Strymon
Smallest BigSky ever Released by Strymon – BigSky Keychain
Strymon released BigSky as a Keychain for $6.00 USD (cheapest shipping to Germany was $15.54). I wait for an eBay listing of those to show up. So watch out for any cheap BigSky and control your instinct to press buy now before checking what you really obtain.
Review
Strymon Sunset – Review & Sound Demo
Strymon Sunset – Review & Sound Demo
Beginning with a quick overview and discussion about the unit, followed by a quick tour of the main features and a minimal to no talking sound demo of the presets to finish and let you come to your own conclusions.
HANDY ALGORITHM CHART
A BANK
Ge – A circuit combining the softer response of Germanium diodes with a parallel path that blends in the dry signal as the Drive is lowered.
texas – A single stage soft clipper configuration that is filtered before and after the gain stage.
treble – A clean boost that removes the low frequencies as the Tone knob is turned up.
B BANK 2stage
The 2stage overdrive combines a soft clipping stage followed by a hard-clipping stage.
hard – A single-stage hard clipping circuit that has a ton of gain.
JFET – A clean boost that subtly beefs up your signal with the dynamics and response of a JFET front end.
The Sunset Strymon is a premium, top-class Dual Overdrive pedal with a ton of options and a fun and easy-to-use interface/layout.
If you’re a producer or recording artist, this pedal will save you a bunch of time messing around in the box with digital distortions and help you get your overdrive tones sounding natural and right at the source.
If you’re a guitarist then this will also open you up to a world of overdrive tone options that you may not have tried before.
- TONE OPTIONS, TONE OPTIONS, TONE OPTIONS
As mentioned in the video today, this dual overdrive has some SERIOUS tone options for someone looking to get into the world of overdrive.
Whether it’s for a more classic 70’s guitar overdrive type tone or a bunch of multi-staged overdrive and distortion units to dirty up your synth lines.
With the ability to use the A and B channels’ sets of 3 algorithms in parallel or feeding into each other, it’s a fantastically versatile distortion unit to keep you tweaking, finding new and unique sounds and generally experimenting for years to come!
- COMPACT WITH A GREAT SOUND
Even with so many options it’s laid out very intuitively allowing you to dive in and get tweaking from the day of unboxing. With a more clean and subtle set of distortions on the A bank side and more hard clipping and aggressive on the B bank side, you can have fun experimenting with these and the routing options to create unique tones in no time.
In addition, despite taking up a little more space on your pedalboard or pedal rack it’s surprisingly very light in weight.
- MORE HEAVY DISTORTION WOULD BE WELCOME…
While I’m a big fan of the A bank on this unit and the subtle tones that it can bring that would be VERY difficult to achieve in the box or with digital equipment, the B side is a little lacking for me in terms of any super heavy or industrial kind of distortion tones.
It would be nice to have a ‘Heavier’ version of this unit as the with some much more distorted tones to play with! (Of course you can use the Sunset in conjunction with a Fuzz or Metal Distortion pedal to achieve this but it would be nice to have an ‘All-In-One’ product/pedal.)
In Conclusion
While a little pricey in comparison to other pedals, it offers so much in terms of variety and control of your overdrive sound quickly, with ease, and most of all, with a great tone and sound!
While we’ve been focusing on the tone aspect of the pedal, there are a bunch more features such as MIDI connectivity, Expression Pedal functions, Favourite Patch Functionality and a bunch more hidden under the hood. So let us know if you’d like to see more in another follow-up video!
Strymon
Iridium Pedal an Amp Modeler & Impulse Response Cabinet by Strymon
Strymon wants you to Leave Your Amp At Home and get instead Iridium
With Iridium Strymon pushes pedal design to wrap world-class amps driving perfectly-matched speaker cabinets in great-sounding rooms.
Iridium is driving pedal design to wrap world-class amps driving perfectly matched speaker cabinets in great-sounding rooms. It wants to do the magic by providing easy access to three iconic amplifiers with loadable impulse response speaker cabinets that complement the tonality of the amp and lush room ambiance aimed at pedalboard-based performance directly into a recording interface or PA (public address) system.
