Question for the Strymon Guys

L

Lionheart

Guest
I've been seeing an increasing number of pedal boards that these things are showing up on. Particularly the Mobius, BigSky, and TimeLine.

I haven't had the chance to play any of these, yet. So, for you guys who have, how did you like them? And most importantly, do they sound any better than what we already have in the Axe-Fx?
 
Lionheart said:
I've been seeing an increasing number of pedal boards that these things are showing up on. Particularly the Mobius, BigSky, and TimeLine.

I haven't had the chance to play any of these, yet. So, for you guys who have, how did you like them? And most importantly, do they sound any better than what we already have in the Axe-Fx?
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Hi Lionheart,

I own the big sky and Timeline, which I find to be amazing- sounding, very user friendly pedals. I've tried the BigSky through the AFx via an FX loop and it works fine.
I haven't quite been able to achieve the same sounds as the BigSky but I'll have to defer to someone more experienced (such as yourself) in the minutia of the AFx as to answer whether or not those sounds are achievable.
As for the timeline- I find the multi-delay to match/exceed most of its functions.
 
I have the Timeline and Blue Sky. Both are amazing. Once I moved from pedals/amp to the Axe-Fx I just spent TONS of time dialing in what I was getting with the Strymons. I pretty much recreated the sounds that I used and more (mostly "ice"/crystal style delays and ambient swell effects). The quality of Strymon is equal to the Axe-Fx IMO.

The great thing about the Strymon pedals is that you can get instantly great tones and only dive deep if you want. With the Axe-Fx I needed to spend a LOT of time getting my same ambient delays and reverbs that way I had them from the pedals, but again in the end - everything sounds great on the Axe-Fx.

It does seem like there are some really intricate and beautiful reverbs on the Big Sky (which I don't own) and trying to recreate them on the Axe-Fx seems pretty difficult.

Bottom line - the Axe-Fx has a crazy amount of parameters to tweak to get ambient sounds, you just gotta spend the time and kind of half know what you are doing (or download someones rad ambient patch!). I wouldn't say the pedals or the Axe-Fx are better than he other - I just look at it as the Axe can create most of those types of ambient sounds and more - and Strymon has great, easy to use sounds out of the gate with less tweaking...

Simeon from the forum is big into ambient stuff like I am - and has created a lot of cool delay and synth patches among others. You may wany to check his stuff out!
 
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yes they sound amazing. the best part is the truly inspirational presets. so many usable and inspiring ones to choose from you can get lost for hours scrolling and playing...that's a good thing.

can you get those sounds out of the Axe? you can get pretty close on the delays, not quite as much so with the verbs. like others have said, to do so takes quite a bit of time...so much so that often times inspiration will have come and gone by the time you get it there...if you even have the know how to build it in the first place. it's also a matter of using 3-4 blocks to get there...whereas in the BigSky it's a matter of one of the reverb machines in the unit and the pertinent settings. this is why many, including myself, have suggested a few all in one blocks, with limited parameters etc, to achieve some of these tones.
 
The thing about Strymon-type pedals is that there's usually more going on under the hood than just a delay or just a reverb. For example, I believe Yek posted a preset where to get a big sky reverb he chained 1-2 diffusers with complex settings, a stereo analog chorus with the drive turned down, and then a reverb block.

All that stuff is built into the functions of the pedals and the user can't access certain parts of those things.

You can program outstandingly crazy modulation, reverb, and delay stuff with the axe, but you need to understand what the effect you're trying to get to is doing first.
 
The Strymon pedals are 100% worth the hype. They're very well designed and crystal clear. As a self-professed gear head and an AxefxII owner the major problem I keep running into is NOT needing to buy excellent pedals and new gear. My little black box does everything already!
 
Yeah dude. I was just pointing out the sonic territory is already there in the axe. The reason people get pedals is because they immediately have an accessible character and you don't have to work to get to it. But at like what... $300+ it's often that I feel I would rather spend a day studying than toss extra complications (outboard gear) and money into a thing.
 
I run my Ultra, with all verbs off, into the Big Sky then into the board in stereo. Never had much luck via loop. What's cool is you can take an Axe preset, say Studio Lead, and vary it by a hundred different verbs on the fly. You also get familiar with verb preset names just like you do Axe preset names. So relatively few Axe presets combined with relatively few Big Sky presets will give a ton of results. Honestly I felt like I had an Axe II long before I actually got one. The sound is pristine.
 
