“In essence – you are playing a bolt of electricity”: Gamechanger Audio and Third Man Hardware celebrate 5 years of the Jack White co-designed Plasma Coil with limited edition version in white

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.

Limited to 400 units worldwide, available via Reverb and direct from Gamechanger Audio and Third Man Hardware, this special edition gives the enclosure a makeover in white, played with sheets of photosensitive anodised aluminium. But it remains every inch the wedge-shaped anarchy machine under the hood.

The Plasma Coil takes the input signal from our electric guitar, converts it internally to 3500V, and then converts it into a distortion that can be further manipulated with subharmonics and upper harmonics. This really is an out-there design, but we'd expect nothing less given the principles involved in its design.

At the heart of the pedal there is a six-way rotary switch offering six different modes. There is a Voltage Booster, two different Subharmonic modes, an upper harmonic mode, and two mixed harmonic modes. 

These are combined with a Voltage dial that controls how much current is sent into the pedal, with lower settings offering more articulation, high settings more saturation and sustain. And there are a pair of low and high-frequency controls to shape your tone. 

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Altogether, the Plasma Coil offers a wide range of distortion and quasi-fuzz tones, with various octave effects in either direction. 

The subharmonic modes will give you glitchy octave-down distortion that’s not unlike a ring mod or bit-crusher, while the octave-up sounds via a “full-wave rectifier and band-pass filter” that are reminiscent of a vintage octa-fuzz.

“In essence – you are playing a bolt of electricity,” says Gamechanger Audio, “and the electrical discharges produced by your instrument are instantly converted back into an analogue audio signal, producing a quick, responsive, and extremely heavy distortion with tons of unique character!”

Indeed, the Plasma Coil blurs the line between distortion and fuzz and octave pedals. If you are not sold on the idea already then consider this; there is also a display on the front of the enclosure where you can watch a bolt of lightning when the pedal is engaged. 

This is of course the sort of Nikola Tesla-inspired madness that gets someone like Jack White excited, and he paid tribute to Gamechanger Audio for approaching guitar effects pedal design with no half measures. 

“Gamechanger is one of the most innovative effects companies out there today,” he says. “They don’t shortchange a good idea; they take everything all the way. Collaborating with them has made Third Man Hardware all the better for what they bring to the table. Plasma Coil pedal is incredible to look at, let alone play through – it’s so cool to come out with this white colourway anniversary version.”

Third Man Hardware x Gamechanger Audio PLASMA Coil 5-year Anniversary Edition - YouTube

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The Plasma Coil does all this without the typical complement of transistors, LEDs or even a vacuum tube inside the pedal. This Gamechanger Audio x Third Man collab is designed around a xenon tube.

It takes your signal, turns it into electrical impulses and feeds them into a step-up fly-back transformer that transforms this into thousands of volts, discharging all these electrical activity into the xenon tube, with an antenna on hand to capture all these electromagnetic waves and then convert them back into an audio output.

It’s pretty wild. Priced £359, the Plasma Coil 5th Anniversary edition is available now. See Gamechanger Audio, Third Man Hardware or Reverb for more.