Strymon’s new pedal is the Iridium floor-based amp modeller and cab sim

Last week, Strymon took to social media to tease a new guitar pedal, and now it has revealed the Iridium – a pedalboard amp modeler, which promises authentic valve amp tones and “unprecedented impulse response speaker cabinet realism” when going direct into a PA, recording interface or headphones.

Key to this claim of authenticity is the new ‘Matrix Modeling’ technology, which Strymon claims faithfully captures the subtleties of each of the three classic amps models within – round (based on a Fender Deluxe Reverb), chime (based on a Vox AC30) and punch (based on a Marshall Plexi Super Lead 1959).

In addition to these three classic amp sounds, the Iridium also features nine IR cab sim models (three for each amp), and perhaps most interestingly of all a ‘room’ switch, which provides ‘adjustable room ambiance’ – effectively a hybrid room reverb that combines a 256 millisecond stereo impulse response with Strymon’s reverb tank algorithms.

In practice, this is designed to give the emulated tones the ‘airiness’ of a real room – something that’s often lacking with IR cab sims. As you’d expect with any amp simulator, you also get a classic three-band tone stack and a drive control to tweak your chosen amplifier to taste.

While the stereo-outs of the Iridium are primarily designed to be used as a stereo floor-based amp going into either a PA or recording interface, it also has a secondary benefit as a high-end practice tool. Thanks to the presence of a 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom of the pedal, you can plug in and enjoy the Iridium’s tones through your cans.

As you’d expect from Strymon, there’s plenty more under the hood of the Iridium, including a low-noise JFET front-end preamp that offers 20dB of analogue gain before your guitar tone hits the amp-modeling DSP. As with most Strymon pedals, we also have MIDI and expression pedal control, plus the ability to store up to four amp and cab presets.

Here the Iridium in action, featuring the guitar stylings of Vanessa ‘VAVÁ’ Wheeler, in the video below:

The Strymon Iridium is available to order now priced at $399 – for more information see the Strymon website.