Strymon Iridium

[OffsetUsername]

It has to do more with the responsiveness of the amp than the pickups. I’ve made the pilgrimage to the 120 because a lot of my heroes used it. While I really like the amp for its flatter response for some applications, it just doesn’t respond to dynamics quite like my AC15s/30s. The iridium reminded me of that.

Ah fair enough, I may have to give the Iridium a chance then and see how it fares. Thanks for all the insight, hope it continues to work well for you.

[gregrus]

Wow. Really great sound.

[algeriet]

Here's a shitty recording of me practicing for that synth and drum machine and direct Iridium show with it. That's Round setting on the first IR setting. No room, mids dimed, bass at noon, treble at 2pm, gain at 1 o'clock, punched at times with my Upstate Analog Rat (he made it weird so it's not exact Rat) and El Capistan. JM with Pickup Wizard P90 as well.
https://soundcloud.com/greatunwashedlum ... al-1-18-20

Fun listening to yer music. And the guitar sounds great too.

[redchapterjubilee]

Thank you!

[Firecat]

I have a baby daughter and I get to play guitar mostly while she's asleep, so I don't get to fire up the amps very often at home. I got a Strymon Iridium recently and so far I'm very impressed. My favorite settings are the Round amp with cab A and the Chime amp with cab C. I haven't recorded with it yet, but there doesn't seem to be a bad sound in it.

The headphones output on the Iridium is a total winner and in my case that feature alone is already worth it. I wanted a headphones solution without needing a computer. Playing through headphones with the Iridium sounds really really good, even with distortion pedals. I used the headphones output of a Yamaha THR-5 or an Orange Micro Terror before having the Iridium, but always found them sounding pretty meh, especially with gain pedals.

I also have a Harley Benton (= Joyo) American Sound, so here's my comparison if anyone's interested:

With the drive knob set off or very low on both pedals, the american sound sounds quite similar to the Iridium on the Round setting. The Iridium has a lot more clean headroom though, which I like, and better dynamic response. Iridium also sounds better on medium/high gain settings and the 'room' control is a great feature that the american sound doesn't have. The Iridium takes gain pedals better. They sound smoother, less harsh through the Iridium compared to the American Sound, which can get a bit fizzy if you push it hard. I think the Iridium responds more like a real amp in general. It's probably because of better cab simulation and the room control. You won't hear me say anything bad about the American Sound though. I think it's amazing and a no brainer at that price point.

I actually don't find them very comparable. There's just one comparable setting if you keep the drive low on both and use the Round amp on the Iridium. I'd say that specific setting is 90% as good on the American Sound, especially for clean sounds. If that's the only setting you'll ever use and you're happy with how it sounds with drive pedals, I wouldn't bother getting the Iridium. The Iridium does much more than the American Sound of course. The American Sound on the other hand also doubles as a pretty decent overdrive pedal through an amp, which the Iridium doesn't do.

Personally, I'm keeping the Iridium at home to play silently and record and the american sound as a back-up in my gig bag if my amp ever goes down at a gig.

[mackerelmint]

I just got an american sound pedal. The Caline one, which is the exact same pedal with some hilarious designy US flag graphics on it. It should be here in a few days, it's coming from Canada apparently.

I really like the way that preamp/DI pedals are gaining traction. It's been my approach for years and it's nice to have more options. I'm gonna get the Vox and Marshall cheapo pedals, too. Maybe someone will clone a Leeds... I have one, but I'd take two if I could.

[somanytoys]

Maybe someone will clone a Leeds... I have one, but I'd take two if I could.

That’s the spirit! (Just kidding, no I’m not...)

That’s probably a really good idea, since you change the pedal, you change the amp. Let us know what you think of them.

I bought one of those Caline reverb pedals for an ex-girlfriend a while back. I spent some time with it before I gave it to her, and I thought it was pretty impressive for the price (I paid 25 Ameros used but in perfect shape). It isn’t incredible and it doesn’t do a whole lot, but it can do 2-3 sounds pretty well.

[mackerelmint]

I've been so impressed with those crappy clones of the Tech21 character pedals that I'm amazed it's taken me this long to get one.

I keep hoping that quilter or someone will make a better class D power amp than the one I have, but you know what? You can get the amps themselves for cheap from China. So maybe I'll just get a nice enclosure and put two 75w@8ohms amps in there and give it a master volume and a basic EQ per side. Then I can just run it into a pair of 112s and with the preamp pedals and my zoom cdr, I've got all the amp and effectss I'll ever want, in stereo.

I dunno.

[somanytoys]

I have 2-channel stereo poweramps, QSC and Crown, for my bass rigs. I’ve never tried any of them with a guitar preamp into a guitar cab, but that’s interesting, maybe I should. On second thought no, they’re pretty high wattage, 2 or 300 per channel to something ridiculous bridged, but they’re full spectrum and have built in shelving for treble and/or bass. I’ll just use them for bass so I don’t trash any speakers.

