Gamechanger Audio Light Pedal Analog Optical Spring Reverb Black

The light pedal truly sounds too good for words to describe, yes it's a spring reverb and as such has a lot in common with vintage and modern spring tanks but it goes way beyond what most would ever dream of expecting from springs. When this pedal was announced years ago many myself included were a bit worried if the "optical spring tank" idea would be a gimmick or a game changer (pun intended) well they certainly lived up to their name with this one, it's got so many unique features especially for a spring tank and yes the optical sensors absolutely open up new sonic possibilities. My personal favorite feature is the harmonics mode which is basically a tunable shimmer you can sweep from very low to high frequencies. At lower frequencies it adds a sort of dark lofi grit more akin to a hall reverb, at higher frequencies it sounds like a celestial choir is singing behind every note you play. You can accentuate this with the master tone control which helps if you want a darker room/hall sound or more of a bright plate like reverb. The gate control is another brilliant addition, haven't seen any other spring tanks try adding a gate but it really is fun and saves you the trouble of needing to manually set up a gate or ducking effect. Yes the gate works in both directions so you can use it for gated or ducked spring reverb. Even cooler you can use the secondary feature of the gate to make the parameters of any mode volume sensitive, for example the rate for the modulation can be set to go up/down based on the input volume. You can do the same with the harmonics frequency or any of the modes. I've seen some reviews complaining about noise but it's usually obvious they don't know what they are talking about. Springs rattle and are by nature on the noisy side, that's part of their charm and something people just had to live with, up til now that is. The shock sensor is another huge QOL improvement, the soft mode will subtly mute any rattling or noise from being bumped, the hard mode will let you throw it around violently without hearing a peep. And of course you can turn the shock sensor off if you want to kick it around and hear it rattle. Really the only way I can imagine them improving this pedal is if it were somehow stereo, which is a tall order even for such a fancy spring tank. And features/sound quality aside the design of this pedal is brilliant, the dark color scheme is reminiscent of old Moog pedals. The window to see the springs rattle as well as the light/sensors is beautiful and a lot of fun to watch, could be incorporated into a light show pretty easily which is something I'd love to try eventually, actually did make a video playing Pink Floyd's Let There Be More Light through it which was fun. Can't say enough good things about this pedal, it's on the pricey side but worth every penny and considering it took years to design they could probably be charging twice as much and it would still be worth it. It's refreshing to see a company come up with such a unique take on a classic effect rather then make yet another digital reverb (nothing wrong with them but most are not nearly as exciting or original at this point when free software reverbs can sound just as good)

The unit is worth it for just the spring reverb sound alone as it is comparably smaller than traditional units. The variety of modes expands upon this pedals uses such as a univibe style tremolo. The ability to blend clean/spring/optic deepen your combinations availible exponentially. From cool surf to deep space the pedal can cover it. Yes you can crash the tank if you hit it. It is a real spring reverb unit; however the unit has a silencing mode that will shut the unit off if it detects a hard or soft crash if you have it mounted on a board.

This reverb unit was horrible, just made a bunch of noise and I would not recommend it.