The Strymon Fairfax is a fully analog drive pedal for electric guitar. It is built to act like a small amplifier rather than a typical distortion box. Its design was inspired by the Garnet Herzog, a tube drive unit made for Randy Bachman in 1965. It is the first pedal in Strymon's Series A line of all-analog designs, with no MIDI, USB, firmware or digital processing.
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Amp-style circuit: a scaled-down tube-style preamp feeds a Class A power stage and a custom circuit that mimics output transformer saturation. There are no actual tubes or transformer in the signal path.
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40V internal operation: a galvanically isolated, transformer-based supply turns the 9VDC input into 40V for extra headroom and a more amp-like response.
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Sag control: sets how far the power rail sags. Low settings add gentle compression. High settings un-bias the preamp JFETs for gated, sputtering fuzz textures.
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Bright switch: choose a full, flat response or a darker, smoother voice with some highs rolled off.
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Pedalboard friendly: true bypass, a JFET-buffered high-impedance input, and an internal jumper that sets the on or off state at power-up for loop switchers and rack drawer systems.
Drive and Level together cover a wide range, from a clean boost through light crunch to full saturation. The discrete tube-emulation stage clips asymmetrically for a smooth breakup. At lower gain the Fairfax adds harmonics and mild saturation while keeping the frequency response flat. Turned up, it moves into thick, saturated drive. Raising Drive also makes the circuit sag harder, so the two controls interact much like a pushed amp.
Strymon designed it to work with clean or already dirty amps and with amp modellers. That makes it equally usable as an always-on tone shaper or as a dedicated gain stage. Strymon's demos show its range, including:
- 2000s British rock and 90s alternative tones
- Garage punk and fuzzy sounds with Sag maxed
- Metal tones when the pedal is hit with a boost
- Fat boosts on the neck pickup
An amber LED shows when the effect is engaged. The pedal runs from a standard 9VDC centre-negative supply, which is not included.