Trey Anastasio. For those of you who don’t know (or don’t care), Trey has been a HUGE guitar influence on us for almost 3 decades, and today’s pedal encompasses some of the best aspects of his tone. From his use of the famed grey Ross Compressor at various stages of Phish’s career, to his consistent use of different variations of Tube Screamers, his tonality and superb sustain give him an unmistakeable and easily recognizable sound, one that many of us have been trying for years to replicate. The Farmhouse from Farm Pedals brings together the Ross and Tube Screamer circuits: three pedals in one, to mix and match as you see fit, and closely embody a tone that has delighted phans for over 35 years….
For the Farmhouse, a modded TS9, a modded TS808 and a modded Ross Compressor were built, all based off of their original schematics. The two Tube Screamers have always been set with one featuring Less gain and one featuring More gain, hence the L and M stamps on these respective knobs. The L is the TS9, with Trey’s classic mods that increase the low end and smooth out the Tone just a bit. The M knob does the same thing, only with extra dirt on tap, for a more powerful sounding overdrive. Each of these gain stages can be tweaked via internal trim pots, to adjust overall Tone and Gain to taste.
The Compressor portion features 2 knobs, V (Volume) and S (Sustain) – Trey‘s typical settings for these parameters have typically both been set right around the 11:00 mark, but are still fun to experiment and toy with, to dial in the best sound for your personal rig. The signal chain goes TS9 – TS808 – Ross, like Trey’s, with the compressor keeping all the dirt levels in the right spot. This can be directly correlated with his hollowbody Languedoc guitars, and for the demo below, we used a fantastic Phred Instruments Dockstar, similar to the ‘Docs, but with its own unique sound and flavor. Ours also features a pickup set from our friends in Boise at Porter Pickups, makers of both fine pups and a new, incredible line of guitars as well (go check both of these companies out, won’t you?).
Farm Pedals takes no shortcuts, with their handmade builds, hand-painted enclosures and attention to detail, you know you’re getting a quality pedal. This one just happened to fall into the OMG category for us, and we were lucky enough to garner one of the THREE of these that will ever be built! That’s right, folks: these are in the super-rare category, but we hope you enjoy our attempt at playing some Phish tunes through it as much as we love playing them. And hey, if you don’t like Phish or Trey or hollowbody guitars or Maine or farms, this pedal probably is not for you – all you other Trey-loving prep school hippie tweezers who are stealing time from the faulty plan with Reba and Wilson as you travel through a gumbo of scents and subtle sounds for 46 days…we hope you will enjoy!
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