The Small Trees

The Small Trees (TSTs) is an all valve, Class A clean boost, and put simply – it makes things better.

Based around a single ECC82, TSTs is comprised of two stages – the first stage providing 16dB of clean boost, the second, a valve line driver. Essentially TSTs is the ‘Green’ side of TBTs, housed in a smaller enclosure and powered via a 12V adaptor. ‘What’s the point, though?’, you cry. Well, enough TBTs users contacted me to say they have found the green side invaluable as a guitar and bass front end, that after the umpteenth email it seemed sensible for us to provide it as a stand alone.

Most musicians I know are searching for that magical lift to their sound, a sprinkling of fairy dust which creates its own space in a mix or even just makes their instrument more fun to listen to night after night. That is what TSTs does. In fact, having it in circuit sounds so much better than bypass that I have witnessed guitarists leave it on all gig and just ride the Gain knob with their foot, pushing the level when needed.

As you would expect TSTs are hand built with just the same love and care at our workshop in West London as all of our gear. This care and craft pervade the influence TSTs has on any signal which passes through it, which in turn testifies to the time and effort spent testing and comparing components and circuit tweaks.

Whether you need to create an exciting DI guitar sound in the studio, bathe a bass signal in harmonics or enliven the output of a soft synth or sampler, TSTs will make your ears smile.