Revisiting the Strymon Iridium (vs Axe-Fx 3)

[Stratzrus]

Your prayers have been answered, mere mortal.

I keep having an itch to get one of those. I could use a small and light box for practicing when staying overnight out of town.

 

[Jarick]

Please excuse my ignorance in advance, but what does this mean exactly? In my 32 years, I’ve yet to find an amp that didn’t work with pedals.

Some modelers don't take pedals well. Could be not enough headroom or something in the modeling. The Iridium, I think because it has this JFET preamp, handles boosts and drive pedals very well. My Axe FX 3 does the same thing. HX Stomp is pretty good as well, although I prefer the Fractal. The DSM Simplifiers I had sounded awful with drive pedals.

 

[laxu]

I like the idea of a small wysiwyg amp in a pedal.

Me too. While I still think there's no goldilocks product in this category, the Strymon at least gets closest for me as it does enough in one box - as long as you aren't into high gain sounds or try to get them out of the Iridium on its own.

 

[Orvillain]

Ha! Jokes on you! I got the animals without even reading it!

 

[Lysander]

I keep having an itch to get one of those. I could use a small and light box for practicing when staying overnight out of town.

It's really good. I like the Amplifirebox line a lot.

The only reason i don't own one right now is that a HX Stomp covers those bases better for me.

 

[norminal]

That's part of it. There's also D/A conversion limits, hardware idiosyncrasies, model implementation, etc.

I’ve heard this thrown around with tube amplifiers as well. Maybe @Tom Von Kramm can share his experiences.

 

[laxu]

Ok I'm a dumbass . I rewrote the Punch amp section in OP because I made a very critical error.

I have been using the Fractal IR Player block (basically a simplified cab sim) as headphones/room correction. I have each of its channels set to different headphones and one for room correction on my studio monitors. I don't know if it's really any better than global EQ, but I have the horsepower so why not. The IRs for this are created from Sonarworks Reference ID plugin.

The reason why I wasn't getting good results out of the Punch model was that because on the scene I set up for the Strymon, I had set the IR player on the wrong channel! It was set for correction of my Beyer-Dynamic DT990 Pro headphones, which have a massive amount of overhyped high end so obviously the correction cuts a lot of that out. Meanwhile my Sennheisers only require a little bit of correction, so they were obviously way off. When I set the correction to the right channel, all my problems were fixed.

Now I was able to dial the Punch amp to sound very close to Fractal's. I had to turn the Fractal model normal channel gain to about 6 and treble gain to about 4 to match the Strymon, so definitely different from what most people use on Plexis (treble volume higher than normal channel volume).

 

[laxu]

On another note, the Strymon Impulse Response Manager works pretty well. It can select the right slot and amp model on the pedal just clicking things and makes it easy to audition different IRs. The level, treble and bass controls for each IR can be useful as I found some level differences between my ML Sound Lab and York Audio IRs.

I'm looking forward to Strymon's new software editor, hopefully they release it after NAMM.

 

[aivoryuk]

I had the iridium before I received my Fm3 - I already had the ax8 but I wanted a small device for around the house.
Generally I liked the tones out of it but even compared to the ax8 it didn't have the dynamics.
But I sent it back mainly because the headphone output was really noisy.

 

[2112]

Solid piece of kit. The Plexi model did very little for me but the Fender and Vox are good. The fact that it's stereo in is a lovely touch for people who want to use this as a replacement for their dual amp rig and I remember enjoying the verb on there.

 

[Foxmeister]

Me too. While I still think there's no goldilocks product in this category, the Strymon at least gets closest for me as it does enough in one box

Terrible product!

Who in their right mind puts a headphone socket on an AIAB-style pedal without an FX loop???

Truthfully, I liked the Iridium but genuinely thought it didn't sound better than the HX Stomp, it so I sold it.

 

[Jarick]

Terrible product!

Who in their right mind puts a headphone socket on an AIAB-style pedal without an FX loop???

