Rarely does a pedal completely take me by surprise, to where I’m dumbfounded, amazed and excited all at the same time. The cats over at Center Street Electronics have managed to confound me with their weird, awesome fuzz oscillator pedal, appropriately named God Hates Fuzz. An ordinary fuzz pedal this is not; an extremely fun piece of musical equipment, it is.
Basically, all the controls MUST work together to make up this pedal’s individualistic sound. If you turn one knob, you’re inevitably gonna turn another, just to see how it will play with the new setting from the knob you just turned, then the next knob after that will follow suit, and so on. I’m sure if you really tried, you could sit down and figure out ONE specific setting for each knob that you liked, that all worked in harmony together, but what fun would that be when you’re dealing with a pedal like this? Zero is the correct answer. The only way you can reach this fuzz pedal’s full potential is to treat it like a wild, untamed beast…which it kind is anyway, so you wouldn’t be too far off.
You know what a Volume, Tone and Fuzz knob should do, right? Well, that’s exactly what they do on the God Hates Fuzz, too, so we got that all covered. The Starve knob controls how much power is actually going to the pedal’s circuit. This reacts directly with the Gain , Control and Oscillation knobs, and, depending where those are set, what the sonic outcome of turning the Starve knob will be (as much as you can control something like that). The Oscillation knob is my favorite, by far, and the shining gem of this stompbox. When you crank it up, it’s the “Normal” setting, where you just have a kick-ass fuzz pedal, minus the wackiness. As nice as that sounds, start turning it counter-clockwise, and this pedal comes to life! The God Hates Fuzz becomes a true terror of a pedal, a totally whacked-out jumble of sound, yet still allows (some) notes and (partial) chords to sneak through the noise to be just perceptible. A funky adventure into the depths of fuzz hell and back, this knob will have you twisting and turning for hours upon gloriously fuzzy hours.
On top of all that, there’s a Stutter soft switch, too, which actually works in two different ways. When the Oscillation knob is cranked, or normal, the Stutter becomes a signal kill switch, fun for stop-start jams and the like. But when the Oscillation starts to move to the left, the Stutter takes on a whole ‘nother function, resulting in the creation of even more crazy tones and feedback sounds. This pedal is not for the tame, so beware if you’re timid about fuzz at all, or just go for and have a blast! Thanks so much to John and everyone at Center Street Electronics for sending this rad box over to us to review – keep an eye out for more C.S.E. reviews coming up in the near future, and go check out the rest of their pedals, too!
Submitted by Mike B, Website
Demo Rock pedalboard by West Coast Pedalboard
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