Name: Kevin Rasch
Hometown: Knoxville, TennesseeGuitar: Sundial Fender Stratocaster
This guitar began its life in 2011 as a candy apple red, made-in-Mexico Fender Strat with HSS pickups. Today, the only remaining stock items are the alder body, jack plate, and jack.
I bought the guitar because I loved the look and feel of the beautifully figured bird’s-eye maple neck installed by the previous owner. It’s a Warmoth neck with a double-expanding truss rod and Gotoh side-adjuster mechanism. The stock pickups were replaced with Seymour Duncan Antiquity Texas Hots and the tuners, pickguard, and even the 4-bolt neck plate were upgraded to higher-end Fender products. The stock tremolo, however, had serious tuning issues. My wife was kind enough to buy me the Callaham tremolo assembly and super short, Gilmour-style tremolo arm for my birthday.
The guitar’s most visually stunning upgrade is its custom paint job by David Tapia, a talented young artist who’s one of my daughter’s best friends. While brainstorming together on ideas, he suggested putting words on it. I’d recently learned about a motto inscribed on sundials: “soon comes night.” I chose this phrase because it literally describes when moths and fireflies appear (as they have on the guitar), but also metaphorically describes human mortality. To me, it’s another way of saying, “Seize the day.”
After reading about the death’s-head hawkmoth painted on the front of the guitar, I learned these moths are specially adapted to raid beehives for honey. And so, a beehive became the obvious choice for the back.
A special note: Erick Coleman’s article, “DIY: How to Refinish Your Axe,” in the May 2017 issue of Premier Guitar was instrumental to how the original paint was stripped, the choice of a nitro finish, and the entire process of refinishing the guitar. I can’t tell you how many times I read Erick’s article and how much I appreciate his sage wisdom.
Send your guitar story to submissions@premierguitar.com.
Buzzaround Blues
Some of the G.O.A.F.’s can’t-quite-place-it tone profile probably comes from its uncommon design inspiration, the Baldwin Burns Buzzaround. The Buzzaround is most famous for being Robert Fripp’s fuzz of choice through the early ’70s. It’s also legendary for being incredibly rare. Purple 10-horned pachyderms may outnumber surviving examples.
Such rarity makes it hard to evaluate how precisely the G.O.A.F. nails the Buzzaraound’s signature tones, but the Buzzaround’s circuit clearly is the foundation of the G.O.A.F.’s three-transistor design, which features a germanium AC125 and two rubber-sheathed germanium transistors of uncertain origin. (Massive says they are NOS Russian units.) The whole circuit is tidily laid out on a through-hole board about an inch wide that runs the length of the enclosure and is mounted independently from the in/out jacks and footswitches. The arrangement also makes way for a 9V battery, which Massive FX says is key to extracting the best tones from the G.O.A.F. On the whole, it’s a sturdy, thoughtfully built stompbox.
The direct influence of the Buzzaround on the G.O.A.F. is also evident in the reproduction of the Buzzaround’s unusual control array. It includes a fairly standard gain/fuzz control, but also two very interactive controls for treble and bias that are key to G.O.A.F.’s fuzz flavors. Massive FX added extra flexibility in the form of a master volume that the original Buzzaround did not have. The G.O.A.F.’s fixed octave function is a new twist on the Buzzaround formula, too. But the sum of the parts—new and old—is a wealth of provocative, musical, and distinctive fuzz textures.
An Alchemical Buzz
For all the menace suggested by the G.O.A.F.’s esoteric art and labeling, it’s not the loudest fuzz in the world. That’s a good thing. Massive FX wisely traded bluster for range, headroom, and versatility, which is consistent with the Buzzaround’s best virtues. The most obvious difference between the G.O.A.F.’s basic fuzz voice and more forceful fuzzes is an airy, open sense of balance between fuzz and empty space. There’s just more of the latter, and it makes each note stand out in sharp relief.
Other points of reference for the G.O.A.F.’s basic voice can be elusive. It shares the sharp-fanged attack and high-contrast aggression of the Tone Bender MkII. It also has the cello-like sustain of a Big Muff (an attribute that made the original Buzzaround appealing to Robert Fripp), but lacks a Muff’s corpulent low-end presence. On balance, it tends toward the toppy, fierce presence you get from a Fuzz Face or Tone Bender, which makes the very interactive treble and bias controls that much more valuable.
Ratings
Pros:
Deep, wide range of distinctive fuzz voices. Versatile treble and bias controls.
Cons:
Super vague esoteric control labels. Highly interactive bias and treble controls can be tough to master. A touch spendy.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$299
Massive FX G.O.A.F.
massivefxpedals.com
Mastering these two controls takes practice. They have a much different tactile response than the average tone or bias control. They’re also very interactive with the fuzz, the master volume, and each other. Their respective ranges are broad, too. And their effect on the overall output is so strong that, at low levels, they can almost cancel your output entirely if you don’t have enough fuzz and master volume in the mix.
The broad range of the bias and treble controls doesn’t radically transform the basic voice of the G.O.A.F. But it enables you to emphasize very specific frequencies. Of the two, the treble control is the subtlest. I tended to use it for fine sculpting after dialing in appealing fuzz and bias levels. The bias control has the strongest effect on the overall voice. At high volume, with big amps in particular, it’s super satisfying to explore its range. At maximum levels, the bias control gives the G.O.A.F. a honky, almost snorkel-y, midrange presence that has the punch of a cocked wah without the heavy filtering. As you dial the bias control back, you lose a little girth and muscle, but gain focus that you can emphasize with a bump in the treble and master volume. The interactivity of these four controls often feels almost synth-like—even chaotic at times. The payoff for your patience, though, is highly sculpted fuzz tones that still feel as nasty, singing, or soaring as you require.
As addictive as the cool fuzz tones can be, you can almost forget the octave function, which can also be used independently. Though fixed in level and octave content, it’s a killer compliment to the fuzz and shares the fuzz section’s impressive knack for sustain. That’s no mean feat for an octave-up effect. It also sounds great with chords. If you’ve been frustrated by octaves that fizz out at the mere thought of a dissonant triad or full-step bend, the G.O.A.F.’s octave section may be worth the price of admission alone.
The Verdict
Punchy, precise, open, and aggressive, the G.O.A.F. is, in many ways, the ideal fuzz. The effective but sensitive and interactive bias and treble controls can make G.O.A.F. harder to know than say, a Fuzz Face. But the spectrum of fuzz colors you can access is more than worth the trade-off.
Watch the Review Demo: