Any Strymon fans?

[RoyBoy]

+1 on the El Capistan. It's my only Strymon. In playing praise and worship, I find the pristine fidelity perfect for what the genre requires. For those concerned about power requirements, digital delays and compressors both require a strong, clean power source to deliver the way they should. I invested in a One Spot Pro a couple years back. A worthwhile investment if you have a lot of pedals and often use several of them simultaneously.

[BoneDigger]

So, school me a bit on this energy draw and how it's something I need to watch? Since I don't play out, the pedals are all hooked to power supplies which are plugged to a power strip. I use some individual plugs and some hooked to a power supply (5 spot or Voodoo). What do I need to do differently or watch out for?

[al_az]

So I use a power supply that has isolated outputs for each pedal. Similar to this one.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/det...l-power-supply

Notice there are only 1x 800, 2 x500, 2x 250 mA outputs. My TRIO pedal takes 800ma. Some strymons take 250 mA. The neo micro takes 180 mA.
So for everything to work correctly you have to match your pedals to your power. Also some pedals are 12 volt. If you just use the power adaptors that came with each pecal, no problem, except all the 'wall warts' will fill up a power bar quickly. I want only one power cord into one power supply into one board (lots of pedals).

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by BoneDigger

So, school me a bit on this energy draw and how it's something I need to watch? Since I don't play out, the pedals are all hooked to power supplies which are plugged to a power strip. I use some individual plugs and some hooked to a power supply (5 spot or Voodoo). What do I need to do differently or watch out for?

Very simplistically

There are two power elements voltage and amperage. Volts is the pressure and amps are the amount. One analogy is in a river the elevation drop ratio (or steepness of downstream pitch) is the volts,, and the amount of water is the amperage (like 20 ft wide or 50 ft wide).

Also note Volts is what is being supplied to the unit.... But amps is what the unit itself wants to draw (use)
Ok so the same thing applies to pedals.

As a general rule you are safe with mA's that are over the what the individual pedal draws ... BUT you do not want to plug into more than the recommended voltage.

You can run less volts than recommended which is why some power supplies list their basic connections as (9v-12v ) which I am guessing means it is pushing 9v, but will power a 12v pedal. But what you do not want to do is plug an 18v supply into a pedal rated only for 9v, because you could potentially burn up its internals (like plugging a 120 volt house appliance into a 240 volt circuit . ouch !!!

Note most power supplies have multiple 9v, or 9-12 v-- 100 mA connectors which is fine for most analog pedals.
Many also offer additional 12v and 18v connections with various mA ratings. And many also offer some higher mA connections like, 250 ,300, or 500 mA's in various voltages i.e.-- 9v,12v, or 18v

You can plug into more mA's than needed/recommended by the pedal specs (which is the recommended minimum for best performance) because it will still only (draw) what it needs out of what is available (as long as it is the correct voltage) You can plug into somewhat less mA's than the recommended a(to a point) , it will work and you won't hurt the unit, but you are probably not getting optimum performance sound wise.

For example your Big Sky is rated @ 9 v-- 300 mA's. So what you want is to plug it into a 9v- connection with 300 to 500 mA's

Any power supply unit that came with the pedal, will have the correct Volts and mA's. And the pedals manual will/should list its recommended voltage and mA requirements.

But with a third party power supply what you need to look at (either in the manual or sometimes printed right on top of the unit ) is what the voltage and mA, configuration for each of the multiple output connections are. And then choose the best option for the specific pedal spec. recommendations

When you get a 1/2 hour or so check out this

[daiku]

I have lots of Strymon stuff, but if I was going to recommend one of their pedals to start out with it would be the Flint (Reverb/Trem) or El Capistan(Tape Echo), or both. For most acoustic players, I would think this would provide most of what you would need in two pedals. My thought is it covers all the effects you would get out of a Fender Princeton Reverb with El Cap for room ambience. The other great thing about these, is they are much simpler than their big pedals I own(Timeline,BigSky,Mobius). I know the big pedals are complete overkill for my needs, but I am a software/engineering type, so I bought them because I love well executed products! Remember, this is supposed to be fun, yes?

[stevo58]

I have a Flint, a Deco, and a Lex. Strymon makes great stuff. I would start with a Flint - you get great Trem and reverb, including Fender ‘harmonic vibrato’ which is worth the price by itself. I use the Deco mostly as a slap back.

Yes watch your current. Add up the current draw of all your pedals and make sure your power supply delivers at least that much.

Steven

[Bluesdale]

Originally Posted by J Patrick

...I have a Flint and an El Cap on my board....pretty much covers all my ambient needs..and then some....although I wouldn’t mind adding a Lex....

Ditto on these two. The Brigadier is also a really sweet delay pedal but I've never had one.

For power, I use a Nomad Outlaw rechargeable pedalboard. Lot's of high powered outlets built in.

[angaval]

Originally Posted by daiku

I have lots of Strymon stuff, but if I was going to recommend one of their pedals to start out with it would be the Flint (Reverb/Trem) or El Capistan(Tape Echo), or both. For most acoustic players, I would think this would provide most of what you would need in two pedals. My thought is it covers all the effects you would get out of a Fender Princeton Reverb with El Cap for room ambience. The other great thing about these, is they are much simpler than their big pedals I own(Timeline,BigSky,Mobius). I know the big pedals are complete overkill for my needs, but I am a software/engineering type, so I bought them because I love well executed products! Remember, this is supposed to be fun, yes?

New to AGF and came across your post. Just purchased the Flint last week. Absolutely love it!!! I spent most of this weekend trying to decide between the El Cap and DIG and ended up going with the El Cap... should arrive tomorrow.

My question is, are you still satisfied with this combo? (Flint/El Cap) I play soley acoustic rootsey type stuff and just want to add some atmosphere without a lot of trickery and gimmicks.

There's not a lot of demos online, acoustic/El Cap, and it's got me a little spooked since it's mostly electric demos. You think this is a good fit?

[robj144]

Love Earthquake Device pedals, but I just got a Poly digit which can basically do anything you want. It has convolution reverb too based on reverb IRs. And, they are made entirely by one guy in Australia. He physically makes them, ships them, and does the coding. You can email him about bugs and he'll usually put out a firmware fix for the bug and new features almost weekly. I know because I emailed him and he fixed the bug for me.

Did I mention it's also two kinds of pedal in one too? You can switch between Beebo and Digit modes in which Beebo is modulation (with an awesome chorus and rotary, along with synth modules) and Digit is mostly reverb and delay. It's also cheaper than Strymons:

[robj144]

Double post...

[stephenT]

I have the Strymon LEX, Leslie speaker sound. After years of buying and then selling Leslie sim pedals I'm happy w/ the Strymon LEX, very convincing sounds and easy to use and a great size for my pedal board.

All of my Goodsell amps have tube driven tremolo and reverb, for which there is no suitable pedal substitute. I use a Source Audio Nemisis for it's many great delay sounds, a vintage Crybaby and a prototype Goodsell overdrive for the rare occasions I want distortion.

[Bill R]

I have a Strymon Dig dual delay pedal and use the Zuma power supply for my pedalboard. I'm quite pleased with both of these products.

Bill

[dnf777]

No doubt, they are top shelf. I only had the reverb, and thought it was a cut above other pedals Ive owned in the 100-200 range. Then I sold off several pedals to buy a Helix FX pedal, and have never looked back. It has the ability to accurately reproduce almost every pedal ever made, and then some! Okay, that is a slight exaggeration, but not much of one. It has really become my all-in-one pedal, and does everything my strymon did.