to guess.

He almost certainly used it on “Breathe” and “Time” both from Pink Floyd’s 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon.

The Uni-Vibe pedal was developed in the mid-1960s by a Japanese audio engineer Fumio Mieda sometime in the mid-1960s, as an attempt to emulate the sound of a rotating Leslie speaker. The pedal was initially designed to work with organs, but a lot of guitar players became interested in using it, including Jimi Hendrix, and of course, David Gilmour.

Rack Unit

Towards mid-70s David had one of these units built into his rack system, according to his guitar tech Phil Taylor.

You remember the old Univox Uni-Vibes? I had one built into a rack system. We even had the old logo embossed on the face plate. We also have an old MXR DDL digital delay unit built into a rack unit. It has a digital readout, but it’s really nowhere close to being accurate. Dave likes it because even though it’s a digital unit, it still sounds a little dirty, like a tape unit.

Phil Taylor, Welcome To The Machines, A look behind David Gilmour’s mighty wall of sound

It seems that David stopped using this pedal around 1977 when he switched to a Pete Cornish custom-made pedal board.

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1 Comments
  • Author Avatar Alessandro

    David’s lead sounds are almost always modulated and “liquid” sounding. David first created this sound in the ’70s with rotary cabinets like “Leslie” cabinets, then began using a Uni-Vibe, a phaser, then a flanger, then a chorus, but all the effects served the same purpose: adding a light, modulated, swirling sound to create space and depth to the sound. One of his most used modulation effects, besides rotary cabinets, was the Boss CE-2 chorus. It’s a very rich, warm-sounding modulation. David had a dedicated amplifier for the CE-2 in his Division Bell/Pulse setup, so it wasn’t 100% in the mix. The CE-2 was used on almost all the tracks on Pulse, especially his Big Muff solos. On some tracks, David also used an MXR Phase 90 and a Univox Uni-Vibe. The Uni-Vibe simulated the swirling sound of a Leslie-type rotary cabinet, while the Phase 90 created a phase effect that oscillated across the timbre. Much of David’s modulated sound, both in the studio and on stage, came from his Leslie-type rotary cabinets such as the Rover, Yamaha RA-200, and Doppolas. In 2006, Gilmour switched to a simpler tone, with very little modulation.

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