Strymon with a £700 reverb

[mordecainyc]

Can someone explain this pedal to me?.... cuz they already had the Big Sky. So they revamped it with a new display/interface and made it $200 more expensive? Is that it? or is like two big skies (dual dsp etc) in one pedal or something? What am I missing?

I think this video did it for me: Yuki the Synth Dragon This is with synths, though. For me the fact that the algorithms apparently sound much better than v1 is why I’m considering buying it. Sounds like a great box for studio use.

[sunburster]

Can someone explain this pedal to me?.... cuz they already had the Big Sky. So they revamped it with a new display/interface and made it $200 more expensive? Is that it? or is like two big skies (dual dsp etc) in one pedal or something? What am I missing?

You can run any two reverbs at once (in series, parallel, or split L/R), so it's like having two reverb pedals in one. It also contains all the original Big Sky algorithms and all new ones (+ the ensemble effect from the cloudburst pedal). And you can load IRs.

I am happy with my Big Sky and I don't use a lot of different patches, so this seems like overkill for me. But if you want to stack reverbs and save on pedalboard space this looks like a great option.

[OffYourFace]

Can someone explain this pedal to me?.... cuz they already had the Big Sky. So they revamped it with a new display/interface and made it $200 more expensive? Is that it? or is like two big skies (dual dsp etc) in one pedal or something? What am I missing?

I think this video did it for me: Yuki the Synth Dragon This is with synths, though. For me the fact that the algorithms apparently sound much better than v1 is why I’m considering buying it. Sounds like a great box for studio use.

I'd want it for my synths mainly. It's just so pricey

[OffYourFace]

You can run any two reverbs at once (in series, parallel, or split L/R), so it's like having two reverb pedals in one. It also contains all the original Big Sky algorithms and all new ones (+ the ensemble effect from the cloudburst pedal). And you can load IRs.

Ok that makes sense but I'm a bit surprised by the big price increase. Perhaps the processors are very expensive.

[OffYourFace]

ughhh it sounds so good. I guess selling $800 worth pedals that I'm not using will make it feel ok.

[mordecainyc]

ughhh it sounds so good. I guess selling $800 worth pedals that I'm not using will make it feel ok.

I’m in the exact same boat

[crazyzeke]

Personally I want and will eventually buy the weirdest, coolest sounding reverb I've come across and it's a tiny tiny little thing too...



I think I'd have about £615 change, maybe more maybe less depending on where I got it from.

I have to disagree with this now, as like with the Blue Sky there's a version two of this which is bigger and better :-


£130 from Thomann however a local(ish) guitar store has one on Reverb, I could collect so we'll see what they do with my offer (refuse it I expect, but it's been on for a month, has very few views and watchers, so maybe they'll do a "cut your losses" with it). Twice as many modes (14 not 7), more presets (I think), most importantly stereo out because that's basically required for anything downwind in the effects chain, dealing with mono only pedals is becoming a bit of a pain for me these days because it limits certain pedal order choices I'd make.

So yeah still struggling to see the value of a £700 reverb for anything other than kitting out a studio, and even then rack mount or plugin would make a lot more sense. As someone who stacks effects and loves Fender spring reverbs, the Mooer would doer fine.

[fuzzjunkie]

Yeah, £700 does seem like a lot for a pedal.

I’ve been around for a while though, and remember when you had 2 options for adding reverb to your guitar if spring reverb wasn’t enough: A Boss RV series pedal or a rack unit.

Alesis and a few other low end options eventually became available that cost less, but even in 1990 the Roland and Yamaha units were over £700. I still have a Roland DEP-5 ($895) and a Yamaha SPX-900 ($975).

For some more perspective; the studio reverb units from Eventide and Lexicon were 2-3x that amount and a plate reverb just isn’t practical outside of a recording studio.

It looks like Strymon is trying to put a studio quality reverb into pedal format? Compared to what was available in 1990, my Eventide Space already does that. Both of those modern options are better sounding and cheaper than what I had back then. But look at a modern Lexicon studio reverb and it will set you back almost $3k. I’ve never used one, but the Bricasti is supposedly the standard for state of the art studio reverberation. That’s $5k.

All of those are overkill for guitar reverb. This new Strymon is too. Nobody needs that much shimmer.

If you want to you could compare it to the 500 series Meris reverb. That’s $550 for half of what the Strymon does, so $1100 for two. Plus the 500 series power supply. That’s more in line with what this unit is. And the new Eventide. You can’t compare it to the little Boss and Behringer pedals. It’s in a completely different league.

[burpgun]

Eventide is the Android phone: I can do anything with this… if only I had a degree in engineering.

Strymon is the iPhone: ok, this I can sort of figure out. But it costs how much???

I'd suggest that Eventide is Linux and Strymon is MacOS
(or Windows 10? How well does strymon work? I know I've been frustrated by the secondary functions on their smaller pedals. Meris may be windows, since you need some ugly third party utility to get to the functional editing that should be built in from the start.)

I own a Meris Enzo and feel your pain. The thing's extremely unpleasant to program due to critical "alt" functions. Mine's off the board now and I should just sell it, although sometimes I'm not even sure if it's hard to program or straight up malfunctioning.

[cestlamort]

I own a Meris Enzo and feel your pain. The thing's extremely unpleasant to program due to critical "alt" functions. Mine's off the board now and I should just sell it, although sometimes I'm not even sure if it's hard to program or straight up malfunctioning.

Judging by my limited experience with a Polymoon, I wouldn't touch any of these again without have some sort of computer editor (this one looks decent: web based editor) but you'll need a special trs-midi box (like the Meris one or I think some disaster area ones work) and many editors remind me of a UI that I'd design (not a good thing!). In short: all feel like compromises and work arounds. The small Meris pedals UI feels like design bullying to me.

Back to the $700 reverb. I've paid that (inconceivable) price point for an Eventide H90 (well, a bit more actually, but would do so again in a heartbeat if anything happened to that pedal). I can't speak to the Strymon directly (and it only does one "thing", or two flavors of that thing with various routing options), but sometimes it may be worth thinking of effects like having a bunch of budget guitars: it's okay to sell 'em and consolidate the funds in something truly outstanding / inspiring / etc. (With that in mind, new and fancy isn't necessarily the most inspiring).

[OffYourFace]

All of those are overkill for guitar reverb. This new Strymon is too. Nobody needs that much shimmer.

That's the thing, it looks like a guitar pedal but it is a studio grade reverb. I would never put something like this on my pedalboard but it'll go on an Aux send on my home studio mixer for all my synths. Their Cloud reverb effect is a very interesting concept. If I understand it correctly, it's multiple tiny 'shards' of delay that create a dense spatial effect. Combining that with another reverb effect and impulse responses is pretty cool.

This is what people buy now. No more racks, just small computerized effect processors that you can take anywhere.

I currently use a Strymon Volante and an Eventide Space in my setup, both with midi for tempos, etc. It's enough but tbh I'm getting a little bored with the Space.

[RockStarNick]

I'm sure others have said the same thing, but I'm more excited by the form-factor update than the fact that this is a Reverb.

I'm hoping that they do a re-release of the Timeline with this big screen and new knob layout. even if the tones don't change.

The timeline has served me very well for almost a decade, but my biggest issue is ergonomics. I regular stomp the global knob w my toe, which will change the display from preset to BPM