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Meris Enzo X

Fascinating pedal. Devil is in the tracking.

Finally watched the demos. Wild. But was also put to sleep with the slow synthy tron soundscapes.

I wonder what real world vs midi pickups will be
 
I’m either crazy or stupid, but I absolutely love bass synth pedals! Like a guitarist with OD and distortion pedals, I’m nuts for the synth. I have a C4 (which was actually my very first pedal) an FI v.4, 2 Enzos, a DigiTech Bass Synth Wah, a Boss SY-300, and now an Enzo X. I’m selling one of my original Enzos to a friend. I got the SY-300 for a crazy price last year, but I’m not crazy about it and plan to sell soon.

If you want my advice (feel free to disregard), hang on to that FI if you have the ability. It’s a fantastic pedal that you don’t have to worry about settings during gigs. The real UI is done in a DAW, but there’s enough you can do with the factory patches using the basic pedal UI to keep things fresh and interesting. There are certain sounds on the FI that I’ve never been able to replicate using other synths. For me, the FI is all about having fun. It’s not about creating patches from scratch.

The Enzo X is a different beast. It’s better for deep editing and experimentation. It’s about creating patches. The UI is part of the pedal itself, as I’m sure you know. I didn’t have the money to get it, ended up using credit, as I’d been waiting for it since I tried an LVX!
Great post, thanks! I understand that Panda Audio is bringing out the FI Mk4 in a very neat compact housing, soon.
Fascinating pedal. Devil is in the tracking.
Finally watched the demos. Wild. But was also put to sleep with the slow synthy tron soundscapes.
I wonder what real world vs midi pickups will be
^^ this 100%. Tight tracking for me is absolutely critical for live use. Whilst not everyone is a fan of the Boss Synth sounds, I've found a few usable ones which can be saved as presets with the SY-200 and sufficient for what I've needed for our covers band set. The polyphonic tracking it delivers is as tight as any synth pedal I've ever used.
 
Enzo X listens to your incoming signal and translates the natural volume of your playing to a synthesized note. In general, higher values equate to longer, sustained notes and shorter values correspond to tight tracking of the incoming volume of your playing.
Did not try to create my own patch, but did run through all the presets and looked at the parameters for some of the bass ones which did vary this value. Lower settings did track better, but still pretty slow.
 
Got ‘eem. Plugged in, used Zach Rizer’s #38 preset. Exact. What is missing on the pedal are indicator marks on the Control 1 and Control 2 knobs. They are detented. They GREATLY influence the output. Like exponentially. Like inverse square influence. The Pitch knob can put you from Mixolydian to Ionian and beyond with little travel. You can turn a bass into a flute. I greatly underestimated the power of this. It’s a deep dive. For the purpose of documentation I would recommend marking the Control 1 and Control 2 knobs @ complete Anti-Clockwise with a sliver of Blue Painters tape. I plan on contacting Meris towards this; it would be an improvement. Im not disappointed; this thing is POWERFUL. If you are in a Worship situation, just sweeping through the presets gives you a number of beautiful possibilities; I don’t play in a church but if you do, THIS thing is your huckleberry. Its a synthesizer. Im playing a fretless. The C4 didn’t appeal to me because of the MIDI interface and the ancillary stuff. I just wanted an adjunct of sorts between analog and digital. There are probably dozens, perhaps hundreds of slices of epiphanies here. I spent 15 minutes with this gizmo; have yet to crack the manual. The possibilities for those with greater appreciation and aptitude are beyond my simple requirements. My $. 02
Can you say more about how you think this would apply to playing in a church? Thanks!
 
Can you say more about how you think this would apply to playing in a church? Thanks!
It turns your bass into a synth. Very dramatic. I do not attend any ecumenical bodies but the idea of being in a church was the first thing that popped up in my head as i was dialing through the presets. This thing is wild!
 
Does it work well just as an envelope filter or octaver without full on synthesizer triggering?
The original Enzo did, so I suspect the X can as well. I really liked the Enzo as a filter, though the knob sensitivity made it pretty hard to dial in (same can be said for any of the settings though). The X should be much better in that regard since the settings are spread out through menus rather than all squeezed into the knobs
 
Did not try to create my own patch, but did run through all the presets and looked at the parameters for some of the bass ones which did vary this value. Lower settings did track better, but still pretty slow.
That's a shame to hear, but I guess not super surprising. I found the original Enzo to also have pretty typical tracking latency with bass (meaning a very apparent lag anywhere below the guitar register or thereabouts, so that I would only ever practically use it playing in the upper register with bass), but hoped they may have evolved their tracking algorithm the way that Eventide and Panda MIDI have recently (the H90 and Future Impact v4 are among the fastest pitch-trackers I've heard with bass)
 

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I want one so bad but I think I’ll wait to hear more feedback about how tight the tracking is for bass.
I’m still making my way through it. Some presets track better than others, but in general it’s not terrible depending on your the variance you will accept. For me, it does exactly what I want. Some presets track differently due to the LFO, attack, release, etc. I treat it like an analog octave as far as my approach to it.
 
