
A simple and straightforward atmosphere machine spans deep, orchestral ambient reverbs and colorful room sounds.
Great range of sounds from small room and plate reverbs to expansive, orchestral, and ambient tones. Organic edge to many sounds and fewer digital artifacts. Small size.
No presets without external switches. And only a single preset available without MIDI.
$279
Strymon Cloudburst
strymon.net
Harmonizing ambient reverbs are tricky stuff. Tilt too much to the heavy-handed side and you can easily have a box of schmaltz on your hands. And from an operational standpoint, a lot of harmonizing reverbs tend to be complex and thick with secondary, hidden controls. That’s great for sound designers. Maybe less so for performing guitarists that would rather play and write than tinker with a pedal’s deeper secrets.
Strymon’s Cloudburst does a classy, clever job of inhabiting the simplicity side of the spectrum. It’s still deep and rich with ambient sounds that can stretch to extra-expansive. But it also produces very rich sound pictures of small spaces. And while it won’t effectively replace a spring sound—there’s a little too much harmonizing at most voices for that—it can be modest, a little lo-fi, imperfect, and less than pristine in really cool ways. With a WYSIWYG control set, it’s also a lot of fun to use in fast-moving, intuitive fashion.
Shrunken, Streamlined, Simple
Strymon pedals have taken on a few forms over their history. The near-uniform, relatively economical layouts of pedals like the Flint, El Capistan, and Deco, or bigger pedals like the BigSky or TimeLine, have an almost Boss-like way of engendering familiarity and ease. The Cloudburst feels every bit as inviting, and perhaps more so for its small size and relatively spare control array.
“Short decay, bright tone, spanky pre-delay, and a strong dose of mod, to simulate tape drift, can evoke skanky Exile on Main Street ambience.”
The controls are de rigueur for an ambient reverb. Mix, decay, pre-delay, tone, and modulation make up the knobs. A single toggle called “ensemble” switches between the three levels of harmonics that are added to the input signal: off, mezzo piano, or forte, which effectively increase the intensity of the harmonic effect
Each of the controls, and the pedal in general, have a lot of range, so you have to pay close attention to how the knobs relate to each other at very specific settings, with just a single preset at your disposal (called a “favorite” setting here), which unfortunately requires an outboard switch that can also be configured to work as a freeze switch (not included). If you have a MIDI controller, the pedal can be set up for 300 presets. The lack of many easily accessible presets is bound to turn off some users, and that’s a shame given the pedal’s range. But that makes it no less fun to work with on the fly, and the expression-pedal jack means you can create dramatic variations in mix level while you play. Cloudburst also comes with a full stereo TRS in/out, TRS MIDI, USB C and a discrete JFET front end.
Summon the Cumulus
The Cloudburst really can move through a lot of spaces, and many voices and capabilities will surprise. In the no-ensemble setting, and at a low mix level (as heard in Clip 1 of the audio included with the online version of this review), you get a taste of how rangy the Cloudburst can be in even small amounts. For starters, the pedal can offer a dollop of brightness and punch to a clean signal. Short decay, bright tone, spanky predelay, and a strong dose of mod, to simulate tape drift, can evoke skanky Exile on Main Street ambience, or a more controlled ’70s room environment. Stack on the decay time, a washy pre-decay, plus doses of tone and modulation, and you’re in ringing harmony-heavy surfgaze spaces. Advancing the mix just to noon significantly changes the size of the no-ensemble setting. And here, as heard in Clip 2, you’ll find much dreamier colors as you advance the mix.
One thing that’s cool about themezzo piano and forte settings is that both modes can generate high-harmonic or orchestral textures that straddle the strange and organic. Depending on tone, modulation, and pre-delay settings, they can take on husky, almost dirty overtones or can be soft—almost like a synth with a slow attack setting. They can also easily be tuned to eliminate much of the cloying, hyper-angelic sound that colors other high harmonic reverbs, and can embellish simple melodies in very dramatic ways (Clip 3).
One thing that’s cool about themezzo piano and forte settings is that both modes can generate high-harmonic or orchestral textures that straddle the strange and organic. Depending on tone, modulation, and pre-delay settings, they can take on husky, almost dirty overtones or can be soft—almost like a synth with a slow attack setting. They can also easily be tuned to eliminate much of the cloying, hyper-angelic sound that colors other high harmonic reverbs, and can embellish simple melodies in very dramatic ways (Clip 3).
The Verdict
Strymon’s simple but expansive Cloudburst pays a cost for its streamlined functionality and compact enclosure. Primarily, there are not enough presets for how many cool sounds there are here, unless you introduce other hardware and use MIDI. But that problem aside, Cloudburst is fun and stimulates musical thought. It’s also intuitive to use—as long as you’re willing to take the time to study the expansive ranges in the controls and get a sense for how interactive they can be. Still, even minor mastery of Cloudburst’s capabilities can open up opportunities and musical directions. At $279, it’s a pricey little machine. But it’s not hard to see getting many tunes, hooks, licks, and sparks of inspiration from the Cloudburst. And you can rack up a few hundred bucks worth of that stuff pretty quickly.
Strymon Cloudburst Ambient Reverb Demo | First Look
The country virtuoso closes out this season of Wong Notes with a fascinating, career-spanning interview.
We’ve saved one of the best for last: Brad Paisley.The celebrated shredder and seasoned fisherman joins host Cory Wong for one of this season’s most interesting episodes. Paisley talks his earliest guitar-playing influences, which came from his grandfather’s love of country music, and his first days in Nashville—as a student at Belmont University, studying the music industry.
The behind-the-curtain knowledge he picked up at Belmont made him a good match for industry suits trying to force bad contracts on him.
