03/21/2026
Updated 03/23/2026
Please note that this is a preliminary review and will be updated over time.
I ordinarily don’t offer any sort of review before I've spent extended time on a product but there is an irony and an urgency here: I sat on this purchase for a long while, as is my wont. In fact, I waited until just days ago. When I finally made up my so-called mind to buy one I found that all the big online dealers had no stock of them. I went on the company page and they had no stock either, so I emailed them. Surprise! They told me they had discontinued the pedal.
Well, that hammered it. Sooooo… I immediately went out onto the Internet and started searching for dealers with stock. I eventually found at least one place, TUBE DEPOT, who showed stock. I emailed their nice customer support person and she verified that she could place her hands on a couple of them. I immediately threw down my pesos for one of them. If you want one, there are still some out there, but the supply is ridiculously short so I wanted to inform my friends.
I ordered a new pedal and it has just arrived. We are talking about the Gamechanger Audio PLUS pedal, a sustain/sostenuto pedal. It continuously samples whatever you are playing and when you press the pedal, it constructs a seamless loop and plays it back. The loop is extremely short, milliseconds, so there isn’t much room for expression within the loop, but by setting the parameters, the result sounds like a sustained note or chord, depending upon what you sample. It works extremely well and had a bag full of options.
What's in the box?
So, quick first impressions: The pedal enclosure is well-built and finished flawlessly in black. The activating pedal is solid brass, just like a piano pedal, and is created via lost-wax casting, just like piano pedals are. The pedal's aesthetics are sharp. It has a large footprint, but if you need this sort of device you won’t mind the size. Everyone acknowledges that this is the best sustain pedal out there. There are many options including combining the buffered output of your guitar and sustain sound, separating the outputs for each, or outputting the sustain only with the direct sound muted. You’ve got the ability to set the attack and decay of the sustain and the type and quality of the sustain, ie., tone of the fade and number of sustain layers up to five that you want to use to perfectly match your song.
The pedal has a smooth travel with only two effect points, neither of which has a detent. Long duration presses produce lower playback at half press and full volume at full press. Short duration presses stop playback. Half presses stop the last layer's playback and full presses stop all playback. Differentiating between full and half press requires a little practice. Attack, sustain tone, release, and number of layers are controlled by knobs. "Sustain tone" is variable from a virtual steady high fidelity to a decaying fidelity as most acoustic, electronic, and mechanical delays exhibit. There is a loop for the sustained output that allows you to modulate the sustain sound as desired.
Interestingly, if you set up those parameters for single-layer sustain, two factors obtain:
1. A long release isn't cancelled by a new recording. It just continues to decay in the background to the preset length.
2. If you switch over to multi-layer, all the sinle-delay settings carry over. However, the sustain knob becomes the method by which to choose how many layers you want to sustain, from one to five. The LED flashes to show you how many layers you have selected.
Even though I researched the pedal over a couple of years and read the instructions more than once, I spent the first thirty minutes just trying to learn to drive the thing. But then it gelled, and I got lost for nearly two hours with an electric guitar, afloat in the possibilities. Next, I tried the pedal with acoustic guitar, a Taylor Gold Label 717e, and it did just as well. The sound is brilliant. Note that it sounds best if the sustained content is relatively clean rather than distorted so that the foreground work has more space to live in. I'm sure I'll find a compromise that allows some drive. For now, I have been able to ascertain that I'll be able to use it in my work.
The entry price isn't cheap - $379.00, but I got 10% off from Tube Depot by signing up for their newsletter, making it $341.10 plus local tax, and there is one left there, last I checked. You can find them used on Reverb but most go for exactly what I paid. If you register your pedal with Gamechanger Audio on their site, you are upgraded to a limited lifetime warranty.
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