Gamechanger Audio Motor

The Gamechanger Audio Motor Pedal is a fully playable electro-mechanical synth voice that tracks the pitch of your playing in real time. Its sound engine is not a DSP model: it is a specially designed brushed DC electro-motor block, spinning at 3 Hz per rotation, whose rotation speed is matched to the fundamental frequency of your input signal. To hit an A440 note, the motor spins at 146 revolutions per second¹². Gamechanger Audio describes the result as "the sound of a spinning brushed DC motor, pushed to the edge and tamed with precision control," and is explicit that "this isn't an emulation. This isn't analog modeling"¹.

The pedal is a reduction of the company's desktop Motor Synth II, using one of that machine's oscillator motors³, and it sits in the broader family of synth pedals alongside pitch-tracking units like the Boss SY-200 and Meris Enzo. It tracks guitar, bass, synth or voice, and can serve as a drone element that doubles your lines, or as a ring-mod or x-mod engine for your signal¹.

The engines and modes

The Motor Pedal's sound comes from five engine modes, selected with an Engine Mode switch⁴⁵. Each takes a different approach to the spinning motor:

Guitar Pedal X's summary of the engine lineup groups them the same way: MOTOR as raw and growling, MXD as cross-modulation, M-Wave as a multitimbral synth, Coil as AC coil injection versus DC, and a 24-band Vocoder⁵. Beyond the engines, an X-MOD mode uses amplitude modulation to cross-mod your input signal with all of the motor engines⁴.

The controls and expression pedal

The pedal's most distinctive control is its spring-loaded foot controller, which Gamechanger Audio likens to a car's pedals: it can act as an accelerator, brake, clutch or volume pedal⁶. Each mode changes what your foot does to the sound⁴:

• ACCELERATOR: a wide range of controlled pitch-shift, or floor it to redline the motor
• BRAKE: downward pitch-shift, or mash the pedal to bring the motor to a stall
• DRIFT: play it like a gentle vibrato arm, or floor it for a complete wipe-out
• VOLUME: use the spring-loaded pedal to create volume swells

Guitar.com's reviewer, Richard Purvis, found the expression pedal versatile: "It can be set to go up or down an octave, engage infinite sustain, add momentary vibrato or serve as a volume pedal." He also noted that pushing down extra-hard in vibrato mode increases the speed, and that in either octave mode it soars beyond its range⁷.

On the panel itself, two volume knobs give independent control of the dry signal and the motor output, and an analog TONE BOOST provides a tilt EQ for shaping the motor output⁴. A sound shift control offers vibrato or glide with interval settings from -OCT through -5th, -4th, 0, +4th, +5th to +OCT, with a maximum vibrato depth of +/-100 cents and a maximum glide of 5⁸.

Power and connections

The Motor Pedal runs on a standard 9V DC center-negative pedal power supply of at least 500 mA, and the supply is not included in the box¹⁴. There is no battery option⁸.

Other measured specifications from the maker include an input impedance of 0.5 MΩ, output impedance of 100 Ω, maximum input level of 9 dBu, signal level of 4Vpp max on all audio connections, frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz (±1 dB), signal-to-noise ratio of 90 dB (A weighted), and an operating temperature range of 0 to 50 degrees C⁸. MIDI comes in over 5-pin DIN, with USB-C handling MIDI, firmware updates and diagnostics¹⁸.

History and versions

The concept predates the pedal by years: Gamechanger Audio demoed a Motor pedal in a Premier Guitar video, where Jason Shadrick highlighted "another ear-twisting filter that is incredibly deep"⁹. The desktop ancestor, the Motor Synth, is described by its maker as the world's first electro-mechanical desktop synthesizer, built around a system of eight electro-motors that change rotation speed to produce musical notes. The current Motor Synth MKII adds a third digital voice with adjustable four-note polyphony, a virtual-analog oscillator and noise engine, a dedicated multimode digital filter, and MIDI and CV control¹⁰¹¹.

What reviewers said

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