Wong and Paisley swap notes on fishing and a mutual love of Phish—Paisley envies the jam-band scene, which he thinks has more leeway in live contexts than country. And with a new signature Fender Telecaster hitting the market in a rare blue paisley finish, Paisley discusses his iconic namesake pattern—which some might describe as “hippie puke”—and its surprising origin with Elvis’ guitarist James Burton.
Plus, hear how Paisley assembled his rig over the years, the state of shredding on mainstream radio, when it might be good to hallucinogenic drugs in a set, and the only negative thing about country-music audiences.
Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
As head of Breedlove and Bedell Guitars, he’s championed sustainability and environmental causes—and he wants to tell you about it.
As the owner of the Breedlove and Bedell guitar companies, Tom Bedell has been a passionate advocate for sustainable practices in acoustic guitar manufacturing. Listening to him talk, it’s clear that the preservation of the Earth’s forests are just as important to Bedell as the sound of his guitars. You’ll know just how big of a statement that is if you’ve ever had the opportunity to spend time with one of his excellently crafted high-end acoustics, which are among the finest you’ll find. Over the course of his career, Bedell has championed the use of alternative tonewoods and traveled the world to get a firsthand look at his wood sources and their harvesting practices. When you buy a Bedell, you can rest assured that no clear-cut woods were used.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesn’t keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories he’s collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relic—and stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Maryland—he discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how he’s putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relic’s cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the store’s house-spec’d Bedell parlors while we chatted.
“The story of this guitar is the story of the world,” Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, “I’m gonna make up the story,” Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregon’s Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization process—in which the building team fine-tunes each instrument’s voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysis—and Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitar’s warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acoustics—and of any Bedell I’ve had the pleasure to play—delivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, that’s what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. “We have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,” Bedell effused. “There are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but there’s nobody on a production level.” And he wants to spread that gospel.
“We want to reach people who really want something special,” he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores he’s visited, “who have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.”
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
A beautifully realized mashup of two iconic guitars.
Reader: Ward Powell
Hometown: Ontario, Canada
Guitar: ES-339 Junior
I’ve always liked unusual guitars. I think it started when I got my first guitar way back in 1976. I bought a '73 Telecaster Deluxe for $200 with money I saved from delivering newspapers.
I really got serious about playing in 1978, the same year the first Van Halen album was released. Eddie Van Halen was a huge influence on me, including how he built and modded guitars. Inspired by Eddie, I basically butchered that Tele. But keep in mind, there was once a time when every vintage guitar was just a used guitar—I still have that Tele, by the way.
I never lost that spirit of wanting guitars that were unique, and have built and modded a few dozen guitars since. When I started G.A.S.-ing simultaneously for a Les Paul Junior and a Casino, I came up with this concept. I found an Epiphone ES-339 locally at a great price. It already had upgraded CTS pots, Kluson tuners, and the frets had been PLEK’d. It even came with a hardshell case. It was cheap because it was a right-handed guitar that had been converted to left handed and all the controls had been moved to the opposite side, so it had five additional holes in the top.
Fortunately, I found a Duesenberg wraparound bridge that used the same post spacing as a Tune-o-matic. I used plug cutters to cut plugs out of baltic birch plywood to fill the 12 holes in the laminated top. I also reshaped the old-style Epiphone headstock. Then, I sanded off the original finish, taped the fretboard, and sprayed the finish using cans of nitro lacquer from Oxford Guitar Supply. Lots of wet sanding and buffing later, the finish was done.
I installed threaded insert bushings for the bridge, so it will never pull out. The pickup is a Mojotone Quiet Coil P-90 and I fabricated a shim from a DIY mold and tinted epoxy to raise the P-90 up closer to the strings. The shim also covers the original humbucker opening. I cut a pickguard out of a blank and heated it slightly to bend it to follow the curvature of the top.
All in all, I'm pretty happy how it turned out! It plays great and sounds even better. And I have something that is unique: an ES-339 Junior.
ENGL, renowned for its high-performance amplifiers, proudly introduces the EP635 Fireball IR Pedal, a revolutionary 2-channel preamp pedal designed to deliver the legendary Fireball tone in a compact and feature-rich format.
The EP635 Fireball IR Pedal brings the raw power and precision of the ENGL Fireball amplifier into a pedalboard-friendly enclosure, offering unmatched flexibility and tonal control for guitarists of all styles. This cutting-edge pedal is equipped with advanced features, making it a must-have for players seeking high-gain perfection with modern digital convenience.
Key Features:
- Authentic Fireball Tone – Designed after the renowned ENGL Fireball amplifier, the EP635 delivers the unmistakable high-gain aggression and clarity that ENGL fans love.
- Two Independent Channels – Easily switch between two distinct channels, with each channel’s knob settings saved independently, allowing for seamless transitions between tones.
- Built-in Midboost Function – Enhance your tone with the integrated Midboost switch, perfect for cutting through the mix with extra punch.
- Advanced Noise Gate – Eliminate unwanted noise and maintain articulate clarity, even with high-gain settings.
- IR (Impulse Response) Loading via USB-C – Customize your sound with user-loadable IRs using the included software, bringing studio-quality cab simulations to your pedalboard.
- Headphone Output – Silent practice has never been easier, with a dedicated headphone output for direct monitoring.
- Premium Build and Intuitive Controls – Featuring a rugged chassis and responsive controls for Volume, Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble, and Presence, ensuring precise tonal shaping.
SPECS:
- Input 1/4” (6,35mm) Jack
- Output 1/4” (6,35mm) Jack
- Headphone Output 1/8”(3,5mm) Jack
- 9V DC / 300mA (center negativ) / power supply, sold separately
- USB C