Pedals and Effects Exclusive: Enzo by Meris

Hope you had a nice long Labor Day weekend because Pedals and Effects is putting in work! We've got a surprise debut from the homies over at Meris. Meris is currently one of the most creative effects pedal makers going right now and we're always stoked to rep them. They hit you the Ottobit Jr., they brought you the Mercury7, and they came at you with the Polymoon. This small three person team, is once again changing the game, and this time, it's with the Enzo synth.

If it's one thing I've always been about its musicality in effects pedals. A good effects pedal should encourage you to cater to the pedal, you end up playing new licks, new riffs and you become a better musician for it. The Enzo, is the perfect example of musicality from effects. I swear by the vintage Electro-Harmonix Microsynth, but it could be such a fight to get the sound I hear in my head, and even then there are some artifacts, with the Enzo its seamless. Big synth tones, bit crushing, pitch shifting, oscillation, filtering, ring modulation, portamento/glide, mono/polyphonic tracking, envelope filter, this thing even has a solid vibrato in it! The Enzo can be pure Bootsy Collins funk, or it can be the wildest Oberheim synth you've ever heard.

Much like Meris' other pedals, you can fine tune each and every feature. Much like an actual synthesizer, you can fine tune the rise and fall of the filter (even by cents! "microtonal tuning" as it were). There's an arpeggiator/sequencer and tap tempo, and there are a number of secondary functions per knob "unlocking" different envelope types, and wave shapes. There's so much to unpack here with the Enzo that Meris offers a "preset" extension that allows you to save the sounds that you come up with! The Enzo is everything you could want from a fully fledged synth inside an effects pedal sized enclosure. The Enzo even knocks down the coveted Digitech Space Station down a peg.

There's so much to discover with this pedal and we haven't even scratched the surface, Nick and I took a deep dive into the pedal, but even when we were corresponding with Meris we realized the Enzo is capable of so much more and then some. Don't sleep on the Enzo! And definitely keep Meris on your radar, you'll be a better musician for it!

-Juan