I find Meris's marketing quite frustrating

[Orvillain]

My first Meris rant for 2024! Welcome!

So I'm looking at the Mercury X right.... after about a year of prevarication over the LVX delay pedal, and too-ing and fro-ing constantly... I ended up getting one and I completely changed my initial impressions after actually owning the unit. It is too deep to demo in a shop, in my opinion. I got several bad impressions of it.

Meris's marketing doesn't help. Even to this day, you cannot find any official demos of the LVX that simply go through each mode and each model and demonstrate how the thing sounds. All you get is a 10 minute overview video that focuses more on functionality than the sonics of the thing. This is a huge fail in my opinion. All the Meris official videos do - for me at least - is scare me away from the product.

If something sounds good, then I'm more willing to jump through hoops to learn how to use it. But having to rely on 3rd parties to be able to hear how their gear sounds ... nil pois!!!

So here I am, scrolling through endless Youtubers having to try and find clips and examples of each algorithm on the MercuryX, in order to make a purchasing decision.. and this is just way more annoying than it needs to be.

And what makes it worse is, because of the Line6 and Strymon lineage for Meris, you'd think they'd know this already!

 

[laxu]

I mean, Meris saw no problem replicating the same secondary function issues that Strymon has (lack of labeling).

It's a double edged sword because if the official samples are not great, that might mean people think it doesn't sound great. For me e.g Strymon's sample videos are often ok, but don't really make me go "I want this pedal". It's Pete Celi's "deep dive" videos that do that, because he clearly shows what it can do and then I start thinking "ok, this pedal I didn't consider at all might be something I actually want..."

 

[Orvillain]

For me e.g Strymon's sample videos are often ok, but don't really make me go "I want this pedal".

See that is completely the opposite for me. I think back to when the BigSky launched... it was the preset exploration videos that got me hooked!

 

[laxu]

See that is completely the opposite for me. I think back to when the BigSky launched... it was the preset exploration videos that got me hooked!

That might vary pedal by pedal, I'm mostly talking about their more recent demos from say Volante and newer.

But if I don't like one source, I'll just check others and try to form a complete opinion. I wasn't really blown away by any of the SA Collider demos I watched when I was considering buying it, but when I got it myself I do really like how it sounds.