Gamechanger Audio brings Advanced-Dynamics Modular Synth Cross-Cabling to Stompboxes with its innovative MOD Series

I love that Gamechanger Audio exists and is so free and forward looking in its innovation - continuously delivering new and distinct ideas into the world of pedals. They certainly make very interesting form factors, while their pioneering spirit often kind of ignores the more practical aspects of day-to-day pedalboard management. All their units are larger than the norms - often quite substantially - which makes those pedals difficult to accommodate on a typical board. And those considerations remain with this release - as these are once more large-format pedals both in length and height. The design of these is of course incredibly cool - but most players will struggle to accommodate these within their typical rig.

It’s noticeable in the demo that the MOD Series trio is featured kind of stand-alone - where most players would be thinking how they might incorporate these within their current pedalboard setup. The truth is you can’t really just whack these in on the board - this is another entirely new thing - and you will need to swap out a whole load of pedals to make way for these 3! While this stompbox format is really quite revolutionary. Stompboxes are being used increasingly by the modular synth and tabletop player cohort - and yes there are already several pedals out there with lots of CV sockets / ports on the front facia - while of course no one has done it quite like this before.

The genius of these pedals is really how the Dynamics of your Playing and Pitch - or Note Choices can control and trigger how the pedal responds. Each of the 4 Primary Controls on each pedal has a corresponding smaller Attenuverter knob - which sets the direction / degree / amount of Modulation. You can press both footswitches together to define a threshold - above or below which the Modulation is automatically engaged - you can have Feedback and Speed accelerate on higher and harder played notes for instance - or one of the values can go down and the others up and vice versa.

These pedals are really all about the dynamics of your play / feel and how that triggers the Modulation. The Right Footswitch engages the pedal, and the Left Engages the Modulation. You have various further controls to marshal and fine-tune the impact of the modulation - and each pedal alone has 162 patch combinations for how it can be wired up.

Of course most of this exists already in Eurorack and similar Modular Synth modules - but these Gamechanger devices have been very cleverly designed in stompbox format. I still feel that they will mostly be used within a tabletop style environment. It’s going to be a lot easier for the Modular Synth crowd to get to grips with these - while the vast majority of stompbox users are not at all familiar with this modular style of cross-cabling via CV patch cables.

The bar displays on each units - and the various LED’s deployed make for a very immersive experience - and these definitely do introduce new player dynamics into the mix. The challenge though is with the learning curve of the rank and file, and the ease of accommodating these into your setup!

Individually these are relatively reasonably priced for what they deliver at $299 each - with all 3 available with a $100 discount - at $797. You need to be on the mailing list currently as I am - to have access to these particular store items - otherwise I would have shared the URLs here. These are intended for delivery in and around March. If you’re interested - make sure you subscribe to the mailing list.

I really love that these exist - but it’s rather unlikely that I will be acquiring these. The make the most sense if you buy the full set - but then you need the finances and real estate to accommodate that. Definitely plenty of innovation going on here - and with the amount of R&D involved and custom components - enclosures etc. the $299 price point per unit is really very fair.

I would love to know who will be picking these up - it really has to be all or nothing I feel. To date the only pedals within the Gamechanger range that have fully made sense to me are the two Plasma types - where I own the limited Jack White edition. I like most everything Gamechanger make - but their pedals really are mostly way too large to be accommodated within my rig - I’ve always loved the idea of the Plus Sustainer, Light Pedal Spring Reverb Tank, and Bigsby Pedal - those would need to come down in size considerably for me to be able to use them in any practical sense though!

Please refer to the Gamechanger Audio Website for further information on the MOD Series.

What say all of you?