Speculum Speculorum said:
Yeah dude. I was just pointing out the sonic territory is already there in the axe. The reason people get pedals is because they immediately have an accessible character and you don't have to work to get to it. But at like what... $300+ it's often that I feel I would rather spend a day studying than toss extra complications (outboard gear) and money into a thing.
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I heard you and agree.. Good point!
I've run into a few occasions (early on) where I gobbled up all my cpu with two amps, multiple modifiers, and High-res everything and big modulation/reverb usage and I had to learn to curb my presets as a result. So I could understand supplementing the axe with a kickass reverb or mod pedal to conserve cpu or simply playing with a new toy. If I did use other pedals with my AxefxII I would lean toward Strymon and TC Electronics, I suppose. But alas, I personally haven't had any issues regarding a need for sounds Fractal hasn't knocked out of the park yet!
 
I would suggest the same for Neunaber pedals.

Now that I have the AX8, for as much as I firmly believe that everything I need is right there and that Fractal effects are top-notch, having a pedal like the Immerse, will simplify presets and save CPU. So that, and the Morningstar MC6 are the only items on my list at the moment.

Strymon are right there at the top with digital effects. Empress does a great job, too. The Strymon Orbit is a great flanger, for instance. Their big 3 multi pedals are pretty amazing.

I definitely don't fully understand how to program everything that some of those pedals can do. Thankfully, I tend to keep things pretty simple; and, I enjoy trying and studying and tweaking others' presets to try and understand.
 
I use a BigSky and love it. People mostly like the Bigsky for the Bloom and Cloud reverbs...The AxeFX stuff is incredible, but just cannot do the bloom or cloud effects like the Bigsky can...it takes about 3-4 effects on the AxeFX to get close, which is then hard to set up for a foot controller to turn all those on or off if you don't use scenes. I think the BigSky is more than worth it.
 
I have the timeline and bigsky in a pedalboard, I wouldn't say they're better or worse, they're just different. The axe can probably achieve similar results by combining a few different blocks (especially for the bigsky). The way I see it is about compromise: I think that the tonal difference does not justify adding extra pedals to the axe fx as you can get pretty much "there" by using axe fx only. If I had to add extra pedals to the axe array of fx, those would probably be fuzz boxes which are still not very convincing within the digital world.
 
I don't have any experience with the Strymon boxes, but I've had an Eventide H9 for quite a while and it pairs up great with the Axe. As good as the effects are in the Axe, I still love using my H9. It's easier for me to dial in some sounds from the H9 than it is for me to dial them in on the Axe.

Plus, it's still fun to plug the H9 and a couple of dirt boxes into a real amp every once in a while.:openmouth:
 
Lionheart said:
...So, for you guys who have, how did you like them? And most importantly, do they sound any better than what we already have in the Axe-Fx?
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For the most part they sound really great. There are some algos in them that I would imagine to be hard to find a use for, but most are, if not practical, easy to integrate and have a lot of dimension to them.

Better? Not to me, not in sound quality. I only used the timeline and big Sky until we had that cpu-use reduction FW update. Since then, I was able to mimic all of my favorite TL/BS settings and sold them off.

They are probably more user friendly in the sense that you have to do some deep editing and critical listening if you want your tape delays to warble exactly the same way, etc. The flip side is I can make adjustments in the axefx I can't make on strymon pedals.
 
I've had a Timeline for a couple of years now, and only got my Axe-FX II earlier this year. As many have said, Strymon sound quality is really hard to fault, and coupling that with outstanding user friendliness, really good simulation of tape delays, and simple to use MIDI switching made for something I had absolutely no intention of replacing.

There are a few really mad sounding pitch shifted delays that I used to use on the Timeline. Haven't got around to trying to duplicate those with the Axe-FX yet, but I'm pretty confident I'll be able to recreate them. For the rest of the fairly "standard" tape and bucket brigade delays I think the Axe-FX sound quality is at least on a par, and I'm pretty cheerful about using Axe Edit to get what I need. I don't think I'm going to feel the need to use any pedals along with the Axe-FX yet.

