Unglued · macOS + Windows · VST3 + AU
A harmonically locked bass synthesiser. One note in: solid sub, locked mid harmonics and filthy distortion out.
I kept building the same stupidly specific six-plugin bass chain. So I turned the whole thing into an instrument.
Intro price £39 · £79 from 30 August or after the first 100 licences
Installer blocked? Unzip the manual download, move the full Harmonic Bass Machine.vst3 folder into C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3, then rescan your plugins.
No account needed. The demo runs for 90 seconds from your first MIDI note, then pauses for 15 seconds. Buy once to remove the pauses.
Already own it or get it through the Academy? Open your account to download and manage your computers.
Harmonic Bass MachineClick a sound to playSounds
Six featured
Harmonic
Locked to D
Every rung stays related to the note
Selected
H06
D
Ready
Scope
Live output
Harmonic series
D
Output
0 dB
Selected Delicious Subtlety
Audio rendered by the real synth
Harmonic Bass Machine · Unglued
The whole idea
Clean lows. Filthy mids. Fizzy tops.
One MIDI note drives the tonal core and the crossover together. The bottom stays solid while the mids take the damage.
01
Clean lows
The sub stays solid and centred.
02
Filthy mids
Multiband distortion with a crossover that follows every MIDI note.
03
No drift
Every tonal layer stays perfectly in phase on the harmonic series.
Advanced View
The whole chain. Nothing hidden.
Simple mode shown above gets you playing fast. Advanced opens every stage of the instrument in the exact order the audio flows.
Signal path
One note, one chain
Five stages, laid out in the order the sound travels through the instrument.
01
Two sine oscillators
A sub at the fundamental, and a second locked to an integer harmonic of it from 1 to 20. Phase locked, so it can never drift or beat against the sub.
02
Stage one clipper
Shapes the tonal core before anything else touches it.
03
Noise layer
Filtered noise driven by an envelope follower, so it breathes with your playing. The sub stays mono and centred.
04
Multiband distortion
The crossover follows the note automatically. The low band stays clean, the mids get worked, the top stays pristine.
05
Final clip
A hard or soft final clip. Its own crossover lets the low band pass through clean.
Reviews
5.0 average from 12 reviews
★★★★★
“Woii, this thing is sick.”
★★★★★
“The presets u have got there are sick, almost don't need any processing on it. It sounds crazy straight out of the box.”
★★★★★
“Holyyyyy shit bro.”
★★★★★
“Literally what i felt like i was missing”
★★★★★
“spicier than a pack of doritos chilli heatwaves”
★★★★★
“Josh you are unstoppable”
★★★★★
“This is unreal mate the stock subs sound so good”
★★★★★
“What you've done with this plugin it's just unreal, like you've absolutely smashed this.”
★★★★★
Aug 2026“It SLAPS, it's FAST, and it's FAT. A real BIG BOY. You'll hear him rumbling, tumbling down the street from a block away, blowing out windows. Try the Machine and then try to make a similar bass in Serum or something. You'll immediately see that A: It takes longer with more steps to complete and B: It won't sound as weighty and fat and you'll have to fiddle with it a bunch. Absolutely recommend this.”
★★★★★
Aug 2026“90% of what this does CAN be done in serum 2... but it takes time. This is a great timesaver, it will shave minutes off my workflow. And it makes fat sausages with clean sub accessible for everyone! Big up!”
★★★★★
Aug 2026“This is sooooo fun”
★★★★★
Aug 2026“this thing is a massive cheatcode forreal. got no inspiration? just hit randomize, unlimited bass for ur face”
Every part of the machine
Spectrum and harmonic ladder
+
The live spectrum shows the sound across the full range. Click any harmonic from H1 to H20 to choose the upper tone, with its exact relationship to the played note always visible.
Two harmonic-locked oscillators
+
The first sine is the sub. The second follows an exact harmonic of it. Set their levels, octave and glide, or hit Extra Sub for more clean weight. Neither tone can drift away from the other.
Two envelopes and two LFOs
+
Shape the sub and harmonic separately. Draw attack, decay, sustain and release curves, or switch either side to a repeating LFO synced to the song or running freely in Hz. Dotted and triplet timing is included.
Fixed stage one clipper
+
A protective hard clip shapes the combined oscillators before the noise and main distortion stages. Extra Sub bypasses it for a cleaner low end. There are no hidden controls to manage.