Truthfully, I liked the Iridium but genuinely thought it didn't sound better than the HX Stomp, it so I sold it.

The interesting thing with the Iridium is that it has stereo inputs and amp modeling! I rarely ever used that though because you'd need to run the amp pretty clean.

 

[laxu]

The interesting thing with the Iridium is that it has stereo inputs and amp modeling! I rarely ever used that though because you'd need to run the amp pretty clean.

I'd say it's mainly there so you can keep the stereo sound with things you might plug in before it. As an example I plan to plug in a chain like this:

Compadre -> Riverside -> Zelzah -> (stereo out -> stereo in) -> Iridium -> (stereo out -> stereo in) -> Gigrig Wetter Box -> Nightsky / Volante in parallel -> Wetter Box -> (stereo out) -> something.

The Compadre and Riverside are both mono.

 

[laxu]

Experimentation continues. I find that I have the Fractal vs Strymon models dialed pretty close for the Vox and Marshall models but found an aspect the Strymon does worse for the Fender model.

The Round model does not start to distort on the bass like the Fractal models do. I have to switch the Fractal model to the Fender Twin to get the low end to stay that clean and then it doesn't distort quite the same for the higher strings.

I've been suspecting this for a bit as it would match my years back experience with the Strymon. Fractal seems to do more accurate emulation of how the poweramp and speakers break up. Which is of course cool and expected for the top dog amp modeler costing several grand more than the Styrmon.

Doesn't mean I'm not getting very good tones out of the Strymon that I think this time I will keep it because the form factor alone makes it worth owning.

In terms of responding to picking dynamics and turning down the volume knob, I think they are fairly close, namely both behave in a very satisfying way.

The Strymon is an easy recommendation for blues/classic rock etc players looking for a simple to use modeler that does the clean, edge of breakup or classic rock level gain well.

High gain players want to look elsewhere or pair some pedals with it. The Marshall model with gain cranked and the right IR loaded can kinda do nice things, but I'd still rather push it with a drive pedal.

 

[the swede]

I used an Iridium in the fx loop in HX Stomp for a while. Killer setup imho. With midi from the stomp, making the iridium switch amps/cabs along with presets… the main takeaway was probably letting the Stomp “breathe”. It did allow me to go nuts with Stomp. Don’t know why i abandoned that setup really… there wasn’t really any reason not to do it that way. It was a brilliant idea.
But I’m like that stupid. That’s why I’m not playing guitar since October and only lurk the forums once a week.

 

[GTR37]

It been said before but I would love iridium 2.0 that has a boutique clean models like a Matchless / Toneking and the goes into the higher gain like A Punch+ Hot plexi/HBE territory
And then finally the Modern high gain 5150 / SLO maybe with reverb
And a booster

 

[laxu]

It been said before but I would love iridium 2.0 that has a boutique clean models like a Matchless / Toneking and the goes into the higher gain like A Punch+ Hot plexi/HBE territory
And then finally the Modern high gain 5150 / SLO maybe with reverb
And a booster

While it could use some high gain options, IMO the current models already cover what you'd typically want out of a Matchless or Tone King. The main thing about those amps to me is the different feature set to their Fender/Vox counterparts.

If I had to wishlist Iridium V2 specs, it would be something like this:

• Amp models, could use a similar LED + spring-loaded switch like UA pedals use:
  • Fender Blackface, Vox AC30, Marshall Superlead (like currently)
  • Dumble, Mesa Rectifier, 5150/SLO/Friedman BE
• Presence control or switch. The 3-way switch on the Riverside does a good enough job so that could work here too.
• Reverb: Different types would be nice, e.g Room, Spring and Plate.
• Allow for mono operation while using one input/output as an fx loop.
• Decouple cab sim from amp model so you could use any of the 9 cab sims slots on any of the amps.
• Cab sim high/low cut as secondary functions.
• Toggle between output modes: Stereo with cab sims, Dual mono with (left out) and without (right out) cab sims, Mono with/without cab sims. This would remove the need to toggle cab sim on/off via power cycling the unit or wasting cab slots on null IRs.
• Color coded indicators for say first 4 presets.

