Here’s my first impressions. The Iridium is super intuitive and the controls are simple. I tried it in three different setups: all by itself using headphones, at the end of my pedal board just like hitting the front of an amp (with headphones again), and lastly ran it into my audio interface using my studio monitors at low volume. The headphone experience with it is nice. Even at low ear volumes it sounds great. I did turn it up a little bit to experience it and the amps sound huge! I’m sure better quality headphones would yield better results, but no complaints here. Getting set up with the audio interface is easy. Just plug and play.
I can’t tell you how well it replicates a Fender Deluxe, Vox AC30, or Marshall Plexi. I’ve never played through those amps and just don’t have that experience to compare. What I will say, in my opinion, all three amps sound really great. I didn’t hear any of the digital artifacts in the higher frequencies that impact sound quality and make it a dead ringer for a digital box. It responded well to volume and tone adjustments on the guitar, and it “felt” like playing through an amp, meaning it didn’t feel sterile.
For me, the room knob on the pedal is magic. It’s not reverb, but it changes the size of the room and the natural room ambiance as you roll the knob. You can also adjust the size of room via secondary function. Right now the Plexi setting with cab A is my favorite. I like to turn the guitar volume down to 5 or 6 and set the gain for good crunch then roll up on the guitar volume for extra punch. It sounds great on this pedal. Also as a side note, if your a Queen fan, the Vox setting with cab B and drive turned up gets some damn convincing Brian May tones.
