laxu
Rock Star
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- 5,157
Strymon sometimes gets described as "really expensive", "sounds digital", "what the rich worship guitarists play" etc but what it really should be described as is "the right mix of top tier sound and easy operation." To me these pedals just sound great, no ifs or buts.
The Riverside is my favorite drive pedal with a vast variety of sounds just based on how you set its knobs and switches, the Compadre is a really easy compressor and boost, while Zelzah, Nightsky and Volante are top tier in their own categories. It's difficult to get a bad sound out of the Flint. I only sold the Flint V1 because of lack of MIDI since it had many sounds in it that would have been nice to recall at the press of a button. If I were to build a simple, compact pedalboard, it would be something like Compadre -> Riverside -> El Capistan/Dig -> Flint.
What Strymon does right is taking something complex and making it fun to work with. Strymon really seems to take the time to figure out how to make their pedals work in a way that is intuitive - having just the right amount of controls to perform the things you need most.
Take the Zelzah. Another company might have gone "well here's a phaser for you" but Strymon went above and beyond by thinking "hey, what if you could blend between a phaser, flanger or chorus?" Suddenly this expensive phaser becomes a multi-modulation playground capable of the afore-mentioned but also vibrato and autowah on its 4-stage side.
I've learned so much about building reverbs with the Nightsky where you don't think in terms of "this is a plate, this is a room reverb" but "what should the pitch of this reverb be and how should it move?" It goes from selecting a pre-built sound and tweaking it, to building it yourself and saving in a preset for later use. This can be too much for many people, but I think it's a great alternative approach to more complex reverb sounds and certainly avoids the "there's these gimmick options I never use" guilt from not using that ring modulated reverse reverb setting or whatever.
If we look at the Strymon Volante, it makes multitap delays so easy. You press the buttons in the center and set the knobs to where you like and that's about it. Compare this to Fractal where getting what you want out of its Multitap delay block is much more complex when you have individual time, feedback etc controls for every delay tap, adding modulation gives you multiple full blown LFOs instead of a "wear" knob etc. While on paper the Fractal is much more capable, in practice it's often just way too much and you instead rely on its (very good) preset sounds with minimal tweaks to get things you like.
A full Strymon pedalboard costs a lot of money compared to buying a great modeler and I don't feel mine sounds better than what I get on my Axe-Fx 3. But just having that curated user experience on each pedal makes playing around with sounds so much more fun. Modelers often focus on pre-built sounds for immediate switching in live use, but what I am looking for is more like a mad scientist laboratory probably closer to working a modular synth.
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Strymon does MIDI in a friendly way. As an experiment I tried setting up a Stream Deck+ to have MIDI controls for my Strymon pedals by hooking the SD to my computer and then connecting the computer via USB to the Strymon Conduit hub. With Strymon's 2-way MIDI I/O I was able to have the Stream Deck dials control parameters but also have their value reflected back when I switched presets or turned the pedal's knobs. Then turning the SD dial encoder would change the current value instead of jumping to something else. This is something that all multifx manufacturers could learn from by providing better support and behavior for 3rd party integration and MIDI mapping.
Where Strymon does fail is secondary functions. There's a good amount of stuff buried under powerup modes or holding a particular switch. With no labels printed on the front, if you don't work with these regularly you have to bust open the manual. I would prefer an Eventide style "dim labels printed under the knobs and a button to toggle between primary/secondary functions" behavior for this. Thankfully most of the secondary functions are not needed regularly, the only thing I miss is a dedicated pre-delay knob on my Nightsky as "hold this tiny button and turn reverb knob" does suck.
Likewise compromises are made in presets, as on many other preset-capable pedals. While you can save and recall a whopping 300 presets on Strymons, with no displays or LEDs for this it's hard to tell what preset is in use and typical for digital pedals, you have to twiddle the knobs to see how the preset is configured by one of the LEDs turning green when you hit the stored value. I use only like 3-4 presets per pedal, more than that on the Volante and Nightsky because it's easier to track them thanks to the onboard indicators. Many of the pedals don't have a built in favorite switch and I wish you could enable presets by holding a button or cycle them by hitting both buttons or something. Some form of outboard control is recommended, whether it's a simple favorite switch (which you can build yourself) or something more complex. At least there are multiple options.
Strymon has said in a (rather poor) Reddit /r/guitarpedals Ask Me Anything thread that they will release a new version of their Nixie software editor in early 2023 that will be compatible with all their pedals. It's been a long time coming. I think that will make preset management a far more palatable affair but I am also hoping that it might be a good "control hub" for the pedals themselves, sort of like using Axe-Edit on Fractal. That workflow has its own value, especially for using in a recording context.
