Gamechanger Audio and Third Man Hardware release white Plasma Coil anniversary edition

August 19, 2024 · 3 sources

Gamechanger Audio and Third Man Hardware have unveiled a 5th anniversary edition of their Plasma Coil, the high-voltage distortion pedal co-designed by Jack White, MusicRadar reported on August 19, 2024¹. The edition is limited to 400 units worldwide and is available via Reverb and direct from Gamechanger Audio and Third Man Hardware¹.

The anniversary version gives the enclosure a white finish with sheets of photosensitive anodized aluminum, and each unit is numbered²¹. The pedal itself is unchanged: it uses a xenon-filled tube rather than LED circuits, transistors or vacuum tubes to produce overdrive, converting the instrument's signal into high-voltage discharges inside the tube and back into an analog audio signal². MusicRadar reported that the pedal converts the input signal internally to 3500V¹.

A six-position rotary switch selects the octave and boost effects: a voltage booster, two subharmonic modes, an upper harmonic mode and two mixed harmonic modes¹. The subharmonic modes produce glitchy octave-down distortion that MusicRadar compared to a ring mod or bit-crusher, while the octave-up sounds use a full-wave rectifier and band-pass filter¹. A second footswitch controls the FX section and can be set to latching or momentary mode with a toggle on the back panel². The Coil has no blend knob and runs fully wet when engaged, with master volume and low and high frequency EQ controls². The low EQ offers ±9dB boost or cut at a 600Hz corner frequency, and the high EQ ±10dB at 1.5kHz².

The pedal requires a standard 9V DC center-negative power supply and does not come with one². com reported the same $350 when the pedal launched at Summer NAMM 2019³.