Meris LVX

Running sinetones through a fucking rare as hens dicks Marshall amplifier. What the fuck am I doing with my life!?!
God Of War Magic GIF by Santa Monica Studio
 
Right. So here's what I did.

Reamped a sine-tone from Reaper into the JVM. Set it to the crunch channel to distort it.
Jumpered the FX loop with a cable.
Had my Neve DI box in between the amp and cab, to tap the whole output of the amplifier.
Took a measurement of the amp without the FX loop as the sine tone ran through it.

I got -24.2dB peak from the amp without the FX loop enabled.
Setting the FX loop volume knob to the 0dB point, I got a bit of a level drop. This is just the amp. So I can only conclude that where 0dB on the amp label is, is not actually where it is. I bumped it up until the signal was unity gain. So I was getting -24.2dB peak with and without the FX loop enabled. This means I've dialed in the amp to unity gain, and no level drop can be attributed to the amp itself.

Then I added the LVX into the effects loop and made sure the LVX was set to relay bypass, meaning even when a patch is not enabled, the pedal is still processing the full signal.

So in this A/B:
Amp with no effects loop was peaking at -24.4
Amp with effects loop with the LVX set to relay bypass was peaking at -24.8

Then I turned on an LVX patch and set the mix to 0%.
Amp with no effects loop was peaking at -24.4
Amp with effects loop with the LVX set to relay bypass was peaking at -24.3

I could've done RMS, but peak was quicker. But basically no perceptible level loss to my ears and my measurements.
This is great! I wish I could say I had the same experience. Here’s what I was doing, less scientific for sure:

I had 3 pedals set up in the FX loop of my amp. I had all 3 engaged. Meris LVX, Empress Echosystem, and Neunaber Illumine. All in all, 3 very high-end pedals that sound great. When I would engage the FX loop of the amp, the volume would perceptibly drop.

If I ran the Neunaber by itself in the loop with no other pedals present, no volume drop.
If I ran the Empress by itself in the loop with no other pedals present, no volume drop.
If I ran the LVS by itself in the loop with no other pedals present, a very noticeable volume drop would occur. I didn’t measure it, but if you were in the room it was very perceptible.

I did this test with a few different heads and a Synergy rack, across a few different brands, and had the same conclusion. So it was not the heads, not the cabling, not the other pedals. Isolated problem was the LVX. I tried a few of the settings, right now you’ll have to humor me b/c I do not remember them, but the only thing that worked was engaging the LVX’s onboard preamp, but that also changed the tone.

So yeah YMMV, but mine had an unfortunate flaw that was in the box, not in my head lol
 
This is great! I wish I could say I had the same experience. Here’s what I was doing, less scientific for sure:

I had 3 pedals set up in the FX loop of my amp. I had all 3 engaged. Meris LVX, Empress Echosystem, and Neunaber Illumine. All in all, 3 very high-end pedals that sound great. When I would engage the FX loop of the amp, the volume would perceptibly drop.

If I ran the Neunaber by itself in the loop with no other pedals present, no volume drop.
If I ran the Empress by itself in the loop with no other pedals present, no volume drop.
If I ran the LVS by itself in the loop with no other pedals present, a very noticeable volume drop would occur. I didn’t measure it, but if you were in the room it was very perceptible.

I did this test with a few different heads and a Synergy rack, across a few different brands, and had the same conclusion. So it was not the heads, not the cabling, not the other pedals. Isolated problem was the LVX. I tried a few of the settings, right now you’ll have to humor me b/c I do not remember them, but the only thing that worked was engaging the LVX’s onboard preamp, but that also changed the tone.

So yeah YMMV, but mine had an unfortunate flaw that was in the box, not in my head lol
Most odd! If you were near my neck of the woods, you'd be free to pop by and check out my one, but I guess you're in the USA?
 
Do I really need the LVX???
Do you like very digital sounding fxs?

For me it's a pass. I'm still enjoying an ensoniq DP 4 an old bandmate sold me last year. It's digital but doesn't mostly have that digital edge that Meris and Hologram pedals and a few other pedals have like the Boss SY300. At first I like it so much I purchased two. Then it started sounding like a cat scratching a chalk board. Now I hear that same thing in a lot of digital pedals.

If it hurts me ears I move on.

TJ did say it's not for everyone.
 
ooo... noticeable pitch drift when you midi clock the Meris to something else. Constantly jumping between 89 and 90bpm when the Helix sends it 89.5bpm for example.

Gotta be a bug. It sounds terrible!
 
ooo... noticeable pitch drift when you midi clock the Meris to something else. Constantly jumping between 89 and 90bpm when the Helix sends it 89.5bpm for example.

Gotta be a bug. It sounds terrible!
Is it cus it doesn't like the decimal point, or does it drift with whole number bpms too?
 
I’ve got my eyes on this @Orvillain, I’m 99% sure I’m going to bring my Deluxe Reverb to GC and trade it in for one. Really, the 2290p, SDE-3000 and this are up for debate right now.

I like the creativity aspect of the Meris and the fact it does a fuck of a lot more than basic delay stuff, as where I just really dig the sounds of those other delay pedals. That’s the biggest leading factor in me getting it.

Is this gonna help me be more like Billy Howerdel?
 
Quoted from TGP

"Thanks everyone! We're extremely excited about prEDITOR. Jinna and Beau put a TON of work into this free bonus addition to our pedals. MercuryX support is slated to be added to prEDITOR too.

We wish we could have utilized MIDI over USB-C too. LVX uses the full capacity of its ARM processor and there is not enough reserve processing to run the significant resources that USB-C requires. The USB-C port is reserved for firmware updates only."

-terry

Terry Burton
previously founder of Strymon, now
Engineer / Founder: Meris
 
Quoted from TGP

New firmware freshly released for LVX, V1.2.1. (MercuryX has new firmware too but i'll post that on the MercuryX thread)

LVX 1.2.1
New Features
  • MIDI Beat Clock Ignore Global and Per Preset controls
Enhancements and Bug fixes
  • Meris prEDITOR (Editor/Librarian) compatibility
  • Enhanced MIDI Beat Clock tracking
  • Enhancements for Kill Dry in Mono Mode
 
A mate of mine who is quite averse to super complex pedals and just wants shit to be great instantly... he's just bought an LVX, after seeing and hearing my one last Sunday when we jammed.

This is the guy who thought the Timeline was too complicated, and he hated it and quickly sold it. But to him, the LVX (in text mode!) seemed to click enough that he's willing to buy one.

Let's see how he gets on!
 
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