The Internet Has Thoughts About Three Magazines Reviewing the Strymon Fairfax.
Premier Guitar 4.9. Guitar.com 9/10. MusicRadar 4.5. Across all three, the sharpest criticism anyone printed was that some guitarists might want a tone control.
Two sides. One page.
Johnny argues the piece. Then he argues against himself. Somebody has to check his work. Read both, then call the winner below.
The take is shown below.
Source
“I think it can do it all.”
What the other mastheads said
MusicRadar · 4.5/5 · Jan 14, 2026
“It is worth noting that things can get a little frayed around the edges if you push the gain too far.”
Guitar.com · 9/10 · May 4, 2026
“The first, and most obvious, is that it's awesome – smartly designed, unexpectedly versatile and bubbling over with musical character.”
The Suede Read
Three magazines reviewed the $199 Strymon Fairfax across four months and all three loved it. That is allowed. What the three of them do to their cons boxes is the story.
MusicRadar went first in January at 4.5 and printed two real reservations: the drive can get a little fuzzy around the edges, and extra tone-shaping controls would be handy. Guitar.com followed in May at 9 out of 10 and independently landed on the same gap, listing exactly one drawback — maybe some players will wish it had a tone control. Two outlets, four months apart, same missing knob. That is a corroborated finding.
Premier Guitar, in between, scored it 4.9 and wrote this in the cons field: high levels of sag can make precision players sound like they kinda suck, but in an absolutely awesome way. That is not a criticism. That is a compliment with a punchline standing where the drawback goes, on the highest score of the three.
One more thing worth being fair about. Guitar.com's headline says plenty of rough edges, which reads like a pan and is not one — it describes the pedal's old-school voice, and the body calls it awesome. The rough edges are the product working.
So: a pedal that two of three reviewers think needs a tone control it does not have, and a 4.9 whose only reservation is a joke. The Fairfax is probably terrific. The scorecards are the problem.
Spotted something the press fluffed? info@suedeai.org
Three independent reviewers reaching the same conclusion is what consensus looks like. The column has decided agreement is evidence of a conspiracy.
Read the finding again: two outlets, months apart, with no contact, identified the same specific limitation — no dedicated tone control — and each docked the pedal for it. That is exactly the corroboration this column claims to want, and it is here, in print, from the press. Then the post files a fluffed verdict against the press. If independent reviewers converging on a real flaw counts against them, there is no result the glossies could produce that would count in their favour.
The Premier Guitar cons box is a style complaint dressed as an ethics complaint. The line about sag making precise picking sound sloppy is a genuine warning about a genuine behaviour of the circuit: crank the sag and your timing gets smeared. The reviewer thinks that trade is worth it and says so in his own voice, which is a voice that magazine's readers have followed for years. Reformat it as "con: high sag reduces note definition" and it is the same information the column would have accepted without comment.
And the post concedes the pedal is probably terrific, which is the part that should have decided the verdict. Nobody has produced a single owner, forum thread, or rival test saying the Fairfax underdelivers — the column checked and admits it could not find owner receipts at all. So the charge is that three reviewers were too pleased about a pedal that, as far as anyone can demonstrate, deserves it. Fluffed is supposed to mean the press inflated a verdict past the truth. Here the truth is unchallenged and the complaint is tone.