Strymon releasing distortion pedals? Oh no

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Mack_Again

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Riverside - Multistage Drive - Distortion Pedal - Strymon

So........there it is.

I never expected them to release distortion pedals as they said they focus on developing digital pedals. However, they went for semi-analog circuits, where digital controls are used to set parameters. I am quite intrigued by this pedal, even if this pedal isn't going to get any associations with Edge. Also, they said the pedal still contains the DSP chip which apparently alter the tone. So....could this pedal be the first digital distortion pedal not hated by purists? We'll see
 
Purists will still hate it because it's not analog. It'll probably sound great though. The tape saturation on the Deco sounds incredible.
 
Purists hate anything that was not used on those classic recordings from the past. I wouldn't be surprised if digital had been around before analog and the likes of Hendrix and Pink Floyd had used it they would now be ragging on analog for delivering such a shitty low grade sound compared to crisp clear digital.

The golden rule remains, don't listen to what others tell you sounds good, if it sounds good to your ears then it is good.
 
From Strymon'/s demos, this pedal sounded amazing and not too artificial. Yes, I said that.


Also.....am I the only person who thinks of Line 6's distortion modeler pedal Edge uses (DM4) from this pedal's color scheme? Seems kinda appropriate as Strymon was originally created by this project ex-Line 6 employees made a while back.
 
Not that I care about purists, but I often find myself hating digital distortions, as I expect them to sound like analog pedals. I found that to be a wrong mindset, tho. They sound good in their own ways.
 
If you're trying to achieve those vintage tones of yesterday then digital distortions are most certainly not your cup of tea. But unless your in the cover band/tribute business you shouldn't be trying to copy vintage tones. Your job as a musician is to look forward. Embrace new sounds, not jealously decide what is good tone and what isn't. No wonder rock has become so stale. Rock is supposed to be the sound of youthful rebellion, not the jealous domain of cantankerous boring old farts!
 
as I was writing, I remember David Gilmour once used Boss Heavy Metal pedal with Fender Champ and cranked Gallien Kruger amp for particular distortion sound (in the album i can't remember. probably post Roger era, I assume). SO......are people gonna go for that sound because David has done it? lol Apparently some people prefer Heavy Metal instead of Metal Zone. Dunno why though.


I am very much looking forward for non-Strymon made demos of this pedal. This looks marvelous and I assume, they sound good. looks versatile as fuck, though. Me bitching about digital distortion is probably because I have this digital multi effect that...sort of sucks in some aspects. I actually like some gain pedal modeling in that unit, though I must admit that its not perfect especially in distortion/amp-sim department.
 
There are two kinds of guitarist in regards to Boss metal pedals. Those who have no ear for tone and who think a MT-2 Metal Zone with ALL TEH GAIN! NO MIDS! is a great sound. And those who are into Swedish Old School Death Metal, in which case a HM-2 is mandatory, cause that what's those Swedish guys used.

I've got both and overall the HM-2 sounds better, so I can understand why David used one. Although I doubt he used it Swedish Death Metal style, with all the knobs on full. The MT-2 is a much maligned pedal, mostly because of all those tone deaf metal heads with their ALL TEH GAIN! NO MIDS! attitude. Out of the box it has a tendency to be nasal and they say its a metal pedal designed by people who have no clue as to how metal actually sounds. But there are some excellent mods to turn it into a good metal monster. And with some practice you can even get a decent tone out of a stock MT-2. It has after all an excellent and very useful parametric mid EQ. Shame it gets mostly used to for turning down the mids and then ripping the knob off.
 
Am I the only person who thinks Metal Zone is an underrated pedal here? Seems weird we're talking about those metal pedals in a thread about boutique distortion pedal.

Anyway, jokes aside, this Strymon made distortion pedal can be pretty great for Edge fans and tone chasers because this thing has some serious capability to tweak the tones. Also this has this button to recall your favorite setting, which sounds fantastic.
 
I wouldn't exactly call the Strymon a boutique pedal. They're almost always at least analog. And I wouldn't call it the Metal Zone underrated. Both Line6 and Fractal have Metal Zone models in their modelers. And Boss keeps on selling a shitload of them every year. It just has a bad reputation, solely based on the abuse it gets from boatloads of starting metal guitarists. But there are also artists who do manage to get a good tone out of it.

