“It took me back to the days of riding my BMX to pick out a VHS”: Meris unveils the Ottobit X, a high-end purveyor of lo-fi guitar sounds inspired by the ‘80s

Meris Ottobit X.

Now here is a guitar effects pedal that is all kinds of nuts, places all kinds of sounds at your feet, and exists somewhere way outside of the regular overdrive, modulation, delay and reverb continuum – it’s called the Ottobit X, and the very fact that it is from Meris, and commands a whopping $599 price tag, tells us that we are in for something completely different.

Maybe even something weird. Meris describe the Ottobit X as a “modular degradation and texture engine” with lo-fi sounds inspired by a nostalgia for the ‘80s. This is where cutting-edge digital signal processing is leveraged to recreate old-school analogue and early digital sounds, and there is so much going on with the Ottobit X that it is difficult to know where to start.