Strymon, a company that built its name on clean, warm and lush tones, has finally entered the “dirty” pedal distortion market with Riverside, described as “the culmination of a thorough analysis of numerous analog and vacuum tube circuits.” The company’s goal was to deliver a new world of harmonically rich, versatile, tube-inspired drive sounds, bringing a new approach to the world of drive sounds.
Featuring an analog JFET front-end, the pedal is designed to respond to your guitar’s dynamics and feel, while the DSP design generates dynamic complexity and pleasing harmonics at every stage, providing sparking cleans, mild overdrives, high-gain leads, and heavy saturated distortions. What’s most striking is the under-the-hood technology that makes continuous adjustments, tuning the circuit for optimum tone.
The three-position Presence switch tailors the highest frequencies, allowing Riverside to integrate perfectly with any amp or setup, no matter how dark or bright. Check out the video below and hear how it sounds.
Strymon Riverside, Builder’s Notes
A new world of drive.
Riverside is the culmination of a thorough analysis of numerous analog and vacuum tube circuits. Our goal? To deliver a new world of harmonically rich, incredibly versatile, tube-inspired drive sounds. We didn’t want to build just another distortion or overdrive. We knew we must examine what has been done, and bring a new approach to the world of drive sounds.Discover your amp’s potential.
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. Our analog JFET front-end ensures that Riverside responds to your guitar with uncompromised dynamics and feel. The precision crafted DSP generates dynamic complexity and pleasing harmonics at every stage, letting your amp shine at any gain level. Riverside takes your amp to places you never knew it could go.Infinite sweet spot.
Riverside’s continuously variable circuit tuning dynamically tweaks multiple parameters under the hood so that the sweet spot follows you at any gain setting. As you turn the Drive knob, Riverside makes continuous adjustments, tuning the circuit for optimum tone. 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.
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Flexibility to adapt to any amp.
Your amp choice has a large influence on the sound of any drive pedal connected to it. Riverside’s musical 3-band EQ, with independent Bass, Middle and Treble knobs, is designed to complement your amp’s tone with the flexibility needed to dial in your sound effectively and efficiently. The three-position Presence switch tailors the highest frequencies, allowing Riverside to integrate perfectly with any amp or setup, no matter how dark or bright.Digital or analog? We chose both.
The first stage of Riverside’s custom multistage drive topology is an all-analog, ultra low noise, discrete, class-A JFET circuit. This gain stage is digitally controlled to maximize headroom while adding as much as 20dB of pure analog gain, with tight integration to the subsequent DSP gain stages.With our hybrid approach you get the best of both analog and digital worlds: The JFET stage provides exceptional touch sensitivity and dynamic interaction with your guitar, while the incredibly powerful SHARC DSP facilitates the great level of detailed complexity and responsiveness you’ll want to hear.
