The Mesa/Boogie Mark Series is a staple of rock ‘n’ roll music, with the Mark I becoming a favored amp of Keith Richards and Carlos Santana soon after its introduction in 1972. When Phish returned from an extended hiatus in 2009, Trey brought one of his most long-standing and reliable rigs: the Mesa/Boogie Mark III long head amplifier and the 2×12 wood cabinets he and Paul Languedoc built in Burlington, Vermont in the early years. Trey’s ’80s and ’90s rig - and the tones he produced with it - fit the music that Phish created during that era, while the tones Trey is pulling from today’s rig are well-suited to the music the band creates right now. But over the last few years, that super-clean sound has largely disappeared from Trey’s playing, in favor of a more saturated, growling, aggressive and muscular tone, leading many fans to ask me, “What happened to the old guitar sound?” Although there’s an understandable impulse among music fans to seek the comfortable old sounds of the past, artists need to keep pushing their boundaries and moving forward. Like Phish’s compositions, the timbre of the band itself seemed to break the mold for what could work in rock music, much to the delight of fans. The sparkly, distortion-free, jazz-infused clean tone was a signature of Phish’s sound from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s and was a sharp contrast to the grungey, heavily distorted guitars that dominated most rock music for decades. or Nirvana’s In Utero, which were released the same year (1993). Think of the opening lines of “Weigh” on Rift and what they sound like next to the guitar tones on Pearl Jam’s Vs. It wasn’t a sound people were used to hearing from the classic rock legends they revered, like David Gilmour, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. In the mid-1990s when I was eagerly trying to spread the gospel of Phish to anyone who’d listen, the unique tone from lead guitarist Trey Anastasio frequently raised eyebrows. Below is a review of Anastasio’s use of amplifiers during his career. Ryan Chiachiere runs the Trey’s Guitar Rig website that documents Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio’s gear.
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