Liam
 
I run several effects processor through the loop of my Axe II. Timeline is one of them. I can only echo what others have said - in order to emulate what is going on inside the Timeline, you'd use several effects blocks in the Axe, which might cost you the other ones you wanted to use to get "your sound". I have a lot of capabilities in my range of gear. The Axe is doing 90% of the lifting and many times 100%. But for the little sprinkles of pixy dust on top of what the Axe is doing, I like to engage other things in tandem with it. All of this is, of course, to mask my sloppy playing.
 
wangusmcgee said:
it takes about 3-4 effects on the AxeFX to get close, which is then hard to set up for a foot controller to turn all those on or off if you don't use scenes.
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i'd just like to point out that this isn't actually true. assign a footswitch to an external controller and then you can turn multiple blocks on and off with one switch. i don't use scenes, so for me, this is a great solution. i also don't use the default cc's assigned to block bypass. everything is done with external controllers on my board. infinite possibilities as you can also adjust block parameters at the same time.

as for the bigsky...it's been discussed many times before on this forum. it's not just a reverb. if anything, it's a combination of a plex delay and a reverb. just using those two blocks together in the axe can cop many of the bigsky presets.

i asked cliff many moons ago if it was possible to get an 8 plex delay in the axe (which would help in getting these type of sounds...any eventide user will tell you), but unfortunately there isn't enough memory available.
 
simeon said:
i asked cliff many moons ago if it was possible to get an 8 plex delay in the axe (which would help in getting these type of sounds...any eventide user will tell you), but unfortunately there isn't enough memory available.
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Too bad!
I still use some pedals along wit my axe fx. Just because I like the sound of them and can't get that exact same sound out of the axe fx. Also because I like to create sounds live on the fly without needing to have prepplanned presets or controllers. That is not possible with a multi effect like the axe fx.
 
SolarPoweredSD said:
I have the Timeline and Blue Sky. Both are amazing. Once I moved from pedals/amp to the Axe-Fx I just spent TONS of time dialing in what I was getting with the Strymons. I pretty much recreated the sounds that I used and more (mostly "ice"/crystal style delays and ambient swell effects). The quality of Strymon is equal to the Axe-Fx IMO.

The great thing about the Strymon pedals is that you can get instantly great tones and only dive deep if you want. With the Axe-Fx I needed to spend a LOT of time getting my same ambient delays and reverbs that way I had them from the pedals, but again in the end - everything sounds great on the Axe-Fx.

It does seem like there are some really intricate and beautiful reverbs on the Big Sky (which I don't own) and trying to recreate them on the Axe-Fx seems pretty difficult.

Bottom line - the Axe-Fx has a crazy amount of parameters to tweak to get ambient sounds, you just gotta spend the time and kind of half know what you are doing (or download someones rad ambient patch!). I wouldn't say the pedals or the Axe-Fx are better than he other - I just look at it as the Axe can create most of those types of ambient sounds and more - and Strymon has great, easy to use sounds out of the gate with less tweaking...

Simeon from the forum is big into ambient stuff like I am - and has created a lot of cool delay and synth patches among others. You may wany to check his stuff out!
Click to expand...

This is why I do wish some time would be spent on the effects. In particular I loved how Cliff re-did the wah so it was pretty easy to dial in a particular wah by name alone. I do wish an auto wah would be more turn and go and some other "pre-made" effects too. Kind of like the Standard/Ultra to the Axe Fx II in regards to the ease of amp switching. Axe Fx II was so much quicker and really took a lot less tweaking, if any, to get a great sound. Standard/Ultra took a lot of parameter tweaking in comparison.

Parameters are great, but having an array of stock pre-mades makes things really convenient.
 
The problem I am experiencing is that I can get some great ambient type presets from people (like Simeon - thanks!!) but they won't run on my AX8. I was hoping to use the AX8 at church, but after an evening of trying to get one of these presets to work on the AX8 by reducing all the blocks to their lowest CPU drain type, I still can't get even a Spring Reverb in under the CPU limit. I REALLY don't want to add another pedal to get some of the sounds I am after (and I am not really all that picky - close is good enough for me for these sounds). So I am discouraged at this point. I am even wondering if I need to return the AX8 and get a (choke) Helix for an all-in-one solution for church. (I can't believe I said that out loud!)
 
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