laxu
Rock Star
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I wanted something more portable than my Strymon Nightsky + Volante setup. Lo and behold someone was selling a SA Collider for a fair price. Arrived today, first impressions.
The reason I decided to buy this is that once I have my delays and reverbs setup the way I want, I tend to leave them pretty much alone with only minimal tweaks so I think I can live with the way the 3-way toggle for delay/lock/reverb works with the knobs.
This isn't really a fair fight because the Strymons are dedicated boxes for specific purposes whereas the Collider is more like a simplified "best of SA Nemesis and Ventris" pedal. But the Collider is also like 1/3 the side of the two Strymons.
The Volante is by far a better tape/drum/digital delay with more usable options, better "wow & flutter" features, ability to overdrive the delay etc. But it's got its own pain points like switching presets on the pedal itself or panning the heads when used in stereo (you need to remember to do it yourself and save it to a preset).
The Nightsky meanwhile has way more features for modulation and pitch shifting, as well as going ambient and weird with the sounds. It's more of a "build your own reverb" thing, I've been able to make it mimic e.g my favorite Fractal reverbs pretty decently. But it can be a bit much when most of the time you don't want to dive that deep into how your reverb sounds. I might end up replacing the Nightsky with the Collider as the SA does my core reverbs well.
Overall I think SA did a great job in many areas. I wish they would e.g sell extra algorithms from the Ventris/Nemesis for the Collider though, as I'd gladly ditch the Swell and Reverse for something else and maybe swap the Tape to SA's Binson Echorec model instead.
SA's idea was that the Collider is a cheaper, simplified version of the Ventris/Nememis pedals and you buy them when you want the "full course". But to me they are a bit much and won't run in parallel without extra gear, same as my Strymons.
I wish Source Audio had designed this range of pedals with e.g 3 knobs per side instead of what they have, just make it a bit larger. I'm interested to see what they do for their next gen platform. That seems to be still about a year away though based on SA guys' posts on The Other Place.
The reason I decided to buy this is that once I have my delays and reverbs setup the way I want, I tend to leave them pretty much alone with only minimal tweaks so I think I can live with the way the 3-way toggle for delay/lock/reverb works with the knobs.
Functionality
- The "Are you editing delay or reverb" functionality is pretty annoying, instantly made several "oh I'm on the wrong side" mistakes. EytchPi42 said in his demo of the pedal that the 3-way switch should be just a toggle button with a colored LED. That would be so much better.
- Being able to run in series vs parallel is great.
- Swapping the cascading order from delay -> reverb to reverb -> delay seems complicated though, instead of being just a menu option. Thankfully I see zero reason to do that.
- Switching between parallel/series routing makes a nasty pop sound through speakers. For some reason this doesn't happen if you switch presets tho.
- Being able to do dual delays or dual reverbs with the "Unlock" feature is pretty neat!
- I really like the "tap delay button once when it's on and if you wait a bit it turns off" functionality. That's a clever way to allow on/off/tap tempo/hold for off all on the same footswitch. You can even fine tune how long you need to wait for it to detect tap tempo vs off by using the Neuro Editor.
- Full size MIDI ports on a pedal this size is pretty dope.
- Not needing TRS Y-cables for stereo in/out is nice. Side jacks do mean it takes more board space than smaller Strymons though.
- Preset cycle via button or footswitches (when pedal is off) and LED for 4 or 8 presets functionality is A+. I really wish Strymon did the same thing.
Reverb
- Room I haven't falled in love with yet. I think it sounds fine but does not blow me away. Prefer how the Strymon Iridium's convolution + algorithmic room sounds.
- Hall sounds really nice, though the 5 different hall sizes on a continuous knob is not a good implementation when it doesn't seamlessly switch between them. I wish you could use the main encoder for selecting this instead e.g by holding the control button in the back.
- True Spring. It's drippy and fine, but I've never been much of a spring reverb fan so I might use this only occasionally. Same issues as Hall for selecting spring length.
- Plate. Lovely, really like this! Plate is my favorite so when it sounds good, I'm happy. Again, selecting plate size is not the best.
