Archetype Mateus Asato

A new plugin by Neural DSP

I had never heard about Mateus Asato before the launch of this plugin. And honestly I thought he was just another “YouTuber” getting a signature plugin. But new stuff is always fun and I curiously started to download the plugin. And checking out mr Asato… what a great player! This should be fun…

First test

I realise the my 5-string UNICORNbass baritone guitar wasn’t exactly the instrument NDSP had in mind when creating this plugin. But running through the presets, I’ve never heard such nasal shitty sound, and the breakup and distortion just sound like digital crap. Such a surprise, NDSP usually do amazing things. I switched to the SLO-100 for comparison, and that one sounds as expected. So nothing technically wrong in my setup. I left the Asato to die out its trial period… I had some bass tracks to record.

Second test

About a week later I felt the urge to give the plugin a second try. If one of us were an idiot, it probably wasn’t the guys over at NDSP.

“It’s probably me” - just like Sting sang.

Let’s start clean, no presets, no effects, and start tweaking the Vintage Clean Amp, with the baritone on the Cold Rail pickup. And what a difference it made. It starts to sound really nice. So nice my girlfriend comments on how good it sounds.

Doing the same procedure with the Modern Clean Amp and utilizing both the Cold and Hot Rail pickup I quickly lands a low gain distorted lead sound. And this is the result:

Final thoughts

From a rocky start to a fantastic sound. I really like how it feels to play this plugin. It sustains like a high gain amp, but with much lower gain. There is something in the mids that just makes me smile.

I need to buy this plugin.