This remnant will be replaced soon. The FAQ is back, with a new design! What guitar effects does Trey use The guitar itself: "Trey has a very complex setup on his guitar. There are many effects that he uses here and there, but there are three main components to his unique sound. "First off, his guitar accounts for most of the ripe sound. Paul Languadoc, Phish's soundboard manager, made the guitar for him. Although many people believe his guitar is a semi-hollow body, it it not. It is a true hollow body. "What makes it unique, however, is the size and thickness of it. There is no doubt that it is very small for a true hollow bodied guitar. Most musicians who use hollow bodies have large guitars. This is because if the body is too small, the sound feeds back when the bridge pickup is used. Trey, however, likes this, and uses it to his advantage. By skillfully muting all strings but the one he is playing, we hear long sustains like in Divided Sky and YEM." (Posted by Jeff Goldberg 9/26/96) Mark Powers clarified, "Actually, a larger guitar would be more feedback-prone; the greater surface area would absorb more vibrations from the speakers, which would result in more feedback. All hollow-bodies are very feedback-prone; Ted Nugent used his Gibson Byrdland to get an interesting array of feedback noises." A bridge: trey uses a 3-position locking tremolo bridge mechanism. notice he'll finger a chord and then flick his right hand and bing! he's in a different key without moving his left hand at all." (richard miller 10/4/99) Pedals: As Guitar Worled noted (12/98), "Onstage the guitar is fed through an effects chain that includes a Digitech Whammy II, a Dunlop Crybaby, two Ibanez Tube screamers (each with a different setting), a Ross compressor, and Ernie Ball volume pedal and a Bradshaw remote switcher, which has four pre-programed effects loops. Each loop includes an Ibanez 2000 digital delay, an Alesis Microverb cable, a C.A.E univibe and a C.A.E. tremalo." Wah: Trey plays a Teese Real McCoy Custom 3 Tunable Wah-Wah, not a Jim Dunlop Crybaby. It has controls for low, mid, high, sweep range, contour, and gain all hidden inside the pedal. It is numbered and signed by builder-designer Geoffrey Teese. (Thanks to Andy Hunt 10/30/98, harpua1083 12/23/98, and Guitar Shop. And Sunil posted 8/14/98 that "Trey is using the Whammy pedal much more than he ever has before. 4ths and 5ths pop up in funk jams and the 2 octave jump is what you hear when Trey motions with his right arm up to the sky and back down at the end of some songs. (Gorge 2nd night, maybe 2001)" Tube Screamers: Trey has two Ibanez Tube screamers. They are shown on p. 28 of the 8/96 Guitar World -- a TS-10 (on the left, next to the Ross Compressor) and a TS-9 (on the right; possibly a re-issue). (Gil Guajardo 10/10/98.) They use the same circuitry, and the difference is neglibable. Brad Sarno 1/20/98) Originally, he had two original TS-9 models. (Mark Goldberg) Compressor: Brad Sarno posted (1/20/98): "I hear so much talk abou Trey's amp but really, for the most part his tone gets formed well before the amp. The most overlooked device of all is the Ross (not Boss) compressor pedal. In my opinion it is THE secret weapon of his tone. If you ever plug into one you will go "aaaaah". There is no other compressor that sounds like that. It is this pedal that lets Trey go from a single note to a full chord and have it all come out full and even and sustaining. His guitar doesn't really sustain that well, but with the compressor he can add sustain and also induce feedback easier. The key also is that the tube screamers come before the compressor. This lets Trey turn on a tube screamer, turn down the guitar volume to control the distortion level, and the compressor keeps the overall volume nice and loud and even. This is probably why he gets away with having the Tubescramer's volume on 10 without sounding so loud when he kicks it on. This evenness that the compressor provides, lets Langudoc keep him real hot in the PA without fear of suddenly getting too loud." Boomerang: Richard Akers (11/17/98) reported that Trey is "using a Boomerang looping device but has began experimenting with an Oberheim Echoplex digital pro (an extremely nice looping device)" and added 3/1/99 "Trey seems to be very satisfied with the boomerang and uses it to it's full advandage." Pedal quotes: According to wahfuxx (via email 8/18/96): Trey has put these quotes on his footpedals in this order: "The end and the begining of all philosophy is freedom", I've been all around the world and I have never seen a statue of a critic", and "A man has to shoot his own dog" (Not Jim I hope). Other effects: Chris Glushko posted (12/19/97) about noticing "the subtle use of Midi horns by Trey during the fall tour. For a good example, check out the Bowie from Philly 12-3. I know he's always messing around with Midi sounds, but I don't believe I've ever heard him use the Midi to produce another instrument before this tour. Could be wrong. ...The sound is evident every once in a while [during summer 1997 shows] but not to the degree as it was during the fall." Paul Roth posted (10/23/97) that "During the summer tour of this year trey has been using a new guitar effect quite frequently and i would like to know what it is. He uses it in songs like Free and the jam after Harry Hood at Darien Lake and Ghost at Virginia Beach. It is kind of a spacey effect." Anyone have an answer Spacey effect 4/28/99: The spacy effect Trey is using now at the end of songs and during jams is a Uni-Vibe. He has a homemade version that someone made him, but original maker it was a Dunlop Uni-Vibe. Also this effect can be heard very good on Machine Gun by Jimi Hendrix and on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. "My three all-time-favorite guitarists are Jerry [Garcia], [Jimi] Hendrix, and [Frank] Zappa. They are all totally unique from one another, yet oddly similar. They were all striving for this depth where a solo would take you on a journey. But the journey was their own vibe: Zappa was sarcastic, Hendrix was bluesey, Jerry was downhome. I guess I have a suburban vibe. But I still want to get to the places that they got to." -- Trey Anastasio, New York Post 1/1/99 This page last updated February 03, 2007. 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