Six noise characters
+
Motor, hiss, radio, tape, hum and crackle. Set the level and stereo width, shape the frequency range with two filter handles, then use follower attack and release to make the texture breathe with each note.
Note-tracking distortion band
+
The left edge follows the played note automatically, keeping the fundamental clean while the mids take the damage. Drag either edge for a manual band, then hit Auto to lock it back to the note.
Twelve distortion shapes
+
Move from hard and soft clipping through smooth, square, folding, rectifying, valve and diode characters. The transfer curve shows exactly how the selected shape bends the sound.
Drive, dynamics, bias and mix
+
Drive sets how hard the selected band is pushed. Dynamics lets stronger notes distort more, bias changes the balance and harmonic character, and mix blends the clean and processed band.
Final clip and output meter
+
Finish with a hard or soft clip, its own drive and a crossover that lets the low band pass through clean. Master Trim sets the final level and the output meter shows it.
Factory sounds and INIT
+
Start from any of the 14 factory sounds or return every control to the clean default patch with INIT. Simple and Advanced always edit the same sound.
Save, compare, undo and redo
+
Save your own sounds, compare A and B, copy one state to the other, and step backwards or forwards through control changes. The status marker shows when the current preset has unsaved edits.
It updates itself
+
The plug-in checks for new versions and installs them on its own. No separate manager app to keep track of.
For the nerdsHow the distortion stays clean+
Distorting a low note can throw harmonics above the limit of hearing, where they fold back into the middle of the sound as metallic aliasing. Every nonlinear stage here is designed and measured to keep that rubbish out.
- The clipper was written from the textbook maths and then calibrated against a drive sweep until its harmonic profile landed within a couple of dB of the target. Almost pure odd harmonics, mostly third. Warm rather than brittle.
- The curve is exactly linear until it actually needs to clip, so at rest it adds literally nothing. Verified to the numerical floor. Most soft clippers bend the signal at every level and are never truly clean.
- Every nonlinear stage uses antiderivative anti aliasing plus 4x oversampling through a custom filter. Measured rather than assumed: every inharmonic partial across the whole instrument sits at least 80 dB below the fundamental at the worst case.
- The counter intuitive bit: the hardest case is not the low note, it is the high harmonics, which is exactly where cheap tools spray fizz. Here it is measured clean.
Twelve distortion shapes
Clip
- Hard Clip · Aggressive, square edged, the classic bite
- Soft Clip · Smooth, rounded saturation
- Smooth · The gentlest of the three, subtle warmth
- Square · Near instant crushing, hollow square character
Fold
- Sine Fold · Folds back on itself, complex and metallic
- Tri Fold · Triangle folding, sharper and more aggressive
- Skew Fold · Asymmetric, torn, full of even harmonics
- Saw Fold · The other asymmetry, a different grit
- Xtreme Fold · Folds many times over, for chaos
Character
- Rectify · Adds an octave and dense even harmonics
- Valve · Warm tube style saturation, the politest shape
- Diode · Asymmetric diode grit, gnarly and vocal
The randomiser
Happy accidents on demand.
Roll a complete patch inside musical limits, so you get useful starting points instead of silence or broken chaos. Keep the happy accident, undo it in one click, or recall the same seeded roll later.
Random
Constrained, not chaotic
01
Playable
Musical ranges keep every roll useful.
02
Undoable
One click takes you straight back.
03
Repeatable
Every roll keeps its seed for recall.
The details
- Formats
- VST3 on macOS and Windows, AU on macOS
- Platforms
- macOS 12 or later, Windows 10 or later
- Architecture
- Apple silicon, Intel Mac and Windows x64
- macOS security
- Signed and notarised by Apple
- Voicing
- Monophonic, last note priority, glide and pitch bend
- Included
- 14 factory sounds, 6 noise characters
- Free demo
- 90 seconds from the first note, then 15 second pauses
- Updates
- Free, installed by the plug-in itself
- Licence
- One off purchase, no subscription
Buying and trying it
- One payment · 14 factory sounds · Free updates
- The free demo runs for 90 seconds from your first MIDI note, then pauses for 15 seconds. No account is needed to try it.
- Academy members can use it while their membership is active. Outright purchases are yours permanently.
- Windows may show an Unknown publisher warning while Microsoft approves the Unglued signing identity.