Gamechanger Plasma Coil Pedal

For a distortion effect, it has a very distinctive sound that may not appeal to everyone, but it won me over. The sound is generated by electrical discharges in a tube—which is visibly mounted on top and looks striking—rather than by a standard circuit. Technically, the audio is converted into discharges in the tube and then back into sound, only with a lot of fuzz, artifacts, and other grit. It resembles bit-crusher-style effects and sounds highly chaotic but also aggressive. As a side effect, it works like a noise gate: when you are not playing, it lets through nothing that is too weak to trigger the tube.

Unlike the earlier purple Plasma Pedal, it has no Blend control, so you cannot retain the clean signal and mix it with the distorted one—it is either one or the other. A welcome addition, however, is a second footswitch that can further boost the output or add an octave up or down. A separate knob lets you choose between the boost and octave combinations: one or two octaves down, one octave up, or combinations of them. A major advantage is that this footswitch can operate in either latch or momentary mode: you can activate the boost in the standard on/off way or only while holding the switch down. In momentary mode, brief presses are excellent for accenting selected notes.

The effect was designed for guitars, but I use it with bass and it works well. In a pedalboard with other pedals, you need to keep the input signal clean: any unwanted noise or interference will immediately trigger discharges in the tube, resulting in unpleasant crackling.