As for the Strymon, that favorite button do looks handy, functioning like a preset button, or the toneprint option on TC pedals. Two sounds out of a single dirt pedal means one less pedal on your board. Although there are plenty of dirtpedals which already offer two or three sounds in one pedal. Multiple presets, selectable via MIDI, now that would have been even better. :drool:
 
Yeah but others call Strymon or all small-batch builders "boutique" somehow. So.....I often call them boutique, though unlike most famous boutique pedal makers, Strymon makes high quality digital pedals that often look like a witch craft.

Metal Zone is surely popular, but I think most tone chasers consider it as a joke pedal or even useless. I don't think it is fundamentally a joke pedal or made to be a joke pedal. Obviously Boss people never make joke pedals, unlike poeple at DOD, who often create weird pedals, often accidentally. Look at DOD Thrash Master. I know Metal Zone can sound good. But... you know, only in particular context.

Wait are there dirt pedals where you can store multiple settings? I have seen only few of them and some sounded kinda terrible.
 
Strymon definitely fits with being called boutique. Lots of boutique brands have digital pedals.
 
About digital distortion, have you guys found good gain pedal sounds in modeling units? Like Axe fx and even some Pod stuff.
 
About digital distortion, have you guys found good gain pedal sounds in modeling units? Like Axe fx and even some Pod stuff.

I don't know, I prefer to use an amp model for distortion on my Axe, pushed by an OD model. After all, I used to use gain pedals to get Marshall sounds on my clean amp, but that seems rather unnecessary to do when you can toy around with actual Marshall amp sims. With fuzz its a different thing, as the point with fuzz is not to emulate amps but just f*** up your sound in the worst possible good way. In that sense modelers leave something wanting. The Muff and Fuzz Face models are decent but I really miss something more extreme, like a good fuzz factory model in my Axe. Or on the Pod. Although you can go a long way in the Axe by adjusting the bit rate.
 
yeah the fuzz models in my multi effects are pretty wimpy as well. I know I can probably push fuzz pedal with compressor (used as a clean boost) but I don't think that will be enough to emulate full on insanity I want.


Im curious about this thing about Axe-Fx; if you use amp effect block as a "gain pedal," do you still use another amp effect block to simulate amps (at the end of the signal chain)? or thats gonna eat up processing power too much?
 
The two things that eat up most CPU power are reverbs and cab sims. Modulation and pitch shift can come in second. Amp sims not so much in comparison. In a way its not so surprising as amp preamps aren't complicated circuits. Which is why you have so many preamp pedals. You can literally take an amp preamp circuit and comfortably squeeze it into a 1590B pedal if you substitute the tubes for JFET transistors. Even smaller thanks to SMD components.

If you want to stack amp models in the Axe, that's a different thing. In the past guitarist would jumper the normal channel into their bright channel for added gain, but that's not quite the same as actually stacking one amp into the other. With guitar pedals you're stacking pedals that only have low level guitar outputs. Preamps tend to output at higher line levels, and the output of regular amps requires dedicated speaker cables otherwise you could fry your cables and amp. Which recently happened to our bass player. So stacking amps is not a very common practice, although I know David Gilmoure did it in the early 80's. Of course he had the expertise of Pete Cornish at his disposal to make it happen.

In the Axe of course it doesn't matter so you could probably do it. It also offers models of those amps which often had their channels jumpered, like the Marshall JMP. I haven't tried it yet, only 2 amps in parallel, which is LOUD. I might give it a try but I'm not sure if it has any use. In the past guitarists had to jumper the channels on their amps and boost the input as hot as possible to get more gain, because that was their only option. Nowadays we have high gain amps with all the gain on tap that you need. No need to do crazy stacking stuff if you can just use a triple rectifier model. Saves up more CPU power for other fun stuff.
 
oh i sort of misunderstood...... so you guys would rather change (form the "clean" preset) to the preset which has cranked Marshall amp model rather than engaging additional pedal/effect block to achieve marhsall sound (or any gain sound you want). I see.

I thought it would take good amount of computing powers to emulate the behaviors of tubes and stuff. But i understand that simulating cab realistically seems like a tougher job. or creating faithfully pitch-shifted signals.
 