The Riverside is my favorite drive pedal with a vast variety of sounds just based on how you set its knobs and switches, the Compadre is a really easy compressor and boost, while Zelzah, Nightsky and Volante are top tier in their own categories. It's difficult to get a bad sound out of the Flint. I only sold the Flint V1 because of lack of MIDI since it had many sounds in it that would have been nice to recall at the press of a button. If I were to build a simple, compact pedalboard, it would be something like Compadre -> Riverside -> El Capistan/Dig -> Flint.
What Strymon does right is taking something complex and making it fun to work with. Strymon really seems to take the time to figure out how to make their pedals work in a way that is intuitive - having just the right amount of controls to perform the things you need most.
Take the Zelzah. Another company might have gone "well here's a phaser for you" but Strymon went above and beyond by thinking "hey, what if you could blend between a phaser, flanger or chorus?" Suddenly this expensive phaser becomes a multi-modulation playground capable of the afore-mentioned but also vibrato and autowah on its 4-stage side.
I've learned so much about building reverbs with the Nightsky where you don't think in terms of "this is a plate, this is a room reverb" but "what should the pitch of this reverb be and how should it move?" It goes from selecting a pre-built sound and tweaking it, to building it yourself and saving in a preset for later use. This can be too much for many people, but I think it's a great alternative approach to more complex reverb sounds and certainly avoids the "there's these gimmick options I never use" guilt from not using that ring modulated reverse reverb setting or whatever.
If we look at the Strymon Volante, it makes multitap delays so easy. You press the buttons in the center and set the knobs to where you like and that's about it. Compare this to Fractal where getting what you want out of its Multitap delay block is much more complex when you have individual time, feedback etc controls for every delay tap, adding modulation gives you multiple full blown LFOs instead of a "wear" knob etc. While on paper the Fractal is much more capable, in practice it's often just way too much and you instead rely on its (very good) preset sounds with minimal tweaks to get things you like.
A full Strymon pedalboard costs a lot of money compared to buying a great modeler and I don't feel mine sounds better than what I get on my Axe-Fx 3. But just having that curated user experience on each pedal makes playing around with sounds so much more fun. Modelers often focus on pre-built sounds for immediate switching in live use, but what I am looking for is more like a mad scientist laboratory probably closer to working a modular synth.
---
Strymon does MIDI in a friendly way. As an experiment I tried setting up a Stream Deck+ to have MIDI controls for my Strymon pedals by hooking the SD to my computer and then connecting the computer via USB to the Strymon Conduit hub. With Strymon's 2-way MIDI I/O I was able to have the Stream Deck dials control parameters but also have their value reflected back when I switched presets or turned the pedal's knobs. Then turning the SD dial encoder would change the current value instead of jumping to something else. This is something that all multifx manufacturers could learn from by providing better support and behavior for 3rd party integration and MIDI mapping.
Where Strymon does fail is secondary functions. There's a good amount of stuff buried under powerup modes or holding a particular switch. With no labels printed on the front, if you don't work with these regularly you have to bust open the manual. I would prefer an Eventide style "dim labels printed under the knobs and a button to toggle between primary/secondary functions" behavior for this. Thankfully most of the secondary functions are not needed regularly, the only thing I miss is a dedicated pre-delay knob on my Nightsky as "hold this tiny button and turn reverb knob" does suck.
Likewise compromises are made in presets, as on many other preset-capable pedals. While you can save and recall a whopping 300 presets on Strymons, with no displays or LEDs for this it's hard to tell what preset is in use and typical for digital pedals, you have to twiddle the knobs to see how the preset is configured by one of the LEDs turning green when you hit the stored value. I use only like 3-4 presets per pedal, more than that on the Volante and Nightsky because it's easier to track them thanks to the onboard indicators. Many of the pedals don't have a built in favorite switch and I wish you could enable presets by holding a button or cycle them by hitting both buttons or something. Some form of outboard control is recommended, whether it's a simple favorite switch (which you can build yourself) or something more complex. At least there are multiple options.
Strymon has said in a (rather poor) Reddit /r/guitarpedals Ask Me Anything thread that they will release a new version of their Nixie software editor in early 2023 that will be compatible with all their pedals. It's been a long time coming. I think that will make preset management a far more palatable affair but I am also hoping that it might be a good "control hub" for the pedals themselves, sort of like using Axe-Edit on Fractal. That workflow has its own value, especially for using in a recording context.
