It takes more than nerve to call your company Gamechanger Audio. You also need groundbreaking ideas to live up to the name.
Since launching in November 2015, Latvian company Gamechanger Audio has shown that it has what it takes. The company’s debut product was the Plus Pedal. Introduced at NAMM 2017, it’s an electronic sustain pedal that lets guitarists (and players of other instruments) create droning, piano-like sustain from their instruments, using patent-pending sampling technology that turns notes or chords into a seamless, continuous loop.
The Plus Pedal can be used in combination with your guitar’s original “dry” signal, as in this video.
Or you can deploy it in “Wet Only” mode to create shimmering swells of sound, using nothing but your guitar and the Plus Pedal, as shown here.
For its second act, Gamechanger has introduced the ambitious Plasma Pedal, which takes a unique approach to creating overdrive and distortion, and has made its way onto more than one “Best of NAMM” stompbox lists. Rather than use transistors, vacuum tubes or LED circuits to produce the effect, as other pedals do, the Plasma feeds your signal into a series of continuous high-voltage plasma discharges within a xenon-filled tube.
“In essence,” say the folks at Gamechanger, “you are playing a bolt of electricity.” Now, that sounds exciting, even without hearing anything!
The result is a heavy, yet transparent distortion that’s saturated with character and lightning-fast dynamic response.
The Plasma Pedal debuted at Winter NAMM 2018, and it’s safe to say it had an electrifying effect on those who demoed it.
But then transforming how musicians make music is central to Gamechanger’s attitude. The company was founded by four friends who are “committed to exploring the uncharted territories of music electronics and creating devices that provide real value while stretching the imagination of both musicians and engineers.” They point to transformative effects like the wah, the Echoplex, the Big Muff, the talk box, the Whammy Pedal and the Bit Commander as examples of what they’ve set out to create.
Following a successful crowdfunding campaign, production of the Plus Pedal began in September 2017. Since then, Gamechanger’s team has doubled in size, giving the company more creative minds with which to dream up innovative new products.
Check out the Plasma Pedal in the video below, and visit Gamechanger Audio for more information.