Originally I tried to emulate my old pedal board signal chain, which was dirt pedals into a clean Fender amp. But that just didn't sound satisfying. In part because the dirt pedals I use the most, Stone Grey Distortion and Crunch Box, are not present as models inside the Axe. I also found the signal chain I created to be quite noisy, which required lots of noise gating. Then it hit me, why try to emulate a Marshall sound via pedals on a modeler when it has excellent Marshall amp models? Haven't look back since. It's also less noisy as I now hardly need a noise gate at all.

As for cabinet emulation, its like that military axiom, amateurs think tactics, professionals study logistics. Where most guitarists fret about preamps and the right amp, professionals know that cabinets, speakers and mic placement are of far greater influence on your sound then the amp itself. That's why if you have to chose an amp and cabinet you're better off spending more on a good cabinet then the amp. And if you're going to record or gig it's worth your time to experiment with the art of correct mic placement and selecting the right mic. And it is an art. Which is also why there's a flourishing business in cabinet impulses for modelers like the Axe, the Kemper and the Torpedo.
 
I certainly like the model of cabinet (4 by 12) with greenbacks ( i assume there celestion speaker models or something) or Vintage 30 model within my multi eff. Seems to be that they're standard options amongst many pros, so. I know cabs and speakers are pretty crucial and important to my sound, but again, i abuse speakers often times by playing fake bass sound (made by pitch shifter that lowers my guitar sound by an octave) which might hurt cabinet if i drive them too hard. too much low end, i think. Im not good at taking care of things i guess.


SO Muad'zin, do you use models of classic marshall like JTM or Plexi or do you use more modern marshall like JCM900s and stuff? just wondering.
 
Strychnine makes fantastic pedals.

How unique, different and versatile is their new dirt pedals?

If it's merely another tunescreamer, fuzzface etc... there are plenty of great OD/DIST/Fuzz pedals that are far easier on the bank account than Strymon's usual price point.

If it is something unique... or it does multiple types of OD/Dist... then it might be worth the money





Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference
 
I certainly like the model of cabinet (4 by 12) with greenbacks ( i assume there celestion speaker models or something) or Vintage 30 model within my multi eff. Seems to be that they're standard options amongst many pros, so. I know cabs and speakers are pretty crucial and important to my sound, but again, i abuse speakers often times by playing fake bass sound (made by pitch shifter that lowers my guitar sound by an octave) which might hurt cabinet if i drive them too hard. too much low end, i think. Im not good at taking care of things i guess.

I'm a big fan of octave down sounds as well and I've yet to blow up any speakers. Oscillating delays can be much more dangerous in my experience as some of them can really get out of hand if you're not careful, as they keep on getting louder and louder.

SO Muad'zin, do you use models of classic marshall like JTM or Plexi or do you use more modern marshall like JCM900s and stuff? just wondering.

For all my talk about exploring new sounds I do confess a preference for 80's style Marshall sounds. A nice throaty sound with plenty of midrange. None of that scooped nonsense. I believe a heavy sound comes from what and how you play, not ever increasing amounts of gain and downtuning. I currently use the Plexi 50w jumpered model, boosted into bliss by a Full OD drive. But before that I used the JCM800 Modded model, with a TS808 drive in front of it. And the two sounds are fairly similar.
 
A speaker in my amp started to fart out as soon as I started playing palm-mutes with Octavia model. it might be that different thing caused that terrible noise, though.

I am also starting to use JTM/Plexi more and more, starting to fall in love with those sounds. These amps pushed with OCD model or even some compressor sounds like heaven to me.
 
On the other hand, an overdrive that's used to boost an amp into greater gain, a de facto additional gain stage as it were, still uses diodes as well. In fact diodes are key to overdrive pedal gain and using different diodes is a key ingredient, in many cases the only ingredient, that differentiates between all the different overdrive and distortion pedals. :wink:
 
I'm well aware of that fact but these high gain JCm sounds like they always sound like DS1 is engaged when cranked. Do you have more hands on experiences with those high gain marshalls? Like JCM 2000s.
 
Im kinda sick of hearing that pedal is "tube-like." Not that I hate tube sounding pedals but I'm kinda kilted of hearing that catchphrase already.
 
Tube-like, like transparent, are catchphrase that sell. Especially with TGP people, who seem to have an above average then usual tendency to fall for marketing and hype. But even on DIY forums tube-like and transparent are popular buzzwords in what people would like to build. So as long those catch-phrase continue to work, expect to encounter them a lot more.

In a way its sad that digital distortions try so hard to be yet another tubescreamer, when they at least have the potential be something else instead.
 
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