“A must-have producer’s plugin for just how much ground it covers”: MixWave Yvette Young Plugin review

What is it?

The first signature plugin for pedal-loving math rock guitarist Yvette Young sees MixWave promising to deliver her live rig in digital form. For the uninitiated, Young’s tonal shtick centers on spangly clean guitar tones and oodles of weird and ethereal stompboxes as heard in her band, Covet, as well as her growing solo catalog. So, this plugin is aimed, predominantly, at the math rock crowd.

At its heart, MixWave: Yvette Young is a digitized version of a Vox AC30 combo amp that stays faithful to its control panel, but one that treats the cabinet side like most plugins do – as a separate entity with tweakable speaker cones, with Alnico Blue and Greenback options, 15 different microphones, and mic placements.

Beyond that, there are nine different pedals, ranging from typical stompbox choices like reverb, analog delay, and a classic-voiced chorus, through to grit pedals like overdrive, fuzz, and octaver. More surreal soundscapes can be beckoned with the unique lo-fi modulator, and a compressor in place to produce “infinite sustain,” should it be needed.

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Coming from a player who likes to do freaky things to her signal chain 90% of the time, all those additions are not overly surprising. But Young’s MixWave collaboration has also seen a slew of quality-of-life and workflow features added in. From a completely customizable signal chain to an onboard EQ and compressor, a transpose feature, a Focus dial for smoothing out harsh frequencies, a Vibe control for enhancing the top end, and a Contour for the finishing touch of EQ, the kitchen sink has certainly been thrown at MixWave’s latest signature tie-in.

Following on from work with Unprocessed’s Manuel Gardner Fernandes, JHS, and Spiritbox guitarist Mike Stringer, this is arguably the mathiest and most fully-loaded offering in its plugin stable. So, is it a treasure trove of tone, or style over substance?

Specs

• Price: $139 (approx. £105 / €122 – MixWave charges in USD)
• Type: Amp sim plugin - 64-bit VST3 / AU / AAX / Standalone
• Formats: macOS 10.13 to macOS 15 (Intel & Silicon Native), Windows 10 to 11 (64-bit)
• System requirements (minimum): macOS 10.13, Intel Core i3 Processor (4th Gen), 4 GB of RAM minimum, VST3, or Audio Units compatible host/DAW Pro Tools 11 or later for AAX format. Windows 7 (64-bit) AMD Quad-Core Processor / Intel Core i3 Processor, 4 GB of RAM minimum
• Contact: MixWave

Usability ★★★★½

For anyone familiar with amp sim plugins, everything from the format to the intuitiveness of its interface should require little to no adjustment period here, even if I feel the tuner is a little too tucked away for my liking.

One of its biggest draws in this regard is the sandbox-style signal chain, with every aspect fully customizable. A rummage through the built-in presets, including contributions from Holy Fawn, acclaimed producer Taylor Larson, and Ryan Fluff Bruce, shows just what a difference it makes to have pedals on either side of the amp, for instance, and inspires me to get experimenting. Left-clicking a block brings it up full-screen; right-clicking engages/disengages the effect; and I can click and drag to my heart’s content, making the plugin 10x more viable for several uses.

I also really enjoy the tuner (once found) for its clear, aesthetically pleasing display. Being colorblind, busier, strobe-style tuners wreak havoc on my eyes; this was very easy to use.

One of my only gripes here is its quartet of inputs, which can be confusing to anyone not accustomed to an AC30. The virtual cables often get in the way of the text beside each input, and the font size is brutally small to begin with. I understand that MixWave and Yvette Young have gone for authenticity here – the entire amp face layout mirrors a Vox. Still, here, a better display format would have been a smart way to digitize the original’s design.

The same goes for its control: the lack of a middle dial, while faithful to the OG, feels like an oversight to me. Neural DSP often adds extra features that the real amps its plugins are inspired by don’t have, and for me, this was the perfect way to do that, as it would make it a lot easier to dial in tones with the amp alone. The cab section strays from the AC30’s path, so why can’t the amp’s interface?

Speaking of which, the cab section is highly usable if I want to get really granular about microphone choices and placement details, with the axis, distance, angle, and delay all tweakable. As are the panning and levels of each of the cab’s four speakers, which can be assigned to be Greenback or Alnico cones. The polarity can be inverted on each mic, and the Vibe is a subtle but handy addition for getting a little more top end, especially if the OD is set quite woolly. Fine-tuning is plentiful.

But if all of that means nothing to you, or you find yourself out of your depth, the button to match mic levels across the four setups makes this incredibly granular part of the plugin pretty much idiotproof.

My biggest takeaway is how user-friendly this plugin is. If I want to get anal with every single detail, I absolutely can. If I want something plug-and-play, where I don’t have to concern myself with those kinds of intricacies, all I need to do is take a quick scroll through the provided presets, which just about cover all bases, to find what I need in a pinch.

Sounds ★★★★½

As soon as this plugin was announced, and given the weight of Yvette Young’s reputation as a master craftswoman when it comes to sparkly math rock and ethereal tones, I felt it could dislodge Neural DSP’s Tim Henson X as my go-to ethereal amp. During my time with the plugin, that theory has been mostly proven true (they coexist really well), but actually, putting it in such a limited box is doing it a disservice. Yes, this plugin is absolutely killer at creating atmosphere for what I predominantly use as foley and background tracks in a mix, but it does so much more.

