Strymon recently introduced its Riverside Multistage drive, the culmination of a thorough analysis of numerous vacuum tube circuits. From the company:
Riverside’s cascading gain stages create harmonically rich tones that are immensely musical and natural—from silky clean overdrive to colossal distortion and all points between.
The analog JFET gain stage ensures that Riverside responds to your guitar with uncompromised dynamics and feel. The precision-crafted DSP gain stages generate dynamic complexity and pleasing harmonics, letting your amp shine at any gain level. Riverside takes your amp to places you never knew it could go.
“What we’ve done is chosen to use both analog and digital gain stages to allow Riverside to react to dynamics and feel and response as well as have the flexibility that would be very difficult to achieve in a purely analog solution,” said Gregg Stock, Strymon analog engineer. “With our hybrid approach you get the best of both analog and digital worlds.”
Riverside’s unique continuously variable circuit tuning dynamically tweaks many parameters under the hood so that the tonal sweet spot follows the player at any gain setting. This results in an incredibly versatile drive pedal that is equally capable of providing sparking cleans, mild overdrives, high-gain leads, and heavy saturated distortions.
“As the Drive knob is turned, Riverside makes continuous adjustments, tuning the circuit for optimum tone,” said Pete Celi, Strymon sound designer and DSP engineer. “This gives the player a tonal sweet spot at every position of the Drive knob.”
Available for $299, Riverside is designed and built in the U.S. and housed in a rugged anodized aluminum chassis.
The pedal is sold directly through the Strymon online store and through select authorized Strymon dealers.
To find out more, visit strymon.net.
