Strymon Olivera

The Strymon Olivera is a compact delay pedal from Strymon that emulates vintage oil can echo units, the oddball machines that used a motorized rotating can and lubricating oil to create repeats. Strymon describes it as "the first pedal emulation that truly captures the mechanical yet wildly organic nature of these oddball machines," promising "the vintage syrupy warble of a true oil can echo"¹. It is a digital pedal with an analog JFET front end, priced at $259.00¹.

Where a tape echo drags tape across heads, an oil can echo spun a metal can coated in oil, and the physics of that arrangement gave the repeats a dark, modulated, unstable character. Strymon says the Olivera ranges "from dark and modulated repeats to sustaining textures that approach the sound of classic spring reverb tanks"¹. It sits in Strymon's compact delay line alongside the Brig and EC-1, following what guitar.com's reviewer called "the compact format of its Brig and EC-1 delays, with the same five knobs and three-way mode switch"².

A digital oil can echo

Under the hood the Olivera is a high-resolution digital design. It uses a 520MHz ARM Superscalar processor with 32-bit floating point processing, and 24-bit 96kHz A/D and D/A converters, with a typical signal to noise ratio of 116dB and a 20Hz to 20kHz frequency response¹⁴. The analog front end is a premium JFET preamp feeding a high impedance, ultra low noise discrete Class A input¹⁴.

The pedal is effectively a two-head delay. As Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson described it, it is "a sort of 2-Head Delay, but with one permanently short, and one permanently long" head, with the heads switch selecting between them⁵. He noted the approach uses "a similar technique to what Andy Timmons Halo Delay does"⁵.

The controls and expression assignment

The front panel carries five knobs and a three-way mode switch², with the modulation section offering controls for Rate and Intensity⁶. The single footswitch engages and disengages the effect, with a red LED at the top of the pedal indicating the effect is engaged¹.

A TRS expression pedal plugged into the EXP jack can remotely control any of the Olivera's knobs, and by default it is set up to control the MIX knob⁷. Assigning a knob to the expression pedal follows a hold-and-rock procedure:

1. Press and hold the footswitch for at least 3 seconds, until the LED blinks green⁷.
2. Rock the expression pedal to the heel position; the green LED stops blinking and stays lit. Set the knob or knobs to the desired heel settings⁷.
3. Rock the expression pedal to the toe position; the LED turns red. Set the knobs to the desired toe settings⁷.
4. Press and release the footswitch to exit and store the setup⁷.

One thing to keep in mind: the expression pedal assignment is saved per preset, not globally, so each of the 300 presets can carry its own assignment¹⁷.

The dry signal path has three modes: Digital Mode, Analog Mode, and Kill Dry Mode⁸.

Power and connections: 9V, 250mA

The Olivera requires a power supply providing 9V DC, center negative, at a minimum of 250mA, through a 2.1mm barrel jack¹³.

Connections on the pedal are full stereo: TRS stereo input and TRS stereo output, with incoming stereo signals processed independently¹. The EXP/MIDI jack carries full MIDI implementation, so the pedal can be controlled from a MIDI controller, and the USB-C jack on the back handles MIDI from a computer as well as firmware updates¹⁴⁹. Firmware updates are done with Strymon's Update software: install it, connect the powered pedal with a USB-C data cable, and the software detects the pedal automatically and offers the install if a newer version exists; when the installed version matches the available version, the pedal is up to date⁹.

A factory reset is a powered-up procedure using the footswitch and the RATE (FACTORY RESET) knob¹⁰:

1. Press and hold the footswitch for at least 2 seconds while powering up the Olivera. Release it once the LED flashes red¹⁰.
2. Press and hold the footswitch again, and while holding it, sweep the RATE (FACTORY RESET) knob from minimum to maximum and back twice. The LED shows amber on turns from minimum to maximum and red on turns from maximum to minimum¹⁰.
3. On the fourth turn, from maximum to minimum, release the footswitch immediately: the LED flashes red and the Olivera resets and restarts¹⁰.

The reset restores the pedal to its factory default power up functions and replaces all stored presets with their factory default settings¹⁰.

Oil can echo roots and a new algorithm

Oil can echoes like the classic Tel-Ray units used a motorized rotating can and lubricating oil to generate their repeats, a mechanical approach quite different from tape¹¹. Emulating that in a pedal was not straightforward: Pedal of the Day reported that "the sheer number of variables in the design made authentic emulation challenging, requiring a ton of research and a brand new algorithm"⁴. Guitar World reported that the units were digitized with "an all-new algorithm built from the ground up to emulate every mechanical quirk"¹².

The algorithm came from Strymon co-founder and DSP designer Pete Celi¹¹. In Strymon's launch announcement, Premier Guitar quoted Celi on the character of the original machines:

Delay times

The two head settings give the Olivera its delay time ranges¹³:

The Olivera works as a sort of 2-Head Delay, with one head permanently short and one permanently long⁵.

Those ranges sit squarely in vintage echo territory rather than long digital delay, which fits the character of the original oil can machines.

What reviewers said

guitar.com's Richard Purvis reviewed the Olivera in February 2026 and gave it 8 out of 10, noting its compact format shared with the Brig and EC-1². MusicRadar's Jonathan Horsley covered the launch, reporting the pedal priced at $259 and available now¹⁴. Delicious Audio's Paolo De Gregorio covered the pedal's Rate and Intensity modulation controls in his December 2025 write-up⁶.

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