Iridium Specs
- Three amplifier models crafted using Matrix Modeling™, capturing the subtleties and unique tonal qualities of each amp
- Round Amp – based on* a Fender® Deluxe Reverb®
- Chime Amp – based on* the Brilliant channel of a Vox® AC30
- Punch Amp – based on* a Marshall® Plexi (Super Lead model number 1959)
- Nine Impulse Response speaker cabinets, 24bit / 96kHz 500ms
Stereo (three per amp type), pre-loaded with a curated set of IRs:- Deluxe Reverb 1×12″ by OwnHammer
- Blues Junior® 1×12″ by CabIR
- Vibrolux® 2×10″ by CabIR
- AC30 2×12″AlNiCo by OwnHammer
- 1×12″ AlNiCo by Celestion®
- Mesa® 4×12″ by Valhallir
- GNR 4×12″ by OwnHammer
- 2×12″ Vintage 30 by Celestion
- Marshall® 8×12″AlNiCo by CabIR
- Load your own impulse responses using Strymon Impulse Manager software
- Hybrid IR/algorithmic Room control with selectable small, medium, and
- large rooms
- Simple, responsive amp-style controls for Drive, Level, Bass, Middle,
- and Treble
- Premium stereo high impedance discrete JFET analog front end with
- up to 22dB of pure analog gain
Tube Amp
Nothing quite matches the true nature of a guitar and its playing like a world-class tube amp driving a perfectly-matched speaker cabinet in a great-sounding room. With Strymon’s timely addition of Iridium to its ever-expanding line of pedals pushing the limits of what is possible with music gear using exceptionally great components and ridiculously powerful processors to make gear that sounds better.
IRIDIUM – AMP & IR CAB
Discover inspiring tube amp responsiveness, unprecedented impulse response speaker cabinet realism, and controllable natural-sounding room ambiance — as implied by the AMP & IR cab wording subtly splashed across its foot-friendly top panel.
Nine Stereo IR Cabinets
Iridium’s speaker cabinets offer a level of realism and responsiveness unprecedented in outboard effects. Iridium delivers full stereo 24bit 96kHz resolution for the entire 500 milliseconds of its speaker cabinet impulse responses. Until now, IRs of this resolution has only been available for use within studio recording software. Iridium’s breakthrough technology means you can use the very best impulse responses available, bringing maximum realism to your pedalboard.
Nine Lifelike Cabs
- Deluxe Reverb® 1×12″ by OwnHammer
The impulse of a vintage Fender® Deluxe Reverb 1×12″ open-back combo with a 1978 Fender CTS ceramic 12″ speaker. - Blues Junior® 1×12″ by cabIR
An impulse of a 1×12″ Blues Junior cabinet with a Jensen® C12N speaker. - Vibrolux® 2×10″ by cabIR
The impulse of a 1965 Fender Vibrolux 2×10″ with Jensen C10NS speakers. - AC30 2×12″ AlNiCo by OwnHammer
An impulse of a Vox® AC30/6 open-back 2×12″ combo with 2001 Celestion® T0530 Blue AlNiCo speakers. - 1×12″ AlNiCo by Celestion
The impulse of a Celestion Blue AlNiCo speaker in a closed-back 1×12″ cab. - Mesa® 4×12″ by Valhallir
An impulse of a 4×12″ Mesa Boogie halfback with two Celestion Black Shadow® MC-90 and two ElectroVoice® Black Shadow EVM12-L speakers. - GNR 4×12″ by OwnHammer
The impulse of a 1971 Marshall® 1960B “basketweave” 4×12″ cabinet with 1971 Celestion T1221 G12M-25 speakers. - 2×12″ Vintage 30 by Celestion
An impulse of a Celestion Vintage 30 in an open back 2×12″ cab. - Marshall 8×12″ AlNiCo by cabIR
The impulse of a 1965 Marshall 8×12″ re-issue full stack cabinet, with Celestion T652 AlNiCo speakers.
