01—Strymon
BigSky
Defining the modern ambient-guitar reverb sound — every Justin Vernon shimmer chord runs through one of these.
Twelve years old and still the reference. The MkII updates the I/O and presets but the algorithms are the algorithms. Buy with confidence.
02—On the bench
Twelve reverb algorithms — Hall, Plate, Spring, Swell, Bloom, Shimmer, Cloud, Chorale, Magneto, Nonlinear, Reflections, and Room — running on the same SHARC DSP that Strymon uses for its boutique line. BigSky is the modern standard for high-end pedalboard reverb: every algorithm is convincing, the stereo image is wide and stable, and the preset system stores 300 slots accessible via MIDI. The Shimmer and Bloom algorithms in particular shaped the sound of mid-2010s indie and ambient guitar — pour a clean chord into Shimmer with the mod knob at 9 o'clock and you've made a Bon Iver record. Twelve years in, the BigSky is still the reverb every other reverb is benchmarked against.
- 01Shimmer is the canonical octave-up reverb
- 02Bloom is a swelled, almost endless wash
- 03Plate algorithm holds up against real plate emulations
- 04Magneto adds tape echo into the reverb tail
- 05stereo image is wide without sounding fake
03—In the room
Where else this pedal lives.
- Justin Vernon
- The Edge
- John Mayer
- Adam Granduciel
Meris MercuryX if you want the next generation; BigSky if you want the proven one.