“I can honestly say it’s the most fun and inspiring plugin I’ve ever used”: Mike Stringer and MixWave team up to bring you his Spiritbox tones in digital form

Mike Stringer has teamed up with MixWave for a new signature guitar plugin suite that has everything you need in digital form for replicating the Spiritbox guitarist's 21st-century metal guitar tone – well, besides a state-of-the-art extended-range guitar, oh, and the chops.

Inside the box, so to speak, you’ve got a trio of guitar amps to choose from, each of which where modelled in collaboration with Stringer. The Clean amp is modelled after a British-voiced amp and it is described as being able to take your electric guitar from “lush cleans to edge-of-breakup” – which is all to say that this could also offer a good platform for pedals. It’s controls read left-to-right Gain, Low, Mid, High, Presence and Volume.

Next we have the Rhythm amp, “insanely heavy and monstrous”, which has all the tones you need for replicating rhythm figure 1 form Circle With Me. Just add eight-string guitar and pray for the structural integrity of whatever poor speaker cone this is going to eventually come out of. 

Its complement of controls is as per above but with an added Resonance dial. Intriguingly, for such a high-gain platform, MixWave makes a point of noting the clarity and definition in the voicing, something that is crucial for giving that rhythm tone character and making sense of what you are playing.

Finally, there is the Lead amp, which is described as “dynamic with harmonically saturated gain”, and just because it is called the Lead amp doesn’t mean you can’t pin a big riff to it.

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And there are effects, too. Of course there are! Mix and match from drive, reverb, delay, ring mod and chorus. MixWave gives you full control of the signal chain, so you can drag and drop at will. Speaker cabinet options are extensive enough. MixWave captured the impulse response of a 4x12 cabinet, with two speakers to choose from and 21 different “world-class” mic options. You can also avail yourself of the MixWave IR library.

Stringer says he is proud of the collaboration and that it has everything he needs from a plugin.

“We’ve been working on this for almost two years now, and I can honestly say it’s the most fun and inspiring plugin I’ve ever used,” he said. “It caters to every sound I’d want out of a plug-in, and I am finding myself having endless creativity while using it. The wide variety of tones, effects, and possibility this plugin gives you is really something special, and I can’t wait for you to try it out yourself.”  

Other features include Focus and Contour mixing controls for fine-tuning. There’s a pitch-shifting Transpose feature, too, plus the all important onboard EQ and compressor. All of which is designed so you have a mix-ready output as soon as you’re done tracking whatever you are tracking.

You can install the Mike Stringer plugin in your DAW or run it as a standalone app. You’ll need a free iLok License Manager and iLok account. The plugin is available now with a seven-day free trial and is priced £62.90. See MixWave for full system requirements and to order.