Latvia's Gamechanger Audio appeared on the scene in 2017, with a bold promise baked into its brand name. From its first release, the Plus Pedal, to its Xenon-tube distortion Plasma units, Gamechanger has already made good on its audacity.
At January's NAMM 2020 convention, the company showed off a brand-new contraption: the Light Pedal. It's a spring reverb unit that—instead of crafting its sounds through springs alone—also uses optical sensors to capture the springs' cast-off vibrations, giving you a wild array of reverberations to play with.
Today, the first 1,000 Light Pedals are available for pre-order, exclusively on Reverb. The limited batch of signed and numbered pedals are available here for $299 USD or €299 (including VAT), with delivery set for late May or early June.
The Light Pedal turned heads at this year's NAMM show and landed on MusicRadar's Best of NAMM list for its innovative approach to reverb. Just how is the Light Pedal different from a standard spring reverb unit? Gamechanger explains:
It takes a lot of energy to transfer an audio signal across the length of a vibrating spring. By the time the source audio signal reaches the spring tank's output transducer, most of its nuanced harmonic content will be lost, converted into mechanical energy. This is why spring reverbs have such a particular sound, since what you end up hearing is largely the spring's own resonant frequencies. The light pedal uses extremely sensitive optical pairs, placed at specific regions of the spring to detect very nuanced movements on the spring's surface, as soundwaves travel through it.
This method opens up a much wider range of frequencies, harmonics, overtones, and textures that are otherwise lost in the mechanical reverberation process. Using optical sensors also opens doors to some new effects types, such as optical reverb tremolo, optical reverb modulation, and optical harmonic shimmer. The result is a wide variety of analog reverb sounds, ranging from classic to experimental to pure magic.
Gamechanger got its start at the 2017 NAMM, showing up with little more than a few Plus Pedals and the hope that they'd make an impression. Three years later, and by now one of the most beloved new brands, they're still coming to NAMM ready to impress with fresh, innovative creations.
Grab one of the first 1,000 Light Pedals now, before they're all gone.