 

[laxu]

In other news, I took about an hour on Saturday to install "perfect" cab sims on the Iridium.

Round:

1. York Audio DXVB Mix 01. Deluxe Reverb 1x12. "Main" cab I would use most of the time.
2. York Audio BMAN Mix 10. Bassman 4x10. This is what I would use if I want to go for more Tweed style sounds.
3. Fractal Super Reverb 313 mic. I made a custom IR of this from my Axe-Fx 3 as there's very few good Super Reverb IRs out there.

Chime:

1. York Audio VX30 Mix 05. Vox AC30 Celestion Alnico Blue 2x12. "Main" cab.
2. ML Sound Lab MIKKO VX30 Sweet spots. Vintage Vox AC30 2x12 with speakers using Pulsonic cones. Alternative to main.
3. ML Sound Lab MIKKO Zilla Creamback H75 2x12. Just threw this in as a 3rd option for variety as I thought it sounded good and different enough from the others.

Punch:

1. ML Sound Lab MIKKO custom mix: three 4x12 cabs with different mics on Marshall 70W Celestion Vintage speakers + vintage Greenbacks + vintage G12H-30s. This is my main Marshall sound.
2. ML Sound Lab MIKKO Diezel V30 4x12. If I want to use a more higher gain tone with drive pedals I could use this.
3. ML Sound Lab MIKKO Sound City 4x12 with Fane speakers. Same here, it's just tighter and more aggressive.

 

[deepskyone]

Great @laxu, now I am GASing for an Iridium again

 

[cjl5000]

In other news, I took about an hour on Saturday to install "perfect" cab sims on the Iridium.

Round:

1. York Audio DXVB Mix 01. Deluxe Reverb 1x12. "Main" cab I would use most of the time.
2. York Audio BMAN Mix 10. Bassman 4x10. This is what I would use if I want to go for more Tweed style sounds.
3. Fractal Super Reverb 313 mic. I made a custom IR of this from my Axe-Fx 3 as there's very few good Super Reverb IRs out there.

Chime:

1. York Audio VX30 Mix 05. Vox AC30 Celestion Alnico Blue 2x12. "Main" cab.
2. ML Sound Lab MIKKO VX30 Sweet spots. Vintage Vox AC30 2x12 with speakers using Pulsonic cones. Alternative to main.
3. ML Sound Lab MIKKO Zilla Creamback H75 2x12. Just threw this in as a 3rd option for variety as I thought it sounded good and different enough from the others.

Punch:

1. ML Sound Lab MIKKO custom mix: three 4x12 cabs with different mics on Marshall 70W Celestion Vintage speakers + vintage Greenbacks + vintage G12H-30s. This is my main Marshall sound.
2. ML Sound Lab MIKKO Diezel V30 4x12. If I want to use a more higher gain tone with drive pedals I could use this.
3. ML Sound Lab MIKKO Sound City 4x12 with Fane speakers. Same here, it's just tighter and more aggressive.

Replying to an old thread here but just wanted to say thanks for your write up and this IR list. Super insightful and really useful (will have to check out ML Sound Labs!).

I was getting a lot of use out of my Iridium just before the POD Express came out. Haven't used it for months and only just decided to incorporate it back into my setup as I was missing a good Plexi tone and the Cartographer just wasn't playing well with my P90s. I wasn't prepared for the difference in feel and quality! Don't get me wrong, the POD Express is great and provides the heavier tones I might want to use from time to time (I play mostly rock and blues) as well as access to a good Dumble sound (Litigator). Essentially all the tones I'm missing from your wish list. So I'll definitely keep both - but probably wont go back to using the POD Express for amp/cab sim until the "editor" emerges with :fingers crossed: better amp controls. Cheers