Strymon Engineering has announced a new gain pedal called Fairfax and an entirely new line of fully analog pedals they’ve dubbed Series A.
Fairfax is unique in the world of drive and boost pedals in that it’s a full tube amp circuit, miniaturized using only analog components. Strymon’s analog engineers took initial inspiration from the Herzog® tube drive unit from Garnet Amplifiers that was developed for Randy Bachman of BTO, as its sound powered a number of classic rock hits from the ‘60s and ‘70s.
As the debut pedal in Strymon’s new Series A lineup, the Fairfax uses only analogcomponents to recreate the amp’s topology, encompassing a tube preamp, Class Apower amp and a proprietary circuit that impersonates the important saturationcharacteristics of the output transformer, which is integral to the sound the unitproduces. Strymon created an internal power supply that converts the incoming 9 VDCinto 40V, giving the amplifier circuit a massive amount of headroom that gives the pedaltrue amp-like feel. The sound is clean and clear at low Drive settings, but moves into fulltransformer-like saturation as the gain is increased.
Along with a Bright circuit that modifies the treble response, the pedal also includes avariable Sag control that produces dynamic artifacts at low values, and full sputteringand gated sounds more commonly associated with fuzz pedals at extreme settings.
Here are descriptions of Fairfax controls:
- DRIVE: Discrete tube emulation circuit provides smooth asymmetric clipping.
- BRIGHT: A two-position tone switch for adjusting the high frequency content through the preamp. “Off” cuts high frequencies to darken the tone. “On” provides flat, full frequency response.
- LEVEL: Adjusts the output level when the pedal is engaged.
- SAG: Turning clockwise increases amount of power rail sag. Fully counterclockwise, no sag is applied. At high levels of sag, the preamp starts to un-bias itself, leading to gating and sputtering. A higher DRIVE setting will sag the circuit more than a lower setting with same input level.
The sound and feel of Fairfax is extremely tube-like, with added harmonics and saturation coming from a clever circuit that emulates the true behavior of a tube amp’s output transformer. It’s a drive pedal that feels completely natural to play, retains the natural sound of your guitar, and glues notes together in a truly organic way.
“Man, this thing is such a chameleon”, said Sean Halley, Strymon’s Head of Marketing and a long-time session and live player. “It can be a creamy and gooey boost that works great with any style of amp, and it can also breathe saturated fire.” Halley continues, “because it’s really an amp circuit, it doesn’t change your core tone, and it stacks brilliantly with other drive pedals. This thing is not leaving my board, full stop.” Gregg Stock, Strymon’s CEO and senior analog engineer added “even though we’re more known for DSP, our analog engineers are always coming up with interesting ideas for fully analog designs, so we created Series A to give them an outlet. There will be a number of pedals in the line by the end of next year, so we’re really excited to see some of these products come to market - it’s been a blast to work on this stuff.”
Fairfax is available now directly from Strymon and from dealers worldwide for $199 US. For more information visit strymon.net.
