The master of ambient soundscapes and crushing riffs has teamed up with Neural DSP to bring you the ultimate modern guitarist’s toolkit for ambient cleans and crushing riffs.
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Neural DSP, and nobody from the company asked me to write this post or shoot a video. I downloaded the free 14 day trial to try out the plugin and liked it so much that I ended up buying the license.
What is Archetype: rabea?
I became aware of Rabea many years ago through his online presence. What also stood out were his incredible guitar skills and overall musicality. Over the years, Rabea developed his signature guitar sounds and songwriting style while rising from ‘just’ an influencer to playing some of the biggest festivals in the world.
Archetype: Rabea captures the essence of Rabea’s studio and live sounds into a plugin that does more than just heavy tones.
Specifications
- 3 amplifiers (Clean, Rhythm, Lead)
- Overlord Synthesizer
- 4 pre effects (Dual Compressor, Octaver, Fuzz, Overdrive)
- Cabsim and IR loader
- 4-band semi-parametric EQ
- Delay & Reverb
- Transpose and doubler effects
- Tuner
- Metronome
- You can run the plugin in your DAW or as a standalone app
- iLok account and iLok License Manager needed
What Are The Amps In The Rabea Plugin?
While there is no official word on what the modeled amps are, the clean amplifier has a very ‘Fenderish‘ tone to it. Rabea was also heavily involved with the design of the Victory Kraken, which might have served as an inspiration for the high-gain sounds of the plugin.
Plugin Overview
Archetype: Rabea looks great. The design of the plugin is very clean and minimalistic. The icons are self explanatory and the visual design of the amps gives the plugin a dark and omnious vibe.
I Played Every Preset of the Plugin. Here’s What I Learned:
My first impression of the plugin was that it really captures a lot of Rabea’s tones. Besides being a fantastic guitar player, Rabea is also a producer, and that has definitely influenced his choices in adding the synthesizer, for example.
The ambient clean tones are absolutely amazing. I might have written at least a dozen clean intros in one sitting with them. The crunchy tones worked well with my Telecaster, but I struggled to make them work with the headless Harley Benton I had at the time.
Most of the high-gain sounds have a fuzzy character to them. This works fantastic for Rabea tone fans but may put off some of the modern high-gain aficionados.
While I appreciate the number of artist-made presets you get with this plugin, having 187 of them might be too much. After browsing through the first 50 presets, you have heard most things the plugin has to offer. The rest feel like just the same thing with slightly different amp and pedal settings.
Overall, I think the plugin does a fantastic job capturing the sounds of a modern-day guitar hero, but those sounds might not be for everyone.
Is Neural DSP Archetype: RABEA good?
I liked this plugin so much I bought it as soon as I tried it out. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of every single thing it did, I loved others to the point I had to have them in my producer toolkit.
And the best thing is: you can try it out for free for 14 days and see if it works for you.
►►Find out more: https://neuraldsp.com/plugins/archetype-rabea
►►Gear I Use (affiliate): https://www.thomann.de/fi/thlpg_to7
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