Is the Strymon BigSkyMX Worth the Price Tag?

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[Music] well hey how's it going so we're here to talk about the stman Big Sky MX big box Reverb and to decide is it worth the $679 price tag um and that answer could be different depending on if you already have a original Big Sky or if you might have the Maris Mercury X over there or if you just have like a single Reverb or a couple Reverb pedals uh but you know some of the things that stman put in here after about a decade or so of having the the OG one on the market um they upgraded the processor made it a lot lot more powerful I think somewhere around in the neighborhood of three times more powerful they gave the ability to do two reverbs at once and also put in um impulse responses or IR where you can actually put um capture reverbs from actual places and then of course like they upgraded the screen from the regular LED to an OLED and adjusted some things uh in the UI and like kind of giving you also like on thefly adjustments for parameters one and two and then like selecting what that is so there's a few things you know that you can you can tweak but let's let's kind of figure some things out let's see what we sound like um right now we've got my let's see clean tone right now is a Fender Custom Shop Telly going into a walrus audio 385 Mark I into the Big Sky MX into the HX stomp that you see blinking over there on the upper right left upper left all right here we [Music] go so that's that's what it is clean and here with this little didy I [Music] [Applause] made cool that's an Impulse response and a Magneto Reverb and uh they're running in parallel right now but we can change that we can make it into series and we can split it left and right so let's do that you you tweak this punch that button right there this type and you make sure nope goodness didn't do it right punch it again until the middle there you go until the middle is selected uh parameter or sorry parallel lay series one into two this sounds like [Music] this series two into [Music] one can split it left and right uh Reverb One which is the impulse on the left here the Magneto on the [Music] right and you can switch [Music] that so that's that and just the ability to make those adjustments there it's it's pretty easy to do that yeah um let's make a new one let's make a totally new one let's see what we can kind of mess around with okay here start with the blank one uh blank ones just have Cloud [Music] algorithm and for those of you who want to know if it can do the cloud burst thing with the Ensemble they added that in I'll show you can [Music] adjust so that's pretty cool now let's just kind of move over and let's do [Music] nonlinear make a really long Decay 2,000 milliseconds so 2 seconds [Music] I do like how you can do that when you're moving things around it gives you an instant visual feedback there [Music] so that's the low end right there that is the shape okay let's do uh bounce Maybe [Music] okay I just want to kind of save that as I'm going so I'm going to hold this down right I hold it down right yeah then push it again save complete I'm glad that it tell you to that now let's mess around with some of the um parameters uh you got the low end here press that again get in there let's beef that low end of a bit did the shape already chop I want to do that I don't know what it is let's check it out let's put that to 11 it's kind of like a trim right I dig it maybe bring it down down to a tad oh okay there you [Music] go cool but I can already tell you I want the Decay down little [Music] faster cool switch over to diffusion let's really diffuse that [Music] thing okay a late decay yeah let's do it and a late level let's do that [Music] too definitely diffuses it I like it uh mod speed oh six output level as high as it goes panning I have it centered we'll leave that for now infinite mode at freeze but I want it on infinite infinite latch at latching all right so let's see where we are with that sub now [Music] and infinite kind of um it keeps it it takes what you have in the Reverb chain or Reverb tank and just keeps it going infinitely but it also then applies the Reverb to what you're doing so if you add more in it's also reverbed [Music] right if you do it to freeze it just takes a snapshot of what you put in there and then anything coming in is not affected so so we just made one we made a really neat little uh and let's name this thing right now hold it down right 3 seconds huh cool now how do I get over nope I want that how do I get over ah there let's just call it first because this is the first one I'm making seriously no it's not actually I've made a couple others but this is what I'm making with you guys how to spell save complete all right we got one let's make it dual though RB off let's make it let's do parallel I can do that tap that again let's not do Cloud let's do I like the Magneto one so let's do that one um hold on all right so uh low end it's fine diffusion there heads let's go ahead and do like three heads spaced unevenly that's cool ping Hong let's do that on output level that's cool pan that's cool uh O Let's freeze that one because I think I know what it's going to do we're going to try try something out all right so let's check it out what is this sound like [Music] as you can tell I really like the uh delay type reverbs right all right so what I want to check something out real quick if I hit infinite [Music] H that's an interesting [Music] thing I don't know if it hurted on that end with you guys but when I was went into it the in infinite I felt like it started to build on itself and it started to kind of just distort not uh the Distortion Like if I'm just jamming it right there's a little bit of distortion there from or overdrive from the the pedal that the walrus the 385 but [Music] um so as it builds up [Music] there you hear that [Music] [Laughter] d [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] very interesting Okay so [Music] okay so uh it looks like having the output level dimed up to 16 which is what it comes on uh for the blanks um blank presets kind of made a little bit too much and it kind it sounded like it overd drove internally inside the pedal um I don't know if y'all heard it but I did okay um well I like this in parall but let's check it out and see one to [Music] two two to [Music] one for fun left to right not left to right left and right [Music] [Music] think I might like that one the most so let's save it 3 seconds calling it first [Music] let that feed no okay so you asked is it worth it well I just showed you how quick and easy it is to make a sound um it's a stman it's a stman Reverb and stman reverbs are classic a lot of people love them I have never been the biggest fan to be honest I kind of feel like the stman sound like that it's got this warmth to it but to me it feels un the Reverb side just a little bit too modeled I I love the delays don't get me wrong like the delays all day long the valante the lcap the timeline yes they they've got that thing going and uh for me personally I guess the I guess reverbs side not as much and that's okay now for you if you've been a dieh hard OG fan you've had that original for 10 plus years uh you you would like put it in your casket and be buried with it then absolutely get the Big Sky MX you're going to get the ability to do two reverbs at once you're going to be able to add in some IRS uh and you'll be able to quickly navigate uh it's really really cool uh from that standpoint if you're one of those uh that really enjoys the meis things like the Mercury X which you'd already gotten because that was the Nate latest and greatest and now this this guy comes out do you get the Big Sky MX and I would say if you were one of those di hard string people you might really enjoy the Big Sky MX but if you really enjoy all of the parameter changing that you can do on the Mercury X then you might not like the Big Sky MX because comparatively the Big Sky MX has way fewer parameters that you can change so like on the nonlinear here we go tap that you've got lowend shape chop diffusion late Decay late level mod speed output level pan and then infinite mode so like what's this switch and then some couple things like latch boost persist that's kind of like more Global type stuff that's it that's all you can tweak it might be enough for you it might not I don't know that's something for you to decide folks thank you for being here this has been a lot uh longer than I thought it would be and I'm okay with that I love just diving into some of these things together appreciate it uh we will be of course doing videos that compare the original Big Sky with the new Big Sky MX and comparing the Mercury x to the Big Sky MX so stay tuned for those I'll be working on that but uh a lot of people asking my take on the new Big Sky MX and there we go thank you so much until next time hit like subscribe comment visit our patreon join us over there peace