Really useful demo which answered all of the queries that I had about this pedal and tested all the features I wanted to see. Will be ordering one.

Wow - what an eye-opening (or rather, ear-opening) discovery you have made me privy to! Thanks for exposing me to the joys of IRing! So far I‘d dismissed Dexter and such as things I wouldn‘t need or want...but this demo of this inexpensive and amazing little pedal just convinced me to reconsider big-time! Having the presets, the reverb and all the tweaking capabilities on board in such a small package is absolutely irresistible. I wish they would add one more thing to the software, though: compression. With that, I‘d be good to go for ALL purposes. I can live without delay and chorus (though always nice to have), but I really want some mild compression running all the time, such that my fingerpicking is evened out and elevated a wee bit and my hard strumming is slightly tamed. If they added compression (and heck, why not also a nice chorus and delay), that would be a killer package! At that price point, I‘d buy one for a couple more instruments and skip having to recable and jump through presets. Thanks for kindly showing us your previous IR and comparing it head-to-head with the one made in the video, and with the mic and pick-up sound. Very convenient for the viewer, and it makes a clear statement. Indeed, although I liked your new IR, too, I preferred your earlier one, for it had a bit more of the sparkle of the original guitar (also as evidenced by the pick-up sound AND the mic sound). The later IR lacked a bit of that sparkle but was warmer/fuller in the mids to upper mids. I suppose, though, that one could take either IR and tweak it to taste with EQ, yielding two very useable signals depending on one‘s preference (or the song at hand). At any rate, I‘m really thinking about getting one of these babies and getting IRs of my old Martin D-35, my Lowdon jumbo, my Voyage Air, my Yamaha.... Heavens, we are certainly living in good times, eh? ;-) EDIT: And I‘d love to see your future comparison of this with the Dexter, etc.

VERY impressive! This may be the best IR pedal I've come across to date. Great review!!

Thanks for the little review and tutorial. 👍🏻

now THAT Is a good Review. I think this kind of pedal Is the future of good sounding acoustic guitars. And man, that pedal sound awesome! I can't believe that sound for the price! Please make a comparison video between this and the ToneDexter + Voiceprint. It would be incredible to see that battle of IRs. Thanks for all your work dude.

I did buy this pedal. My Taylor K14 BE guitar never sounded good plugged in. I made my own IR using a Shure Beta 87 condenser mic and a QSC TM 16 digital mixer that has phantom power. With this Optima AIr? Night and Day difference. I have not played out live with my Bose L1,YET. I will let you know how it went once I actually perform live.

Great review, many thanks!

Great review and channel. I've had this pedal for a month or so, and I'm enjoying it. The manual/user guide is not very detailed, and so I was confused about a few features. Scott (@The Pedal Guy) was nice enough to contact NuX with my questions, and I got some answers straight from them. I'll post the Q & A here, in case others have similar questions.

great review Aaron, always enjoy watching your vids, I was wondering if i can ask what level you had on the volume and tone controls on the Martin Matrix pickup

In creating may own impulse response, i used my mixer preamp, for the mic eq, to severely lower the freq below 80 Hz and the IR create was very useable.

I think I already commented on another video where you did a shootout but I wanted to write in and say I recently picked up an 80s Martin Shenandoah HD2832, which shipped with a passive piezo. I paired that with the Nux’s Piezo HD28 preset and 😮😮😮 sounds incredible! So much better with a passive piezo than it was with my fishman rare earth blend - even though I was able to get that sounding pretty good too.

Great video. Can you make a video with the Nux and the Cole Clark 3-way. Like you I find the mic in the Cole Clark knocks so much treble off it's a bit of a problem. And I find the bass shelf very "inarticulate" so that it leaves way too much sub 100hz in. I'd love to see how this pedal goes with the CC. Could be THE most realistic love sound. Or could be a feedback disaster because of the IR boosting the specific treble frequency of the inbuilt mic...

Thanks for the detail explanation throughout the whole video! However I still would like to ask would you recommend this for someone who wanted to record acoustic guitar at home? Like a acoustic fingerstyle guitar cover, or acoustic guitar + vocals cover? I am living in a pretty noisy environment, my neighbourhood is full of dogs and kids and they are making so much noise throughout the entire day, and there is a highway outside of my house so there could be vehicle noises no matter during the day or night, so using a condenser mic is not an ideal option in my case... and my free time is quite limited so I can't deal with so much noise when I have time to record, otherwise I would ended up recording nothing. I tried to record though stock DI, but that sounds like garbage. So I was wondering would you think this Nux Optima Air can be a tool to help me out to get a nice sounding acoustic guitar recording? I'm not expecting it to sound like a mic up guitar 100%, but at least 60-70% close to a mic up guitar so that it doesn't sound like plastic (or garbage).

I finally bought it yesterday after watching several of your videos. It sounds great. I like the fact that they modeled the Pre-amp after the Neve 1073, and that explains why it sounds so great. The fact that we can also create our own IRs with our mics, was also important for my purchase. That and the fact that it has a DI.

Hi Aaron,

Hi aaron! I am thinking of getting an optima air soon, may i ask if you have tried creating an IR from a strat (neck pick up) to use on a piezo equipped acoustic guirar so as to try to get the acoustic guitar sound a little like an electric (clean strat sound) , i know this is not the pedal's intended use but it will be really lovely to know how the pedal does in this set up. I play at church so i just need clean tones. Thanks !

Sounds good, especially for the price. But I have my pre-order for the LR Baggs SoundScape, which I know you will be doing a review, without a doubt. I would prefer to have the Programmable EQ, instead of the reverb. Great video!

Hi Aaron. Do the presets allow for individual gain levels to accommodate different guitars? My primary is a Gibson Songwriter Deluxe with an LR Baggs Anthem SL installed and it has a fairly low output. My backup is a Martin DC-1E with the factory installed Fishman pickup and it has a much hotter output. I would like to be able to switch guitars and simply select another preset/ir and be ready to roll without fiddling around with the gain knob if possible. Does this pedal function like that?

Hi Aaron, is possible to create a guitar sound with two IRs like in Ignite plugin! And use Nux in stereo ? Regards

The included 814 IR has been great with my 814 (not surprising at all), almost perfect for live use but I just wish it had a notch filter to help deal with feedback (I have to rely on the soundtech/front of house to deal with that).