Rabea Massaad

Rabea Massaad is a British guitarist, currently the guitarist of Vower and formerly the guitarist of Toska, who built his reputation as much through video as through bands. A self-taught player, he became what Tone City's artist page calls "a YouTube star widely respected among the online guitar playing community for his thoughtful and informative reviews of picks, pedals, instruments, and other equipment"¹. Sound On Sound, reviewing his Neural DSP plug-in in November 2022, noted he had around 350,000 YouTube followers at the time².

His gear story runs in two directions at once. As a reviewer and presenter, first with Andertons TV and later on his own channel, he has demoed a huge range of equipment, from the Strymon BigSky to the Boss GT-1000. As a player, he has a long list of signature collaborations: a Victory amp, two Victory pedals, a Tone City distortion, a Chapman signature guitar and a Neural DSP plug-in.

From Toska and Dorje to Vower

Massaad's band history, as his own endorsers and the press tell it:

Tone City's artist page also credits him with lending his talents to FrogLeap, Toska and Dorje¹. Beyond the bands, his live work has included some high-profile moments: at the 2021 Reading Festival he opened Stormzy's set with what Tone City calls "an absolutely ripping solo"¹, and BOSS's own buying guide describes him as a Glastonbury headlining artist³.

His path into the public eye ran through the Andertons music channel, where he appeared on his own, with Rob Chapman, and with Dorje⁴. That Pedal Show, introducing a 2016 Metal Zone video, noted he was playing his signature Chapman Guitars ML-3 BEA in the episode⁵.

Demo work: BigSky and GT-1000

Two pieces of demo work stand out in his catalog. The first is his 2014 series for Strymon on the BigSky reverb pedal. When Massaad, then with Dorje, told Strymon he wanted to do an in-depth series on the pedal, the company was, in its own words, "super excited, and for good reason"⁶⁴. The series ran to 14 BigSky videos⁷, published in parts through November 2014, with the final installment covering the Magneto, Nonlinear and Reflections reverb machines and an earlier part covering Swell, Bloom, Cloud, Chorale and Shimmer. Strymon also featured a separate Massaad demo explaining Shimmer Reverb using intervals and parameters 1 and 2⁸.

The second is his work for BOSS. The company's guide to the GT multi-effects series highlights that "Glastonbury headlining artists like Rabea Massaad have created brilliant deep-dive videos exploring just what the GT-1000 can do"³. His Boss MD-500 demo had a measurable effect on at least one viewer: Guitar Pedal X's reviewer wrote that "This video was the single strongest factor that encouraged me to buy this pedal"⁹. BOSS also notes that Massaad uses loops in ambient and heavy riff-based compositions to help him write songs and demo equipment¹⁰. He has demoed further pedals since, including a demo of the KMA Machines Wurm 2 listed on RockBoard's PedalPedia¹¹.

Signature gear and collaborations

Massaad's name appears on a substantial range of gear, most of it aimed at high-gain and progressive playing:

• Victory VX Kraken amp, born out of a collaboration with Massaad¹²¹
• Victory V1 The Kraken stompbox, a pedal version of that amp¹¹²
• Victory The Kraken V4 pedal preamp, developed in collaboration with him and, in Delicious Audio's words, "created with heavy, progressive and extended-range overdrive tones in mind"¹³
• Tone City Wildfro distortion pedal, made in collaboration with him¹⁴¹
• Chapman Guitars ML-3 BEA, his signature guitar⁵
• Neural DSP Archetype: Rabea, a signature plug-in simulation of his guitar rig²

The Victory relationship is the deepest of these. Victory's own product page describes the VX Kraken as "a collaboration with Rabea Massaad" and the V1 stompbox as taking the amp's elements into pedal form¹. Guitar Pedal X's 2024 high-gain distortion guide describes the V1 as based on his Victory amp of the same name, which the writer understood to be largely based on the Peavey 5150 EVH amp, "but with a little darker profile perhaps"¹⁵. The V4 preamp, per Delicious Audio, has two slightly different channels: channel 1 a more vintage British-inspired gain sound, channel 2 a tighter bass with a more cutting midrange¹³.

The Tone City Wildfro came out of his work with Vower. Tone City calls it "the unique design pedal to meet Massaad's specific tonal demands"¹, and the product page introduces him as "guitarist of Vower Band & the former guitarist of Tosk and Andertons TV presenter"¹⁴. He is on the Tone City artist roster alongside those endorsements¹⁶.

The Neural DSP collaboration put him in notable company: Sound On Sound lists Adam "Nolly" Getgood, John Petrucci, Tim Henson, Tosin Abasi, Cory Wong, Plini and Gojira as earlier Neural DSP signature collaborators². He has also given a review quoted by Horizon Devices, saying of a pedal simply:

In August 2024, at the ArcTanGent festival, Massaad and fellow Vower guitarist Joe Gosney revealed festival rigs built around Neural DSP Quad Cortex units, with their pedal collections left at home.

How he approaches gain

For a player so associated with distortion pedals, Massaad's own stated preference is telling. On That Pedal Show's Metal Zone episode, the presenters introduced his take on gain pedals directly:

That preference lines up with his signature gear: the Kraken designs are high-gain amp and preamp circuits first, and the Wildfro is a distortion rather than a low-gain overdrive. He has still engaged with overdrive pedals as a judge, rating three overdrives highly in an Andertons blindfold test won by the Boss BD-2W, the Waza Craft edition of the Blues Driver, with the Wampler Tumnus second and the Warm Audio Warmdrive third.

His endorsements extend beyond pedals and amps. Tone City lists him as endorsed by MusicMan, Victory Amplification and other brands¹⁶, and Sound On Sound credits his involvement in the development of the Victory Kraken amps².

Questions