Meris MercuryX is a modular reverb pedal for the sonically adventerous

Last year Meris took its digital effects prowess and built a ludicrously powerful guitar pedal, the LVX. Now the company is back with another modular creation, the MercuryX, but instead of delay it’s all about epic reverbs.

Like the LVX the MercuryX is built around a “advanced ARM processor” of unspecified origin and a 24-bit AD/DA converter with a 32 bit floating point DSP. It also inherits the LVX’s large LCD for navigating the interface and the basic scheme of combining structures, types, and processing elements to create a unique reverb effect.

In Meris’ lexicon “structures” are the core reverb effects. There are eight different options: Ultraplate, Cathedra, 78 Room, 78 Plate, 78 Hall, Spring, Prism and Gravity. Those first two are borrowed Meris’ popular Mercury7 pedal, the middle three from the company’s collaboration with Chase Bliss on the CXM 1978, while the last three are completely new creations for the MercuryX. Type determines the characteristic of the reverb, while processing elements are effects that can further alter your tone. These can be as straight forward as compression, as wild as a granulator or just a nice hazy lo-fi effect. These can go anywhere in the signal chain as well, allowing the elements to affect only the reverberations or to completely replace your dry tone.

You can also modify parameters automatically using the two LFOs, an envelope follower, a sample and hold function, or the sixteen step sequencer. Not to mention there’s an expression jack input and robust MIDI support.

And if that wasn’t enough, there’s a stereo freeze effect separate from the reverb, a tuner and an absurd 2.54 secs of predelay. The latter means you can effectively turn the MercuryX into a delay pedal thanks in part to its modular feedback routing and selectable note divisions for each stereo channel.

The early demos make it clear that the MercuryX is indeed a beast of a pedal capable of delivering pretty convincing spring reverb emulation. But it’s obviously meant for more epic and creative sounds. This is the sort of thing you might want in your arsenal if you’re into ambient, post rock or film scores.

The Meris MercuryX will set you back a decent chunk of change however. It’s available direct from Meris for $599 and through select retailers as a preorder.