Meris aims to shake up the ambient reverb pedal market with its MercuryX Modular Reverb System

Meris is calling its new MercuryX the most flexible and and powerful reverb in a pedal format, and from some of the brains who were involved in Line 6 and Strymon, that kind of talk carries the weight of reputation.

It boasts eight custom reverb alogorithms and combines those with the impressively advanced  LVX architecture we saw on Meris's Modular Delay System.  

The controls are bolstered by Meris's stunning menu screen graphics, with parameters that can be controlled by the C1 and C2 knobs beneath. This becomes the gateway to deep-dive editing with your reverb sounds, in addition to scrolling through presets and your own favourite sounds with the C3 control to the right of the screen.

The key to the MercuryX Reverb's power seems to be how much you can customise each varied algorithm's 'structure' through modular effects, including preamps, filters, pitch-shifting and modulation. There's pre-delay time and feedback editing too which starts to blur the lines between reverb and delay. It's an ambient tweaker's dream machine and the demo above sounds pretty spectacular. 

As the follow-up to Meris's acclaimed Mercury 7 there's are familiar Ultraplate and Catherdra algorithms, but there's six others too, including three from the world's most expensive reverb pedal, the Chase Bliss x Meris collaboration CXM 1978.

It certainly sounds like a home recording and bedroom fiddlers' paradise from these demos, rather than the average gigging player's workhorse reverb pedal. But we'd wager the market for the former group is far bigger, and this could be some serious competition for the likes of the Strymon BigSky. 

The MercuryX is $599 and available now at Meris