Strymon NightSky

The Strymon NightSky is a stereo reverb pedal from Strymon that the maker calls a "time-warped reverberator": a reverb whose pitch, size and harmonic content can be bent and shaped while it plays, rather than a simulation of a room. Strymon describes it as applying "mind-bending pitch and harmonic manipulation to your reverb tails, with synth-like filter sweeps"¹. It runs 32-bit floating point processing on a SHARC DSP, keeps the dry signal on an analog path, and is aimed squarely at ambient players and sound designers¹.

Strymon's sound designer and DSP engineer Pete Celi presents the pedal in the maker's own in-depth tour, and Strymon positions it as a reverb that "turned reverb into an instrument"¹².

An experimental reverb with pitch and filter shaping

Most reverb pedals give you a fixed algorithm and let you adjust decay and tone. The NightSky instead builds its reverb around a variable rate core: the SIZE/PITCH knob increases the size of the reverb core to create a larger "space" for reflections, and as it does so it also shifts the pitch of the reverb, with a pitch range of 2.5 octaves when QUANTIZE is set to smooth and two octaves in half step or scale mode⁴. A QUANTIZE function snaps that pitch movement to intervals: at noon it sits in the middle of the range, at minimum it is one octave up, and at maximum one octave down⁴. You can also select one of eight scales that determine the quantization intervals of the SIZE/PITCH knob by pressing and holding the QUANTIZE button and pressing the corresponding preset button⁴.

Beyond pitch, the pedal adds Shimmer, Glimmer, Drive and a resonant filter to the reverb tail², and a MOD section lets you modulate the reverb itself. TARGET selects what the modulation is applied to: "verb" modulates the delay lines within the regenerating reverb core, and "pitch" modulates the size, or process rate, of the reverb core⁴. SHAPE selects the modulating waveform from six options, including triangle (a wave that rises and falls evenly, becoming a sine wave when TARGET is set to filter), square (jumps between two fixed values) and ramp (rises gradually, falls abruptly)⁴. SPEED adjusts the modulation rate from 0.06Hz, a 16 second sweep, to 12Hz, a 0.08 second sweep¹.

The DECAY section's TEXTURE button selects one of three reverb types, Sparse, Dense and Diffuse, and MusicRadar's Jonathan Horsley described how they differ at launch⁵:

A Pre-Delay live edit function, reached by pressing and holding the TEXTURE button and turning the REVERB knob, adjusts the time between the dry signal and the onset of the reverb, left for shorter and right for longer⁴.

Presets, MIDI and expression

The pedal holds 16 presets accessible from the front panel and 300 via MIDI¹. Its three footswitches are On, Favorite and Infinite¹. The Favorite footswitch saves your current knob settings, and if the pedal is in Sequence mode and responding to MIDI Clock, the sequence runs as soon as you tap Favorite⁶.

MIDI is fully featured, transmitting and receiving over 5-pin DIN, USB and even the expression jack, supporting MIDI CCs, program changes and MIDI clock sync¹. MIDI inputs include the 5-pin DIN port, a 1/4" TRS MIDI input at the EXP jack when set to MIDI mode, and USB⁶. The manual's MIDI specification is at page 15 of the user manual⁷. Extra INTERVAL options are available by sending MIDI CC# 26 with values 0 to 25, a two octave range in half step increments: value 0 is one octave down, value 8 is down a major 3rd, value 19 is up a tritone and value 25 is one octave up⁸⁴.

The EXP jack can be set to several modes¹:

• Expression Pedal
• MIDI, giving three presets via the MultiSwitch Plus or 300 presets via MIDI
• Preset Up/Down
• MOD, TONE or VOICE bypass

Strymon recommends an expression pedal with a 25k Ohm minimum potentiometer⁹. The USB jack also handles firmware updates¹.

Specifications

The third pedal in Strymon's Sky series

The NightSky is the latest and most experimental member of Strymon's Sky line of reverb pedals, following the BlueSky and BigSky¹¹¹². Guitar World's Trevor Curwen notes that where the earlier Sky pedals went some way into altered reverb, the NightSky "ventures far deeper into that rabbit hole of altered reverbs and otherworldly ambience"¹¹. It was announced in September 2020, available for pre-order at $429¹³¹⁴, and by October 2022 it had been out for a little over two years¹⁴. Strymon has since extended the family with the BigSky MX and Cloudburst, and the NightSky itself now exists as a plugin, "NightSky's time-warped reverb, now inside your DAW"².

What reviewers said

Guitar.com's Richard Purvis reviewed it at launch and highlighted the practical side of the design: "An analogue dry path means your original signal runs through without any digital tampering"¹². His review compared it against the Eventide BlackHole, Empress Reverb and Meris Mercury7 as alternatives in the same experimental reverb space¹². MusicRadar's review team listed its origin as the USA¹⁵, and in a later round-up MusicRadar's Matt called it the benchmark of its kind:

Factory reset and firmware

A factory reset returns all custom presets, power up functions and secondary parameters to their factory settings¹⁷. The procedure, from Strymon's support article¹⁷:

1. Before powering up, press and hold the ON footswitch, then plug in the power.
2. After a few seconds, preset buttons 1 to 4 light amber and preset buttons 5 to 8 light green, and the ON footswitch blinks red; release the footswitch.
3. Sweep the DECAY knob from 0% to 100% twice, with status shown on the Favorite LED, amber at 0% and red at 100%.
4. All three footswitch LEDs blink red while the reset runs; when they stop, the pedal power cycles and starts up normally.

The current firmware release is REV v1.07, released March 2021, which added the ability to store expression pedal control over the Shimmer Interval in a preset¹⁸. Updates are done by connecting the powered pedal to your computer with the included USB-mini cable via the USB-mini jack on the back¹⁹.

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