Why I Sold My Meris LVX Delay Pedal
I recently sold my Meris LVX, one of the most inspiring delay pedals I have ever owned. It went during a season when I needed the cash flow more than I needed another deep dive into sound design, but that decision was always temporary.
The LVX is coming back, and this is the story of why it left and why it has to return.
I’m a Delay Aficionado
I consider myself a delay person first and foremost. I own more big box delay pedals than I do distortion pedals, which probably tells you everything you need to know about where my priorities sit. I appreciate a great reverb too, and I keep a Strymon BigSky around for exactly that reason, but I always gravitate back toward delay. I sprinkle a little reverb into just about everything I play, yet delay is the effect I actually build around. So when I tell you the Meris LVX is special, understand that it is coming from someone who has played a lot of them.
Why I Sold the Meris LVX
The sale had nothing to do with the pedal and everything to do with timing. I was in the middle of a house remodel project and I needed more cash flow to get ready for everything that came with it. The LVX was not the only casualty either. I sold my Meris Mercury X and a handful of other pedals in the same stretch, including a Meris Polymoon that went out the door during that same selling spree. When you are funding a remodel, even the pedals you love start looking like line items. The LVX was worth good money, it sold quickly, and it helped me get where I needed to be.
What Makes the LVX So Inspirational
Meris calls the LVX a modular delay system rather than a delay pedal, and that framing is accurate. Instead of locking you into a fixed set of delay types, it lets you build the delay from the ground up. You get up to 2.54 seconds of dual delay and 26 processing elements you can insert at different points in the signal chain, grouped into modules like preamp, dynamics, filter, and modulation. The delay structures cover Standard, MultiTap, Multi Filter, Poly, Reverse, and Series, and the Poly structure is essentially the Meris Polymoon living inside the LVX. On top of that you choose your delay character from digital, BBD analog bucket brigade, or Magnetic tape style with saturation, degradation, and wow and flutter baked in.
The thing that keeps me coming back is how far down the rabbit hole goes. The LVX inherits algorithms from other Meris pedals such as the Hedra, Polymoon, Enzo, and Ottobit Jr., then adds new ones like Granularize, Cassette, and Poly Pitch. There is a 60 second stereo looper built in, 99 preset locations, full MIDI implementation, and assignable expression control. The whole thing runs on 24 bit conversion with 32 bit floating point processing internally, and you steer all of it with seven knobs clustered around a high resolution color screen. It is a lot. That is the point.
The LVX Versus the Strymon Timeline
People always want the comparison, so here it is. I think the LVX is better than the Strymon Timeline, full stop, though it is a bit more complicated to live with. The Timeline is fast, dependable, and easy to navigate, which is exactly why it earned its reputation. The LVX asks more of you up front, but it gives back delay soundscapes that simply are not possible on the Timeline or most other pedals. They are not really competing for the same job. One is a workhorse and the other is a laboratory.
That difference is why both still have a place for me. My Strymon Timeline lives on its own already built board, ready to go whenever I want something straightforward to work with. Not to mention, it sits before my BigSky and after my Mobius. I’m not willing to break the Stryfecta. There are absolutely days when I want to plug in and play without diving into deep menus. But when I feel like building a delay texture from scratch and chasing a sound nothing else can make, the LVX is the perfect tool. The two pedals answer two completely different moods.
Why It Is Coming Back
I fully expect to buy the LVX again. The plan is to bring it back as part of a dedicated studio build, where the deep settings and sound design potential matter most and where I have the time to actually use them. And if I could get my hands on a special release black version, I would do it in a heartbeat. A black LVX would be the ideal excuse to make the return official. Selling it was the right call for that moment, but the LVX is not a pedal you walk away from for good.
Conclusion
Selling the Meris LVX taught me what I already suspected, which is that some pedals are easy to part with and some leave a hole. The LVX is firmly in the second group. It is one of the most inspiring delay tools ever made, it outclasses the Strymon Timeline for the kind of deep sound design I love, and it earns a permanent spot in my future studio plans. The remodel needed the cash and the pedal delivered, but this was never goodbye. It was just see you soon, ideally in black.
What you probably weren’t expecting is that Meris LVX isn’t actually my favorite delay pedal. It’s actually the Strymon Volante. Yes, I like that one the best for different reasons. I have a story about that: My Favorite Delay Pedal Ever!