Guitarist and content creator Drewsif has shown that, by placing the compressor, octaver, fuzz, and drive in front of the amp, along with some minor EQ notches in the upper mids, it can djent too.

It’s seriously impressive tone sculpting (check the video below), but I wouldn’t be in a rush to use this in a rhythm metal tone context. It can handle everything from scuzzed-up hard rock through to biting indie and smoky, edge-of-breakup blues, but there are plenty more metal-minded amp sims in my collection that outgun it in that area.

From my experience, at least, the amp itself is better serving as a platform for the effects. It’s got oodles of clarity and a really shiny clean sound, on top of which its feast of pedals can be stacked at will, especially tones where the reverb and delay come into their own.

There’s a real touch-sensitive, amp-in-a-room feel to it; it feels as unforgiving as an analog amp should be. As good as Neural DSP plugins are, it’s a skill to make a bad tone, and they do often polish your playing in a way that hides blemishes and mistakes. Here, I feel very exposed, and I think that’s something that actually works in its favor. It makes me play better, cleaner, and more dynamically.

But, as I say, it’s the litany of effects that steal the show. With the overdrive pedal dialed moderately and placed in front of the amp, I only need the reverb and delay to create heavenly magic, and there’s a slew of controls to get the most out of both pedals.

The Pitch feature on the reverb is ideal for making things a little weird, while the high- and low-cut dials are ideal for getting the track to sit better in a wider mix. Meanwhile, the sync feature on the delay, also found on the tremolo and lo-fi modulator, has quickly become a dream feature for me. So much so that it’s become my go-to delay across a multitude of tracks, helping tidy up all the respective tails and give everything a nice sense of uniformity.

The tremolo can go from slow drama to head-spinning wackiness, the chorus is an effortless hack for bringing more color and character to a tone, and the lag feature is a great addition for injecting a sense of oddity into the effect. And the fuzz, while not the lairiest, always retains plenty of note clarity, no matter how much you crank it. On full whack, it handles chords really well. It is incredibly annoying that, for whatever reason, its default sees everything maxed out, so when I turn it on without loading it up on screen beforehand, it can be quite shocking.

The octaver has dials for -1, -2, and +1 octaves and is pleasingly versatile, aided by the direct dial, which lets it add as much or as little grit and/or top-end as needed. It’s a very nice ‘season to taste’ option, and the drive benefits from an optional boost and tweakable silicon/mosfet/open-diode modes to reshape its chic. It’s options aplenty.

I was pretty excited by the lo-fi modulator coming into this review, but it’s actually the pedal that let me down the most. Maybe it’s because I’ve not found a need for sounds as warbly and off-kilter as it produces, but it’s just too weird, not applicable enough for my needs.

But as Young says in her demo video for the plugin, her music so often features one riff repeating for a long time, with subtle nuances pushing it along with each loop. It’s times like that when this pedal will shine, as it just takes the tone out of a pleasant-to-listen-to zone and into something purposefully messed up and out of tune. I’m certainly glad it exists in the plugin, it’s just not one I found myself using all that much. It’s like the evil twin of the chorus.

The plugin has a gluttonous feast of sounds lurking behind its digital grille, but what I did find is that the amp sounds much better with single coil pickups. I’m not sure exactly why, but be it a fat, fuzz-mangled tone or a cosmic clean, the bite of single coils is far more satisfying to me. That’s not to say it sounds bad with humbucker guitars – quite the contrary, even handled my eight-string Strandberg with aplomb – but there’s a more cutting magic to be found here that I can’t get enough of.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

Given Yvette Young’s standing in the modern guitar landscape, it’s no surprise that her signature MixWave plugin so successfully carries her trick-filled live rig into the digital realm. The analog-like feel of the amp, to me, is arguably its greatest asset, as it really helps me connect with the myriad effects on offer and makes me play a lot tighter.

Every detail and control bestowed upon each effect pedal has been well thought out, creating one hell of a canvas for everything from luscious ambiance to house-of-mirrors madness, and the fully customizable signal chain really seals the deal.

For players wanting a user-friendly plugin that does the heavy lifting for you, chances are that its presets will have you covered, with only minor tweaking needed most of the time. But if you want to get really specific, this plugin has your back.

There’s enough within its ecosystem to give me all I need in most scenarios, and with the freedom of the signal chain, I’ve actually found myself using a slew of its pedals alongside other amp plugins, helping me get more use out of them, too.

In my opinion, the plugin is best used as intended. It can get heavy, and there’s something particularly thrilling about getting stank face tones with the fuzz and octaver engaged. Still, for cleans, ambient, and sparkly math rock tones alike, it’s an absolute humdinger, and that’s where it’s been getting most employment with my projects.

Guitar World Verdict: For fans of Yvette Young’s luxurious, so often ethereal, so often otherworldly guitar tones, her first signature plugin is a homerun. There’s a huge amount of colors in its palette, and the amp is a fantastic platform for all of its pedals, with a rich array of subtle tweaking options to hand. Be it a main rhythm/lead amp for rock, blues, and indie players, or used for pads and swells in settings from jazz and pop to metal, it feels like a must-have producer’s plugin for just how much ground it covers. It’s a lot of fun to play with.

Hands-on videos

Yvette Young

Mixwave: Yvette Young - walkthrough - YouTube

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John Nathan Cordy

This BLEW ME AWAY - Mixwave Yvette Young's BRAND NEW PLUGIN - YouTube

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Nick Broomhall

Writing huge midwest emo/math rock riffs with MixWave Yvette Young - YouTube

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