Strymon's new Fairfax is a cool Fuzzy Scuzzy Tube Amp style JFETs saturator with gating sag

A first ever analog circuit from Strymon is a JFET style Tube Power Amp recreation with unique Sag circuit to replicate that sort of mis-biased gating you get from those vintage source amps.

Controls - Drive, Level, Bright : Off/On, Sag.

Strymon put it best themselves in the following paragraphs :

"Fairfax began as an engineering experiment, initially inspired by the original Garnet Amplifiers Herzog® tube drive unit designed for Randy Bachman in 1965. Our analog guys decided to try and recreate all of the critical elements of a custom Champ-like tube amp circuit fully in the analog domain, but small enough to fit into a pedal enclosure (so it couldn’t use real tubes or an output transformer)."

"The final design features a cleverly miniaturized tube preamp, Class A power amp and an ingenious custom circuit that emulates the saturation characteristics of the output transformer (which is absolutely vital to get the sound right)."

"There’s even a variable Sag circuit that behaves just like a real tube amp does. At low Sag values the behavior is mild and only slightly compressed, and at max values the JFETs can go crazy and unbias — which gates the signal — leading to spitting and chortling sounds more commonly associated with fuzzes."

"In order for Fairfax to behave like a real amplifier it needed a massive amount of operating voltage, so a transformer-based power supply converts the 9VDC input voltage to 40V internally. This gives Fairfax the power that it needs for high headroom and amp-like feel, allowing for a wide range of tones." 

"At lower Gain settings Fairfax can be sweet, gently pushing the input to your amp with additional harmonic richness, a touch of saturation and a flat frequency response. At higher Gain levels the sound becomes fully saturated, and that large range of gain on tap allows Fairfax to be used in nearly any setup imaginable."

This is very evidently a 60’s style tube amp recreation - which matches that early slightly overblown style of delivery at the extremes. It depends on how much you like that style as tohow it will appeal to you. I feel it’s all about finding the right balance! I also feel that the Fairfax will be used a lot with other driver pedals - to give them a more authentic feel - and some of that mis-biased Sag!

I feel it’s worth a shake - it definitely goes on the list, not sure yet of its priority. It goes for $199 on the Strymon Webstore, and is £199 at Andertons in the UK!

I feel it’s a pretty decent offering - albeit somewhat of an acquired taste!