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NAMM 2020 Demo: Gamechanger Audio’s new Light is a bonkers reverb pedal

Another visually stunning stompbox from the Latvian brand.

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NAMM 2020: Gamechanger Audio has released another eyebrow-raising stompbox: the Light Pedal, which the brand is billing as the “world’s first optical spring reverb system”.

The device itself bears Gamechanger’s quirky stamp: in the middle of the pedal’s enclosure is an actual spring reverb tank with three springs. But the technology used to harness the signal is far from old-school.

gamechanger audio light pedal

The stompbox uses infra-red optical sensors placed at intervals along the springs to “harvest the full timbral and harmonic range of a spring reverb tank”, the brand claims. “This method opens up a much wider range of frequencies, harmonics, overtones and textures that are otherwise lost in the mechanical Reverberation process.”

All that results in six analogue effects/modes, including Optical Reverb Tremolo, Optical Reverb Modulation and Optical Harmonic Shimmer. You can hear it action here:

The Light Pedal is the latest in a string of kooky Gamechanger releases. Its most recent release, debuting at Summer NAMM 2019, was the Plasma Coil, a fuzz pedal designed in collaboration with Jack White’s Third Man Records. Check out the video demo here.

The Latvian company burst onto the boutique pedal scene in 2017 with the Plus Pedal, an ingenious foot pedal that lets guitarists create layered sustain effects. In our review of the Plus, we called it “a texture-building treat that’s surprisingly easy to master”.

Its other popular stomper, the Plasma Pedal, is another novel dirt box, known for an electrified xenon tube smack in the middle of the chassis. We said: “This is very much a high-gain filth machine, creating a wall of fuzzy fury that’s smooth in its thoroughly flattened dynamics, but rough in the crackling rage of the distortion itself.”

The Light pedal will hit store shelves in autumn this year. However, a limited preorder run will go live 10 February, 11AM central time (5PM GMT) on Reverb.com – for delivery in late May. The preorder run will end once these 1,000 pedals, all signed and numbered have been snapped up. The Light Pedal will list for $299 / €299.

More info at gamechangeraudio.com.

Check out all NAMM 2020 news here.

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