Strymon is Great But Should I Consolidate?

MistaGuitah

Well-known member
I've been using a Strymon Timeline, Mobius, Blue Sky, and Zuma for all my effects since 2016. Lately I haven't been wanting to deal with the bulk on my board and all the little cables, so been thinking about switching to Fractal or Line 6. I suppose Line 6 isn't considered on the same level as the aforementioned but the Helix FX sounds damn good in all the videos. Either way it's less fuss than dealing with 3 separate FX pedals. On the flip side it also consolidates all the effects into a single point of failure, so if the effects unit malfunctions, there will be zero effects. This I have no experience with so it may not even be an issue. I want to hear what you pros who gig regularly and use effects think. Have you moved on from Strymon or stick with them because they're tried & true and sound awesome? Maybe I'm not asking some questions that should be asked, don't know for sure. Please provide insight.
 
Strymon has done well selling individual units but I'm holding my breath for them to release a multi fx rack unit.
 
I’ve previoulsy had the mobius, timeline and blue sky, great sounding units. I did what you are thinking and went down to fx8 route. Loved it, spent many late nights working on sounds but eventually ended up back with single pedals.

Why? Well the fx8 sounds 90% as good as the strymon stuff but took hours to get there, whereas I found it really quick to get great sounds from the strymons, it took a lot longer to get something close from the fx8 and that wasn’t really diving into the advanced menus.
 
Manxmusicman":4t5ttrvf said:
I’ve previoulsy had the mobius, timeline and blue sky, great sounding units. I did what you are thinking and went down to fx8 route. Loved it, spent many late nights working on sounds but eventually ended up back with single pedals.

Why? Well the fx8 sounds 90% as good as the strymon stuff but took hours to get there, whereas I found it really quick to get great sounds from the strymons, it took a lot longer to get something close from the fx8 and that wasn’t really diving into the advanced menus.

Well with my AX8 it's pretty easy to get good sounding, very basic reverbs and delays, but it took some tweaking to get other sounds, so what you said is kind of a concern. My FX needs are pretty basic so I like the smaller Strymon units. The Timeline is more complex than I want so I often think about replacing it with an El Capistan. The Mobius is OK but all the default effects are too much and I find it hard to dial in a good flanger and phaser. The Blue Sky is amazing. Perhaps you are right and maybe I need to look instead at downsizing my Mobius and Timeline. Thanks for your comments. It's got me thinking a little different now.
 
I loved the blue sky but I only use reverb on one setting so it seemed a bit overkill for me, I ended up getting the neunaber wet reverb which serves it purpose very well. I use the source audio nemesis for my delay and an eventide h9 for my modulation, although it can be used for delays, pitch shifting and reverbs as well. I’d recommend you check the h9 out, might just be exactly what you’re after.
 
exo-metal":317x50sh said:
Strymon has done well selling individual units but I'm holding my breath for them to release a multi fx rack unit.


That would be an interesting product!
Done right, running at true line levels, full stereo and hopefully balanced I/Os too.... for those who understand that time based effects should run after a preamp (thus line levels) and enjoy stereo.
Unfortunately market has gone thru a huge cultural and technical regression... just look at what people use and how badly... and there you get the reality, the picture.
We're back at the end of the '70s with the big difference that then all standards and awareness had still to be created... now we have them... and people have no idea about them.
If you consider the current situation from a pure biz point of view, the making of single pedals, running single fx algorithms (in this day and age it's ridiculous...) makes for a VERY lucrative gain for companies.
Consider the following:
a Strymon pedal runs on a 300+ MHz Sharc DSP chip... very powerful. That kind of power is what you would get from a rig running an Eventide H8000 and H7600 together.
How about 3 PCMs 81 or 5 Eclipses? Yep... that's the kind of power you are looking at, when buying a SINGLE strymon large pedal.
Now... they run at 96KHz which is an illogical choice for a guitar, especially running at such low voltages as a -10dBV instrument level connection is... possibly THE worst way to run audio at all.
There's no need for 96KHz sampling rates there as it's a waste of power... that choice makes the processor use twice the resources it would use at 48KHz and for NO reason at all.
Of course... these strymons run everything off the DSP, meaning that there are no co-processors running the operative system and the MIDI, U.I.... but still, at 300+MHz and 48 KHz sampling... one of those chips could make for a very powerful multi-fx processor IF a whole product would be well designed around it. And a great analog input section for TONE is mandatory as all pedals have really bad tones because of that missing.
The kind of money they are making on a single pedal/single algorithm is huge as they force you to buy 3 or 4 pedals to have everything you need. If they did a rack multifx they'd not use 4 Sharcs in it as they could easily run things on a couple of dual core chips... and save on costs. But still it'd have to be more expensive than 3 or 4 of their pedals... in a market that doesn't buy much of these rack things... UNLESS you get into high end gear, like a Bricasti M7 reverb, running 6 2 dual core Sharcs (that's 12 cores, kids!)... but for a quality reason and 192KHz sampling rate if desired.
So... as much as I share your hope and the vision of amazing ways a more advanced rack unit could bring to spectacular development of new algorithms... I don't see this coming. They are very very well off and rich building these little things most people run in mono. Hell.... think about it... most of the customers don't even have an hifi system at home and all they knew about it are shitty MP3s.... they have no idea what voltage is and does to sound and tone. Eventually they might do something a bit bolder than the pedals, only because there seems to be a synth market asking for it, possibly in the Euro 500 box format (what a pain are those!)... but as for a 19" rack... I think we are far away from it. I may be proven wrong? Yes. Let me know when and IF this happens...
 
I like the work flow of the Strymon stuff better than Fractal, Eventide, and the HX series stuff. Great sound quality and you can get there quickly. I find on the gig, even mid-song tweaks, to be a lot faster. The only potential downside is big patch changes are tougher with the separates unless you go MIDI.
 
The problem right now is my Mobius. It sounds great and all, but it doesn't allow me to combine 2 effects. I'm thinking about replacing it with a BOSS MD500 but the Mobius vs MD500 comparisons on Youtube seem to make it sound less good than the Mobius. Maybe an H9 could be a good replacement for the Mobius?
 
The H9 is one algorithm at a time though there are a small handful that combine effects. I have had a ModFactor before, which I believe is the same as what’s in the H9, and vastly preferred Mobius. I have also heard mixed reviews on ease of editing on the fly if that’s important to you at all.

Of the effects available in Mobius, about the only useful combination I could see is tremolo with another mod effect but that could just be a result of lack of creativity on my part.
 
MistaGuitah - that doesn't sound overly bulky to me TBH. Strymon is top notch. I have not messed around with axe 8 or helix EVER. can't comment there. I was going to buy a mobius a while back but I felt it was limiting too. Not really sure nor have I tried any comparisons to the mobius, but it is a solid unit. In my head the strymons are simpler than axe. I like the Timeline a lot. I bought it on a stupid deal on CL for $180, and I couldn't turn down the instant profit. Had it a week and sold it. But I loved it. But I darn near doubled my money in a manner of days. Hard to say no to that.
 
I used an HX Effects for a short time. It's super easy to use and it sounds really good. I compared it directly against an MXR phase 90 and a EVH FLanger and to my ears it nailed the sounds from the analog pedals.
 
I’d love to have Strymon or Fractal make a stereo effercts only rack unit. I’m not holding my breath and currently use the KORG DL8000R. It’s a killer unit and does what I need it to do.
 
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