Strymon Iridium Round Amp vs Joyo American Sound

[Thin white duke]

This is a nice video where we can see a comparison between the cheapest and the most expensive pedal of the same type.

Round Amp means that the guy is using a Fender simulation, just like the Joyo.

I'm a long time Joyo A.S. user and i still like it a lot, i think for those who only need one clean sound to play direct is still one of the best if not the best pedal around considering the price.

I'll probably buy the Mooer Micro D.I. to put after it, i've watched some videos and it sounds even better with an active d.i. with cab sim.

The Palmer pocket amp mk2 is another option, i'll see.

Cheers.

 

[VintageSG]

Ah yes, the Joyo A.S

When I bought mine, the only question I had was why didn't I buy one when the first user reviews came around. A fantastic pedal at a bargain price, and yes, an active D.I with cab emulation adds a certain something to the sound. Daft though this'll come across as, Joyo --> active D.I --> ART Tube MP --> mixer/interface makes for a lovely little setup for home noodling.

In the video above, the Joyo acquits itself well.

 

[Thin white duke]

Ah yes, the Joyo A.S

When I bought mine, the only question I had was why didn't I buy one when the first user reviews came around. A fantastic pedal at a bargain price, and yes, an active D.I with cab emulation adds a certain something to the sound. Daft though this'll come across as, Joyo --> active D.I --> ART Tube MP --> mixer/interface makes for a lovely little setup for home noodling.

In the video above, the Joyo acquits itself well.

Yes, i tell you what, i was considering the Mooer Radar but since i only need one clean sound i think that an analog d.i. would be fine and also because the Joyo eq is so powerful that i can achieve so many sounds.

Would you really put the ART Tube MP after a D.I. ?

Does it makes sense ?

 

[naveed211]

Honestly, I was disappointed with the Iridium and sold it (no returns right now with everything going on, bummer).

The Iridium sounds good, but so does the Joyo. In reality I was hoping the Iridium would blow my software amps out of the water, but really I didn’t like it any better than the amps in GarageBand and still preferred S-Gear quite a bit.

I had the Joyo AC Tone. Good tone, not just for the price. They make good stuff.

 

[Thin white duke]

Honestly, I was disappointed with the Iridium and sold it (no returns right now with everything going on, bummer).

The Iridium sounds good, but so does the Joyo. In reality I was hoping the Iridium would blow my software amps out of the water, but really I didn’t like it any better than the amps in GarageBand and still preferred S-Gear quite a bit.

I had the Joyo AC Tone. Good tone, not just for the price. They make good stuff.

I'm sorry for your disappointment, sometimes we buy some very expensive gear to find out later that we could just have more or less the same result with much less money...

 

[naveed211]

I'm sorry for your disappointment, sometimes we buy some very expensive gear to find out later that we could just have more or less the same result with much less money...

Don’t know til you try, but it also taught the lesson that if something sounds good and works, stick with it versus chasing something “better.”

Oh well, didn’t lose too much cash on it.

 

[VintageSG]

Would you really put the ART Tube MP after a D.I. ?

It's probably one of those 'we all hear things differently' situations.

My D.I requires phantom power, the ART provides it and gives a balanced XLR to the mixer. Live, I wouldn't bother, but for home use?, it sounds great
My ART ( and Behringer ) valve pre-amps give some real sparkle post D.I boxen/pre mixer. I use one for the Trio+ and one for guitar. My mixer pre's are very good indeed, but man alive, those inexpensive valve pre's do something my ears agree with. Note that's post valve swap 12AU7 all the way in those things.

Straight to mixer, the Joyo is OK. Joyo --> D.I and the sound opens out to be way more than OK. I think it's due to electrickery, faeries and magic, or more likely, impedance matching.

I can heartily recommend an active D.I post Joyo A.S. D.I boxes are so damn useful. I'm currently using a Behringer Ultra-G for the guitar and a Behringer Ultra for the Trio+, and very good they are too. The Ultra-G has switchable 'cab emulation', which is really more a tone slope. Does it work?, yes, very well. If you have a DAW and impulse responses, you may get better, but for noodling about at home, and dumping through a P.A live, it works extremely well. Other active D.I which feature cab emulation are available. They all seem to do the same job.

 

[Thin white duke]

Double

 

[naveed211]

I’d wonder how these all sound in a live setting, but I doubt the Iridium would be head and shoulders better if it wasn’t so in the recording realm. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s not what I’d primarily use it for in any case.

My last direct setup I had was an Effectrode Blackbird into a Torpedo CAB and I thought it sounded terrible recorded, but sounded great live. If only I had checked out Joyo sooner, probably could’ve saved a lot of money.

 

[Thin white duke]

I’d wonder how these all sound in a live setting, but I doubt the Iridium would be head and shoulders better if it wasn’t so in the recording realm. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s not what I’d primarily use it for in any case.

My last direct setup I had was an Effectrode Blackbird into a Torpedo CAB and I thought it sounded terrible recorded, but sounded great live. If only I had checked out Joyo sooner, probably could’ve saved a lot of money.

That could be possible, this guy sounds really great, it has an impressive eq.....

 

[Thin white duke]

It's probably one of those 'we all hear things differently' situations.

My D.I requires phantom power, the ART provides it and gives a balanced XLR to the mixer. Live, I wouldn't bother, but for home use?, it sounds great
My ART ( and Behringer ) valve pre-amps give some real sparkle post D.I boxen/pre mixer. I use one for the Trio+ and one for guitar. My mixer pre's are very good indeed, but man alive, those inexpensive valve pre's do something my ears agree with. Note that's post valve swap 12AU7 all the way in those things.

