One of the world's most idiosyncratic gear makers and one of its most idiosyncratic rockers have teamed up for a new pedal. Gamechanger Audio—which makes the Plus sustain, Motor Synth, and more—and Jack White, who needs no introduction, have collaborated to create a fresh spin on Gamechanger's Plasma Pedal.
Fans spotted the strange yet Plasma-looking prototype on White's pedalboard back in April. On Thursday, Gamechanger made it official, unveiling the Third Man Records-exclusive Plasma Coil at Summer NAMM.
Like the original Plasma, the new Plasma Coil is a high-voltage distortion unit that uses a gas-filled tube instead of traditional circuits to create its distortion. But from there, it gets quite a bit different.
The Plasma Coil does away with the original unit's blend knob and replaces it with a range of octave effects, from two octaves down to two octaves up.
The pedal's controls give players plenty of options to tweak their signal. The result is a truly gnarly range of distorted octave tones, with enough wild edges and twitchy gating effects to stay unpredictable, in a good way.
This isn't the first pedal collaboration for Third Man. White's company has worked with Union Tube and Transistor on the Bumble Buzz, Mantic Concepts for a limited-edition Flex, and Critter & Guitarri on the Terz Amplifer.
For more news from Summer Namm 2019, find our ongoing coverage here.