That's a shame to hear, but I guess not super surprising. I found the original Enzo to also have pretty typical tracking latency with bass (meaning a very apparent lag anywhere below the guitar register or thereabouts, so that I would only ever practically use it playing in the upper register with bass), but hoped they may have evolved their tracking algorithm the way that Eventide and Panda MIDI have recently (the H90 and Future Impact v4 are among the fastest pitch-trackers I've heard with bass)
Tracking is physically limited due to the size of bass wavelengths. If you cut the bass neck in half and play above E2, you still have waves that can take 12ms to cycle, which would be noticeable if the algorithm waited for an entire wave to process pitch. I suspect they do some predictive stuff, but every pedal synth I have heard results in a combo of pitching effect, glitches, and latency that disconnects my fingers from what I hear through my amp or cans. I have had C4, v1 & v4 FI, Enzo, Bose synths, Pogs... They all suffer from the same three things at different ratios.

I think I actually prefer glitches to latency or the pitching effect. I can hear that weird pitching effect in the Enzo X demos; in the demo where the fella controls the synth via keyboard and then guitar, it is really apparent; you hear the pitching effect when tracking guitar but not when midi is triggered by keyboard.
 
Tracking is physically limited due to the size of bass wavelengths. If you cut the bass neck in half and play above E2, you still have waves that can take 12ms to cycle, which would be noticeable if the algorithm waited for an entire wave to process pitch. I suspect they do some predictive stuff, but every pedal synth I have heard results in a combo of pitching effect, glitches, and latency that disconnects my fingers from what I hear through my amp or cans. I have had C4, v1 & v4 FI, Enzo, Bose synths, Pogs... They all suffer from the same three things at different ratios.

I think I actually prefer glitches to latency or the pitching effect. I can hear that weird pitching effect in the Enzo X demos; in the demo where the fella controls the synth via keyboard and then guitar, it is really apparent; you hear the pitching effect when tracking guitar but not when midi is triggered by keyboard.
Yes I am aware- I just generally find the guitar register gives an “acceptable” amount of latency with most of the digital pitch-tracking options I have (12ms is probably less than the added AD/DA conversion when I use all my digital pedals together!), while going below that more than a few steps and the lag really gets noticeable for me through most of these pitchtrackers-

I currently have the C4, FI v4, Boss Sy1000, Roland GR55, H90, and have owned an Enzo and played through a few of the digital EHX synths (for me they were useless with bass).

Out of all those I find the Future Impact v4 and Eventide H90 to track the best for my needs when using pitch tracking sounds. I find the Future Impact v4 tracking pretty great (both accuracy and speed) for my needs for the Moog-like sounds (the previous FI was too glitchy though), and the new Eventide H90 synth algorithms probably the best of all so far as far as tracking (though I prefer the sounds of the Future Impact). Not sure what Eventide is using, but it may well be some sort of predictive algorithm as it really is impressive (and polyphonic!).

Out of all of these digital options I end up using the non-tracking sounds in the SY-1000 the most as there is no real latency or strangeness when using my 13-pin equipped instruments to make synth-like sounds (like the other Boss SY pedals, most of the sounds in the SY-1000 shape your input sound into the final sound and so have little to no noticeable latency- on the other hand the pitch-tracking engine also included in the SY-1000 has some of the highest latency of any of them I have apart from the GR-55). Of course those sounds in the SY-1000 are basically the digital equivalent of an octaver-fuzz-filter type synth approach (though more versatile and polyphonic), and so somewhat limiting at approaching realistic synth sounds. There are trade offs with any of these approaches for sure!
 
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Going back in; using preset 38 again. Now i have an idea what to do with C1 and C2. Meris was kind enough to reply to my email. *edit* Huge difference, user error recognized. Ive got to figure out where to go within this preset. Haven’t outlined the online manual yet. Im accessing <.01% of what this thing can do. Gotta figure out how to toggle within this preset.
 
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So. Plugged in, copied Zach Rizer’s notes on 38. Set C1, C2 to proper levels. “Decay” @ 45%, “Mix”@70%. Sounds great, although im not all the way in. Played for a bit, made a minor adjustment to the “Level”, and the thing took off. I got locked into a loop that rung with the “hold modifier” LED displayed. Hit the footswitch, held it down, *crickets*. This is 100% user error. I unplugged, gave it 5 minutes and everything was good again. Da ding dong diddly did i do? Regardless, the first preset that caught my ear, #38 was pretty cool. Tracking was not an issue. Im playing fretless, i can hide all sorts of things. Pretty cool gizmo.
 
Going back in; using preset 38 again. Now i have an idea what to do with C1 and C2. Meris was kind enough to reply to my email. *edit* Huge difference, user error recognized. Ive got to figure out where to go within this preset. Haven’t outlined the online manual yet. Im accessing <.01% of what this thing can do. Gotta figure out how to toggle within this preset.
The online manual if still pretty light on detail but I think it would save you some time exploring
 
The online manual if still pretty light on detail but I think it would save you some time exploring
Yeah, i plan to sit down and do an outline. Got me positive results every time i ever dealt with something i knew nothing about. It’s one thing to read and be able to gloss over detail. Something about actually writing it down on paper seems to further that axon>dendrite exchange.
 
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