IR Technology
Impulse responses allow the sound and character of a mic’d speaker cabinet to be captured so that any audio signal can be processed by the resulting impulse response and sound as if it’s being played through that exact speaker cabinet. Iridium is able to deliver impulse response resolution far greater than any other piece of outboard gear.
With full 24bit 96kHz resolution for the entire 500 milliseconds of its speaker cabinet impulse responses, Iridium is able to use the absolute highest quality IRs available. This means countless details are accurately preserved and reproduced to give you a completely real speaker response. Every cabinet resonance, speaker vibration, as well as reflections between the cabinet, the mic, the floor, and the ceiling; all the minuscule cues that tell our brain we are listening to our favorite cabinet are preserved, providing completely lifelike realism.
Strymon’s Matrix Modeling
Behind the scenes, Strymon’s Matrix ModelingTM process captures all the subtleties and unique tonal qualities of each amplifier — from the unique composition of each tone stack to component values, bias levels, corner frequencies, and tube stage gain, all of which affect the way a note or chord reacts and evolves over time. Taking three iconic tube amps with distinct characters, the powerful processing effects developer has mathematically modeled every aspect of their circuitry with absolute precision to deliver the response, feel, and inspiring experience of playing through the original amps at their best. But taking that process a step further, each AMP — round, chime, and punch — has been hot-rodded to provide an extended range of tonal options above and beyond what was available from the original designs.
Those tube amps everyone has always craved after are available in Iridium. First up, by being based on a Fender Deluxe Reverb® — one of the most recorded amps in history for good reason, the round is clean, bright, and mid-scooped, with plenty of headroom. At higher DRIVE settings it delivers an overdriven sound unique to its architecture. As such, Strymon chose the Deluxe’s Normal channel for its round tone that plays well with pedals. Put it this way: while preserving access to all the tones originally available with this channel, Strymon’s model provides something extra — namely, a MIDDLE (midrange) control. Positioned at noon, it delivers the original fixed-resistor value and standard tonal characteristics of the Deluxe; turn it down for a more scooped sound, or turn it up for tweed-era tones.
The chime AMP is based on the Brilliant channel of a Vox® AC30TB, the amp that defined the guitar sound of the British Invasion. Strymon’s model of the AC30TB Brilliant channel — Top Boost — is jangly, bright, and chime-y, providing air for subtle passages with a light touch, and bite when digging in is needed. This time, the MIDDLE knob acts as a tone cut control, providing high-end roll-off just before the power tubes, as per the original AC30TB design. In addition to the full available gain of the original amp, Strymon saw fit to add a frequency-shaped front end boost towards the top end of the DRIVE knob’s range of travel to tighten the low end while driving the amp further into saturation.
The powerful punch AMP is based on a Marshall® Plexi (Super Lead model number 1959). This is meatier, with higher gain than the other two amps, and has a powerful midrange response. It also features a buttery, smooth overdrive. At higher DRIVE settings it will deliver all the high gain distortion and growl that this amp is known for — and then some! Setting the DRIVE control at around 2 o’clock results in the maximum gain the original Plexi design allowed. But beyond that, Strymon’s model has some additional gain on tap, allowing access to custom hot-rodded Plexi high gain tones.
True to the tone stacks of the classic amps that Strymon meticulously modeled, Iridium’s tone controls have the same interdependences as those found in the original circuit designs. Indeed, Iridium provides amp EQ that is a joy to use, yielding a wide variety of great tones in any which way its users choose to go with it. It is, quite simply, a snap to dial in a direct tone that will truly inspire and sound great, whether monitoring through in-ears, floor wedges, reference monitors, or studio headphones.
Iridium’s speaker cabinets offer a level of realism and responsiveness unprecedented in outboard effects. Iridium delivers full-stereo 24-bit/96kHz resolution for the entire 500 milliseconds of its speaker cabinet impulse responses. IRs of this resolution have hitherto only been available for use within studio recording software. So Iridium’s breakthrough technology means that users can access the very best impulse responses available, bringing maximum realism to their pedalboard.
Availibility
Strymon is accepting orders for Iridium via the Strymon Store to North America for $399.00 USD (plus tax and shipping) or through its growing global network of authorized dealers.
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