Your local music store, a proverbial farmers' market for all things gear. Stop by, say, one of our brick-and-mortars, and you'll be met with a cornucopia of music gear from all over the world. We've got some from the most popular markets – of course – your Californias, your Tennessees. We've got your regional flavors from the midwest and the tristate, international samplings from Europe and Asia, sometimes it feels like we've got the whole world in our backyard.
If there's one brand to embody a homegrown, localized flavor (and to carry on in this farmers' market metaphor), it's Farm Pedals . A small, humble operation dealing in some of the coolest, hand-built circuits around today, Farm wears its grassroots origins on its sleeve. This homegrown brand has made a name for itself with a concise artistic vision and plenty of popular pedals to its name. Imagine trying to find something like that at the grocery store.
The Family Farm
Introducing Farm Pedals
If you could believe it, Farm Pedals doesn't call itself that for no reason. The brainchild of Maine farmer Geof Hancock, Farm Pedals was born of a desire to express musical ideas and keep busy during the off-season. The Farm Pedals operation is based out of the Hancock Family Farm. A real, living and breathing farm in Casco, Maine, the Hancock Family Farm spends the majority of its year farming vegetables – beets, lettuce, radishes – growing flowers, taking care of animals, you know, real farm stuff. The seasons start to change however, and that's when Farm Pedals comes out of hibernation.
For years, Farm Pedals has come alive every winter, becoming a bigger, more recognizable name each ensuing time. Today's Farm Pedals is a diverse mix of hand-built effect pedals with a unifying, rustic aesthetic and homegrown sound. Let's talk about 'em.
Harvest Moon
Farm Pedals Effect Pedals
The Farm Pedals line centers pretty heavily around gnarly distortions, drives, and fuzzes. If you're a fan of the kind of unwieldy, devil-may-care sound you'd get out of an old dirt pedal not as manicured as its more modern counterpart, you'll feel right at home among the Farm Pedals catalog.
Farm Pedals Drive and Distortion Effect Pedals
With Farm Pedals, we're treated to a number of drives and dirts you might not usually find elsewhere. Just take their Evolution Dual Voice Fuzz or Mutual Aid Cosmic Garbage Fuzz for example. These compact circuits throw it back to lesser-seen precursors of fuzz circuits like the Colorsound One Knob and Shin-Ei Companion, respectively, for distinctly vintage flavors of signal destruction. Such signal destruction is found in other Farm Pedals circuits like the Sweet Leaf and Forest Floor Fuzz. These particular units, focusing on silicon-germanium diode mixing to get on to messy dirt blends, make for blissfully simple ways to get dirty.
Of course, the Farm Pedals line isn't solely dedicated to early, obscure, fuzzstortion circuits. What Farm is probably most famous for is their love for jammin'. One particular fixation of Farm Pedals, one they've become something of a household name for, is the tone of jam guitar godfather Jerry Garcia. Throughout Farm Pedals' lineup, you'll find allusions to the great guitarist like with their Samson '78 Distortion – a pedal that hearkens to Garcia's late 1970s distortion and preamp rigs.
The grace for the 'Dead doesn't end there. Likely the most known Farm Pedals effect – the Boost of the Dead – embodies nearly everything that makes Farm Pedals so beloved. A pedal with a number of iterations, the Boost of the Dead has grown from a humble, one-dial boost and buffer inspired by Garcia's Stratoblaster and Tiger Buffer circuits to a dual-booster, two-way buffer creation retaining everything that made its earliest incarnations hits. Today's Boost of the Dead V3 is still a blissfully simple and endlessly inspiring pedal. Though Farm has never claimed to have an exclusive, magic key to Garcia's tone, the Boost of the Dead is still a beloved effect – and at this point, a countless number of Farm fans can't be wrong!
Fly Farm Blues
The Farm Pedals experience is a special one. Naturally fleeting, such is the rhythm of the seasons, Farm Pedals invites you to get in on the harvest with something new and unexpected each time they bring in the crop. The brand's blissfully simple, naturally inspiring, and particularly artistic musical experience permeates across its entire line for a collection of effect pedals to find a home in. What could be better?