I think what you’re talking about would be really cool, it’s a great idea. Have you talked yourself into it yet?!?

[mackerelmint]

I have 2-channel stereo poweramps, QSC and Crown, for my bass rigs. I’ve never tried any of them with a guitar preamp into a guitar cab, but that’s interesting, maybe I should. On second thought no, they’re pretty high wattage, 2 or 300 per channel to something ridiculous bridged, but they’re full spectrum and have built in shelving for treble and/or bass. I’ll just use them for bass so I don’t trash any speakers.

I think what you’re talking about would be really cool, it’s a great idea. Have you talked yourself into it yet?!?

Not just yet. I'm kinda leisurely poking around at what kind of class D amps are out there at this point. But I'm pretty sure that a compact, relatively low wattage stereo power amp is niche enough that I'm gonna have to T-rex this shit and make it happen if I want one. It only recently dawned on me that the hard work has already been done, and cheaply, and that I could probably cobble together exactly what I want for under a hundred bucks.

[Singlebladepickup]

I tried Iridium direct into my mixer through monitors recently and was sort of underwhelmed. The round settings sounded nowhere near as good as my SFPR played direct through Weber Mass Lite using the same mixer and speakers. Maybe with some EQ work it could get there, sounded much better through headphones.

[mackerelmint]

I'm looking at these.

A pair of mono class D power amp boards. There are all kinds of tone stacks and stuff you can get, but that's all for setting it up as a living room stereo. I'm sure I could find guitar amp tone stack schematics without issue and figure out how to wire those up with one power switch and one volume knob for both sides. I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner, this is a really cheap way to build a stereo/dual mono power amp for a guitar.

[somanytoys]

Damn, those seem like they would be great, and damn cheap, like $65 for both (maybe + some shipping?).

Is there not enough tone control with the preamp pedal(s)? Or is that why you’re saying you’re just going to do a power & volume switch for them? Only other things I can think of that could be useful is maybe a crossover to remove the low end, and an a/b switch to be able to cut the signal to one channel, to check the individual channels on the fly.

150 watts each, I assume you’d need to really watch the volume knob on them, unless you can attenuate them otherwise for speaker protection.

But yeah, that’s a really good idea, especially since you know what you’re doing, to house them and attach a control mechanism. That with the 3 or 4 different amp style preamp pedals you already have & were talking about getting, you have a slew of amps at your feet.

My favorite combo has been the Vox & Fender together. I like the Marshall sound, but that & Vox seem closer to each other so they don’t seem to cover as much ground together.

Haven’t really tried the Hiwatt (RAH) pedal with any other amps, but it’s also not really a preamp. So unless I boost the pedal’s signal up to line level (I could) and go into an amp’s effects loop, the sound will be flavored by the amp’s preamp. I need to pull that pedal out and play with it again.

[mackerelmint]

No, it's $30 the pair! The same vendor has the same type of thing at lower wattages, too. I have a 112 cab that has a tonker in it, which handles 150W. I want to get a second one and put a Wizard in it, which handles half of that. The speakers have different but complimentary EQ curves. The reason I'm interested in having an EQ per channel, though, is that I could scoop the mids in one side and boost them on the other, which really makes things sound huge. Though if I do that, I don't suppose there's any reason for me not to get another 150W tonker, huh? I came up with the idea for the wizard specifically because it would kinda do that without eqing and I could use it with my crate power block.

I suppose I could just do the 150W boards and get another Tonker. I should do that. I dunno if I really "know what I'm doing", but at least the heavy lifting is done so presumably I could get away with just adding the ins and outs and power/volume. I see a lot of EQ modules, but the ones I've looked at so far are stereo rather than the mono that I'd want. I'll probably have to find a guitar amp tone stack schematic (not hard to do) and build a couple.

Hey, look at that. I've got another project, and I already have so many unfinished ones!

[somanytoys]

Damn! That’s even better, really cheap. More money to use for preamps/pedals and speakers!

The different speaker sounds like it would be a good idea ( to me), if you’re going to go for different styles of preamps & pedals. It seems like each speaker would favor the tone of one or the other preamp more. With different preamps and possibly different eq settings, that seems like it would cover a lot more range.

I know what you mean about the projects. I stopped working on the reverb unit I’ve been trying to build after I hit a setback. And now I’m trying to figure out how best to cut the pieces of the tolex for a speaker cab I bought & stained, so that I will waste as little of the tolex as possible. The Tetris-ing is the most tedious boring part right now (so far), but I’m about to tackle it because I’m ready to get it done & loaded.

I hope thinking about all of this gets you jazzed to get this one going, it sounds like it’s going to be very cool and not cost you much at all.