- Shimmer. Beloved by worship guitarists, hated by everyone else. At least here you can tone down the shimmer so it's not so obnoxious.
- E-Dome. Big, cavernous. It's nice, have to explore this more to find some use for it.
- Swell. I really don't care for volume swells. I think I will never use this and it's the only gimmick reverb on the box. I wish I could swap it for something better.
Delay
- Oil Can. This is cool. It's a little bit reminiscent of the Volante's Drum mode with specific settings but just has much less control over its sound. Distorted, dark.
- Reverse. This is another effect that I have never understood. Good for Satanic messages I suppose?
- Tape. This is apparently based on an Echoplex EP3, so not the same thing as the Binson Echorec based Volante. The modulation stuff on the two Control knobs is honestly not doing what the "mechanics" knob does on the Volante. It sounds less like "tape with issues" and more like "tape with modulation on it". It's a good sound, but could be better.
- Analog. I like this. I have no idea how it compares to something like a Strymon Brig, but it sounds good and degrades like an analog delay should.
- Digital. No complaints here either - it's a basic digital delay which is fine.
Neuro Editor
Connected the pedal via USB and fired it up on my computer. I don't think I have the right cables to try the mobile Neuro Editor, but with this pedal it offers so little extra features that there's not much need to do so either.- Being able to adjust both the delay and reverb easily is so, so nice! Just a row of controls one above the other, no menuing around between fx blocks etc.
- Being able to pick what tempo divisions to use for the 3-way division switch as well as preset's delay is really nice. I swapped the triplet mode to golden ratio since I like that on the Volante too.
- The editor works fine and functionally is similar to Strymon's Nixie 2 - with the obvious difference that this has been out for years and Nixie 2 is still in beta with few pedals supported!
- Neuro Desktop is a bit dated looking. Bad margins/padding between elements, some box sizing issue. No real problems functionally tho.
- The "icons only" buttons in the left sidebar aren't very clear about their function. "Gear" and "Wrench" icons next to each other is always a bad idea. They're "pedal settings" and "open this pedal in the editor."
- It doesn't scale well on my 4K screen so it has a lot of wasted space and a little bit small controls. Usable in any case.
- No drag/drop to rearrange presets. Minor inconvenience. At least you can name each preset.
- Firmware update caused a bigass pop from my speakers which nearly gave me a heart attack! By comparison Strymon pedals stay nice and quiet when updated the same way.
Against Strymon Nightsky and Volante
This isn't really a fair fight because the Strymons are dedicated boxes for specific purposes whereas the Collider is more like a simplified "best of SA Nemesis and Ventris" pedal. But the Collider is also like 1/3 the side of the two Strymons.
The Volante is by far a better tape/drum/digital delay with more usable options, better "wow & flutter" features, ability to overdrive the delay etc. But it's got its own pain points like switching presets on the pedal itself or panning the heads when used in stereo (you need to remember to do it yourself and save it to a preset).
The Nightsky meanwhile has way more features for modulation and pitch shifting, as well as going ambient and weird with the sounds. It's more of a "build your own reverb" thing, I've been able to make it mimic e.g my favorite Fractal reverbs pretty decently. But it can be a bit much when most of the time you don't want to dive that deep into how your reverb sounds. I might end up replacing the Nightsky with the Collider as the SA does my core reverbs well.
Conclusion
Overall I think SA did a great job in many areas. I wish they would e.g sell extra algorithms from the Ventris/Nemesis for the Collider though, as I'd gladly ditch the Swell and Reverse for something else and maybe swap the Tape to SA's Binson Echorec model instead.
SA's idea was that the Collider is a cheaper, simplified version of the Ventris/Nememis pedals and you buy them when you want the "full course". But to me they are a bit much and won't run in parallel without extra gear, same as my Strymons.
I wish Source Audio had designed this range of pedals with e.g 3 knobs per side instead of what they have, just make it a bit larger. I'm interested to see what they do for their next gen platform. That seems to be still about a year away though based on SA guys' posts on The Other Place.
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I found it a bit strange that they market the Collider as having the 'best presets from both the Nemesis and Ventris' and then they went and put a buried one on it. It should be stock on the Nemesis - one of the more fun delay algos for sure.