Straight to mixer, the Joyo is OK. Joyo --> D.I and the sound opens out to be way more than OK. I think it's due to electrickery, faeries and magic, or more likely, impedance matching.

I can heartily recommend an active D.I post Joyo A.S. D.I boxes are so damn useful. I'm currently using a Behringer Ultra-G for the guitar and a Behringer Ultra for the Trio+, and very good they are too. The Ultra-G has switchable 'cab emulation', which is really more a tone slope. Does it work?, yes, very well. If you have a DAW and impulse responses, you may get better, but for noodling about at home, and dumping through a P.A live, it works extremely well. Other active D.I which feature cab emulation are available. They all seem to do the same job.

Thanks a lot, very helpful, a friend of mine uses the ART Tube MP very often for live and he says more or less what you' ve said, it warms up the sound in a very nice way.

To be honest i tought about the Art but the Cab. Sim. that i get from a D.I. probably is more what i need, i want to put everything on the board and the Art quite big....

I don't know, i'll watch some videos and see what it sounds like....

 

[Shango66]

Spent time with these two recently.
The Iridium is a great platform for a quick plug n play.
easy to get a great tone/feel and play away for hours.

The 2notes Cab M I use with a captor on my tube amps or with a Joyo AS/Tech 21 Character series pedals in front.
It has a lot of tweak ability and also sounds and feels great.

In the pic above I was testing the amps in the iridium going into the Cab M. Kind of overkill really but I enjoyed the experiment.

 

[Thin white duke]

Spent time with these two recently.
The Iridium is a great platform for a quick plug n play.
easy to get a great tone/feel and play away for hours.
View attachment 724852
The 2notes Cab M I use with a captor on my tube amps or with a Joyo AS/Tech 21 Character series pedals in front.
It has a lot of tweak ability and also sounds and feels great.

In the pic above I was testing the amps in the iridium going into the Cab M. Kind of overkill really but I enjoyed the experiment.

Very good pedals you've got there, i have to say that they are too much for me, i only need a good clean amp. sim. sound and i find the Joyo A.S. plus an analog active D.I. more than enough for my needs.

I will never use all the features in those two pedals, i know that i will only use a Fender clean., i'll save some money.

 

[PARCO]

I had the American Sound pedal but I sent it back because it would make a popping sound when I stepped on the switch. I liked the sound of the pedal but I wanted to be able to kick it in when I wanted a change in sound and I couldn't deal with the popping. I'm still looking for a pedal like the AS that doesn't make that popping sound. Any recommendations?

 

[Thin white duke]

I had the American Sound pedal but I sent it back because it would make a popping sound when I stepped on the switch. I liked the sound of the pedal but I wanted to be able to kick it in when I wanted a change in sound and I couldn't deal with the popping. I'm still looking for a pedal like the AS that doesn't make that popping sound. Any recommendations?

Harley Benton, and Amoon American Sound are the same pedals but they probably share the popping as well, the Harley 100%

Another one that looks lke the same is the Caline - CP-55 Central Station American Sound.

An option is an A/B box...

 

[Dobronaut]

Parco, I suspect your popping noise was a defective unit. Neither my AC nor my AS do that.

 

[Thin white duke]

Parco, I suspect your popping noise was a defective unit. Neither my AC nor my AS do that.

Mine does the same popping that you can find in other pedals, for example Electro Harmonix pedals do the same thing, to me is not an issue anyway, mine is always on but it wouldn't have been a problem to switch it on / off during a song...

 

[maxvintage]

Poor tech 21. The American sound is a clone of the California Blond.

 

[Thin white duke]

Poor tech 21. The American sound is a clone of the California Blond.

Yes, not only that, there are 3 - 4 other brands that make it.

 

[wulfenganck]

I own a Sansamp Tech21 "Blonde" (which is their take on Fender); a Harley Benton AC Tone (Harley Benton is just the german brand-name for Joyo, it's 100% the same pedal); the AC is their take on Vox ACs) and the Palmer Pocket Amp Mk2. All of them were bought for solving live-emergency, i.e. amp-breakdown and for a small session-pedalboard going directly to mixing desk. Of course, both AC Tone as the Blonde can be used as a common overdrive pedal in front of your amp (or even as a standalone preamp into the effects-return or power-amp in of your amp)

I also own the Harley Benton Clean Glass (Fender) and Golden Face (Marshall) from the "Micro Stomp" series. They are designed to work as common dirt-pedals OR direct to mixing desks. I use those 2 for my busking-pedalboard, going directly into a Laney A-Fresco fullrange amp. They work with fine that, but with only one tone-knob, they need quite some eq-tweaking on a mixing desk.

The Pocket Amp suffers from the lack of a midrange eq-section, you need to tweak the sound with the EQ of the mixing-desk. But I still keep it in my "emergency-case" for gigs.
The AC Tone is a bit noisy. That's okay when you're up for a clean (or better clean'ish) tone, but if you want to use the crunch tone, it will be noisy.
Another flaw is the quality of workmanship/parts: the jack for the power supply is rather delicate, I had quite a lot of drop-outs or really awful noises, when accidently touching a power-supply-cable. That's why I don't use the AC for my gigging-gear.
Instead I have the Blonde on my "direct to mixing desk" board, as this is a high quality product, robust, solid, quality parts and workmanship - of course it's about 4 or 5 times the price.....

All of them provide a more or less decent enough cleantone for running a gig after amp-failure.
None of them made me want to change my setup and leave my amps at home.
The Strymon Iridium seems to be advanced technology and maybe works more satisfying as amp-substitution, but I'm already very happy with my present setup.