Strymon Iridium Amp & IR Cab

I was looking for an amp modeler for my recording and live setup and I've put this Iridium in my cart as soon as Thomann had it available because I trust so much on Strymon products.

I've had Kemper head, Hx stomp and Fractal AX8 (my favorite of them all), so I have quite an experience with modelers.

I've purchased the Iridium mainly for its pedal format and the ease of use. I didn't want to navigate through dozens of menus just to make a decent sound, neither I wanted a big all-in-one pedalboard because I go to gigs and rehearsals by bike or public transportation. Plus I already have some effect pedals.

The amps and cabinets sound great. Responsive to the touch and faithful to the sound they're emulating. Distorted sounds clean up really well with guitar volume knob and are easy to manage with the effective eq controls. The Marshall amp is very noisy with the gain past 2 'o clock, but I guess a real Marshall is not that quiet...

Anyway, I mostly play jazz through and AER compact amp and the Iridium sounds great before it. It gives the amp that valve feeling I've been missing for years. Sounds fantastic via studio monitors as well. I'm not quite satisfied about the room sounds, I would have preferred an actual reverb algorithm, but I can easily solve the problem by putting my ambient fx after the Iridium. Overdrive pedals sound very good before the Iridium, which behaves like a real amp.

Possible uses:
- Live without amps or as a backup in case your valve amp fails
- Live plugged in the return jack of your valve amp (without cab simulation), as it was a preamp
- In studio to record with a realistic sound without micing any amp or opening CPU-killersplugins.

I moved to an apartment and even with a small amp it is not practical to play in the evening at a decent volume.

I research theDSM Humbolt and several other units before going with the Strymon.
I have a lot of pedals to connect and wanted something that would take them well.
Several days worth of reviews later I chose the Iridium.

I purchased the Iridium to plug in a pedal board and listen through headphones. It does this incredibly well. There is enough variety in the 3 amps x 3 cabs to be able to dial in the tone you are looking for.

I haven’t experimented with loading 3rd party IR’s but don’t think it will be necessary. I’m using a decent pair of headphones and the sound is really full and the level control works well. You can crank this up to loud is more good levels.

I’m looking forward to getting into recording through this unit. As with other Strymon gear the quality is top notch.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants to do some silent practice without sacrificing the quality of your sound. 5 stars.

I love it, i really really love everything about it.

Story from the studio: i played with two «65 amps» in stereo, but ended up using the iridium instead, because it just sounded so terribly good. And thats also because im used to that «direct» sound. It sits so freaking nice in a mix, compared to regular miced cabinets (sm57 + something else..). Especially when it comes to heavy effectized gitarsound from a huge pedalboard - tube amps dont handle the headroom from multiple delays and reverbs. At least not in my experience with mesa boogies or 65 amps (65 amps is so much tube-compression that you will melt away in beautiful harmony, or something).

Only really troubling downside of the iridium is that it actually has turned itself off when all settings is at full(full gain, full volume, full bass, full treble....) my guess is that i have it connected to the «voodoo labs digital power», wich is 400 mA. And iridium needs between 300 and 500 mA to deal with all possible tasks. So i guess i need to feed it 500mA to handle all settings to max. Btw, it can Djent! It definitely can djent. Even with a danelectro baritone with lipstick pickups.... just push it with an overdrive in front, and a tight noise gate after (fortin zuul). thats a lot of fun...

I absolutely LOVE this amp sim pedal. It has absolutely inspired me to go back to using my much loved pedals in place of the helix.. I bought this so that i can run my original pedals into a headrush frfr 108 speaker. The sound is fantastic. Like all Strymon pedals, the Iridium is nicely built and is very high quality. It is fantastic at what it does. It models 3 classic amps, a vox ac30, a Fender tweed and a Marshall plexi, and it does this to perfection.

Pros .. sounds fantastic, can be used with an frfr speaker which means no lugging heavy amps to gigs. It is a high quality premium product.

Cons.. not really a con, but is a little expensive for a pedal, BUT, it IS worth it and basically replaces a more expensive and heavy amp.

I highly recommend it.

I only received this a couple of days ago as I was wanting a pedal to use with a small board of mine for silent practice. I wasn't holding out much hope as I had tried other amp sim pedals before that weren't great. I knew that Strymon make good gear having used some of their other pedals but I wasn't expecting this. The minute it arrived I took it out of the box, plugged it into the end of my pedalboard and plugged headphones into it to try out. It is absolutely amazing. I can't get over how good it sounds. If you need a small amp solution for silent practice/going direct at gigs or to plug into an audio interface for recording then this is it. I'm delighted with this purchase!

Appeared in 2019 .. I bought it at the end of 2021 and it is simply the easiest super quality amp cab simulator for me that is on the market so far, it helps me in rehearsals not to carry my entire amplifier, at home just for quiet hours it is the best choice, its sounds are just great fender - marshall really good work, i can change the IR, it accepts the front and rear pedals wonderfully, I connect directly to my sound card or console when I rehearse (via DI most of the time proD2 and the results are perfect of course there is no sound output or volume as mentioned in many forums ..) I would easily recommend it to fellow musicians