Xploration • Curation • Recommendation
New Chinese Brand Gigagain Audio has released a fully formed range of cool custom enclosure pedals with a smart sliding magnetic battery compartment
So this brand made its debut at last year’s Music China show - back in October. As sometimes happens - this event quite passed me by, but I’ve been alerted to it recently via a spate of new demos.
This isn’t quite as exciting a proposition for me as the recently featured Sonisfact - where I’m wanting all 4 of those, while here the one of most interest to me are the Golden and Silver Legacy Pedals. The 18-segment LED Superkick Booster is also pretty cool, possibly there is 4 here I could get stuck into after all!
These seem to be generally available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk - while the UK one carries the full range of 9 currently, while .com has only 7 of the 9 varieties. Note that Gigagain also do an excellent sort of Cioks DC7 take - with equivalent values a controls, and a couple of extras by way of Centre Positive / Negative switches on Oulets 1 and 4. That unit doesn’t seem to be officially in circulation yet - so I can’t capture the pricing details. Pricing for the compact ranges from £71 for the Blue Giant, up to £123 for the Compressor - while those are mostly sub-£100 - which is very decent!
These then are the 9 first released pedals :
- GP02 Blue Giant Breaker style Overdrive - $123 / £71
- GP07 Dualay Series / Parallel Dual Delay - $145 / £109
- GP10 Final Fusion Cab Sim DI Box - $130 / £96
- GP03 Gainster 2-Channel High Gain Distortion - $128 / £69
- GP04 Giga Screamer Overdrive - $124 / £96
- GP05 Golden Legacy 2-Voice Plexi / JM800 - $130 / £96
- GP09 1176-style JFET Compressor - $165 / £123
- GP06 Silver Legacy Dumble Drive - $123 / £92
- GP01 Superkick Transparent Booster - $123 / £92
A quite fully formed range right from the start, and demoers seem to really rate the Golden Legacy in particular. The Marshall-y Golden Legacy, and Dumble-y Silver Legacy are of most interest for me, and are both priced at £96 and £92 respectively ($128 and $123) - very good value!
These are really smartly and thoughtfully designed pedals - and they all have Off/On switches on the front - for if you're running on 9V Battery! Gigagain make and include their own rechargeable 9V batteries!
Here below are further details and demos for each!
They're basically listed alphabetically by product name, versus product code - GPxx etc.
You can of course read up more on the Gigagain Audio Website.
GP02 Blue Giant Breaker style Overdrive - $123 / £71
Controls - Volume, Hot Switch : Hot / Off, Gain, Tone, Fat, Off/On Power Switch (Battery).
A cool 4-knob Buesbreaker style overdrive with handy extra Hot Switch for more colour and intensity. Sounds pretty decent to me!
GP07 Dualay Series / Parallel Dual Delay - $145 / £109
Controls - Time 1, Feedback, Time 2, Mix 1, Routing : Paallel / Serial, Trails : On/Off, Mix 2, Off/On Power Switch (Battery).
A cool Dual Delay pedal which you can stack in parallel or series, with On/Off option on Trails too. Relatively simple Delay pedal - with just the single Feedback / Repeats knob - but one you can vary up by Delay Time and % Mix.
GP10 Final Fusion Cab Sim DI Box - $130 / £96
Controls - Output Level, MIC Position, Presence, Voice : Bright / Warm, CAB : 12 inch / 10 inch, Resonance, Off/On Power Switch (Battery).
Side Panel - Lift / Ground Switch, 1/8" TRS Headphones Out, XLR Balanced Out.
A cool Simplifier style all-Analog DI Box with all the attributes you would normally expect - Balanced XLR Out with Ground Lift, and Mini / 1/8" TRS Headphone Out port. A smart compact solution for sure - but not something I currently need!
GP03 Gainster 2-Channel High Gain Distortion - $128 / £69
Controls - Bass, Middle, Treble, Volume, Channel : CH1 / CH2, Gain, Off/On Power Switch (Battery).
A potent 2-Channel High Gain Distortion Pedal - for Rhythm and Lead duties. No clues as to what its provenance is, but sounds sufficiently aggressive. My most regular challenge with these sorts of pedals is low output. Which you don't find out about unit you run it into a Clean Pedal Platform Rig like mine!
GP04 Giga Screamer Overdrive - $124 / £96
Controls - Gain, Tone, Volume, BB Bass Boost / Off, Type : 808 / 9, EQ : Scoop / Off, Off/On Power Switch (Battery).
A decent take on a Multi-Screamer - they should have gone one step further and made the Type switch a 3-way - as the TS-10 is very popular these days because of John Mayer. Some really useful additions here - including Bass Boost and Scoop option!
GP05 Golden Legacy 2-Voice Plexi / JM800 - $130 / £96
Controls - Bass, Middle, Treble, Volume, Voice : Vintage / Modern, Gain, Off/On Power Switch (Battery).
This Dual Voice / Dual Mode Marshall style Overdrive / Distortion has been very well received. I feel that Vintage is close to Plexi, and Modern is more along the lines of a JCM800 - that's what makes the most sense to me!
This is one of two here I'd quite like to get my hands on - along with the Silver Legacy Dumble Drive. It will likely happen soon enough!
GP09 1176-style JFET Compressor - $165 / £123
Controls - Dry, Out, In, Ratio, Attack, Release, 10 Segment LED, Off/On Power Switch (Battery).
Alas there is no demo for this pedal yet. Where interesting it's the dearest one in the range. And weirdly it's near enough the same price as the Universal Audio UAFX 1176 Studio Compressor Pedal - at least in the USA it is, while for most of the rest of the world it's around $25 more affordable! Will be interesting to see how well this one does - and whether Gigagain have hot their conjoint pricing analysis wrong here?
GP06 Silver Legacy Dumble Drive - $123 / £92
Controls - Volume, Voice : SSS (Steel String Singe) / ODS (Overdrive Special), Gain, Tone, Voice, Off/On Power Switch (Battery).
This is the second pedal here I'm keen to get my hands on. Seemingly not as expansive as the Golden Legacy, and not as expansive as many of own Dumble style pedals, while it still has something intriguing about it - particularly that 4th 'Voice' control. So likely I will start of by getting those two in - and it may evolve to one or two more!
GP01 Superkick Transparent Booster - $123 / £92
Controls - Boost, Voice : Warm / STD, 18 Segment LED, Off/On Power Switch (Battery).
A really cool, simple, but highly visual booster with 2 modes - the main thing here is probably that 18-segment LED meter!
