PD Space Guitar Synthesizer Forum

I have 3 different guitar signals: humbucker, piezo, and an LR Baggs microphone that's inside the guitar. I'm already handling the humbuckers and piezo in separate channels in AUM. I am just using the microphone with SG. The microphone alone is is fairly ambient and not useful to output on its own. My experiments using this an input for SG sounded good with doing nothing, was just curious about this.

Improvisation, live at The Refter, Netherlands 2th of May 2026
Niels Veron - piano
P:D - Guitar
Looking for a good acoustic sound to match the big piano, I put an overhead condensator mike through a hole in the butt of the guitar and routed it through an instance of PD Space Guitar  for equalisation and limiting. A magnetic pickup over de soundhole is routed to another instance of SG for effects, but not used here in the vid.

In Space Guitar, for short SG, there is a blend knob that balances the synthesized Shaper signal witht he normal guitar signal. But those signals then go into to the other fx in SG, so there is no real overall wet/dry in SG.
There are several way to achieve overall wet/dry mixing: you can make 2 lanes in AUM, and automate them.
Or 2 lanes with 2 SG's loaded, where 1 is used for clean signal. You can assigne.g. the master volume in remote, or "Shaper input gain" if you want to have trails.
But there are really many ways to configure stuff, if you want specific ideas for your specific usage, you have to share more about what you want.
Also: how do you switch stuff? do you use a midi controller? 
SG supports parameter automation via host AND internal midi assigns

I'm using PD hosted by AUM in IOS. I'm using a dedicated input on my Zoom AMS-44, and what like to just have PD be the output audio and never include the dry. Is this the default? and is there a way to control the dry/wet mix in the app?

Well, a distorted bass is "grainy", it has low frequency fluctuations n the spectrum: crossmodulaton causes low frequency components that at their turns spike overtones.. A rough sea with bigger waves, not definable by a signel snapshot. That is also why looping works better before distorting.
The hold function in SG freezes the spectrum at a fixed spot, when the RETRIG is triggering for a GRAB TIME period. There is also a frequency stability requirement builtin, to prevent transients to enter the hold.
I'd have to make the freeze cycle through a number of frames, to make the hold sound natural..
Many freeze pedals use stitching in the timedomain, like you try with retrospective recording. That is an easier way and sounds a bit better than the old EHX freeze, but you'll hear the stitching frequency shine through.
But thanks for the input! holds are technically fascinating, 'll think a bit about it.

Quote from: lwi on Mar 29, 2026, 05:36 PMThanks for the tips, but it doesn't quite achieve the sound I'm looking for.

You have mentioned somewhere that the plugin expects a clean instrument signal, I now see why.  My incoming 'dry' signal that I want to hold is not clean at all... it's a beefy bass with some distortion.  The shaper does strange spectral things with it.

In my setup I split the signal from a bass into 2 signal paths:  one path goes through a pedal board for a typical rock/metal bass tone.  The other goes to Space Guitar for an octave-up distorted tone to emulate a fake guitar à la Royal Blood, this is my main usage for Space Guitar. The hold function for this application works very well.  I wanted to be able to hold both signal paths independently, but I will need another solution for the 'bass' part.

But I don't want a reverb that has a hold function, more like the EHX Freeze pedal.  This is apparently hard to find.

I'm gonna try to do this with Loopy Pro using retrospective recording to a very short loop with crossfades, but I don't expect it to sound like I want it to.

If you were so inclined, Space Guitar's hold function as a stand-alone plugin would be an amazing tool.  I haven't seen any existing plugin that does this.

Cheers and keep up the good work!

Thanks for the tips, but it doesn't quite achieve the sound I'm looking for.

You have mentioned somewhere that the plugin expects a clean instrument signal, I now see why.  My incoming 'dry' signal that I want to hold is not clean at all... it's a beefy bass with some distortion.  The shaper does strange spectral things with it.

In my setup I split the signal from a bass into 2 signal paths:  one path goes through a pedal board for a typical rock/metal bass tone.  The other goes to Space Guitar for an octave-up distorted tone to emulate a fake guitar à la Royal Blood, this is my main usage for Space Guitar. The hold function for this application works very well.  I wanted to be able to hold both signal paths independently, but I will need another solution for the 'bass' part.

But I don't want a reverb that has a hold function, more like the EHX Freeze pedal.  This is apparently hard to find.

I'm gonna try to do this with Loopy Pro using retrospective recording to a very short loop with crossfades, but I don't expect it to sound like I want it to.

If you were so inclined, Space Guitar's hold function as a stand-alone plugin would be an amazing tool.  I haven't seen any existing plugin that does this.

Cheers and keep up the good work!

Hi Iwi,
Tha is correct: only the shaper signal can be hold.
To hold normal guitar pitched guitarsounds,
- you can set the BLEND somehere in the middle to get a balance between dry and hold guitar.
- CHROMATIC should be gray, (OFF)
- Upper row "ATTACK", "DOUBLER", "TRESHOLD" should be set to 0, THRESHOLD all the way to the left.
- Lower row "HX OFF"   TREM/DETUNE/VIB to OFF

You can send both the dry and the shaper guitar through its own AMP, by selecting  appropriate mode in SETUP tab, top row to the left.

Feel free to question everything, I'm here for it!
Best, Paul

Quote from: lwi on Mar 28, 2026, 06:07 PMI want to make a simple preset that holds the dry signal when the CC is triggered.

I set the shaper to blend=0 and turn off every other effect (amp, fx, cabinet, etc..).  When I turn on the HOLD function, no sound is held.  Is this normal?

If I add some synth signal (shaper blend > 0), that part of the signal can be held.

If I set the blend to 100%, I can't seem to dial a dry neutral tone with the shaper, there is some chorus-y phase-ish sound that I can't get rid of (the FX section is off).

I'm currently using the beta iOS version from testflight through AUM.

(Aside from this, what a great app you have made, the octaver alone is much better than a 300$ EHX micro/nano/pico POG)

I want to make a simple preset that holds the dry signal when the CC is triggered.

I set the shaper to blend=0 and turn off every other effect (amp, fx, cabinet, etc..).  When I turn on the HOLD function, no sound is held.  Is this normal?

If I add some synth signal (shaper blend > 0), that part of the signal can be held.

If I set the blend to 100%, I can't seem to dial a dry neutral tone with the shaper, there is some chorus-y phase-ish sound that I can't get rid of (the FX section is off).

I'm currently using the beta iOS version from testflight through AUM.

(Aside from this, what a great app you have made, the octaver alone is much better than a 300$ EHX micro/nano/pico POG)

I'd still love to see some starter presets that are close to some known sounds. I found some great tutorial videos on the Korg Wavestate that works for Native, I wonder how close we could get on PD Space Guitar. Is anyone good enough with the interface to get near these?

Quote from: pipelineaudio on Feb 12, 2026, 10:34 PMOk, this is crazy, last night I spent three hours playing with PD Space Guitar, and finally went to bed after I was frustrated I wasn't quite getting the sounds I wanted.

Today, I went to work and grabbed my Mooer E7 pedal, so I could work back and forth to compare and get the sounds where I wanted hopefully.

When I compared the two, I already liked the sounds I had gotten out of PD Space Guitar last night more than the Mooer pedal. I still have a ways to learn, but surprisingly happy with it now

Thanks for your feedback!
The thing is ofcourse that the direct synthesis algorithms in SG don't deliver normal bread and butter keyboard synth sounds, vice versa the SG sounds can not be done on a normal synth or with midi.
The goal for SG is to create space for imagination, without loosing the direct connection to the guitar itself.