Safety Pin - electric violin distortion

A fat, bassy fuzz made for electric violin.

Turn it into a cello. Add a sub two octaves down. Throw it in the basement. Tune up without leaving the plugin.

DOWNLOAD SOURCE

free · Windows 10/11 64-bit · VST3 + standalone app · v0.3.0

The Safety Pin plugin window: eight studded knobs, a violin tuner, the OVERKILL switch and BYPASS / MUTE — the plugin, actual size-ish

THE KNOBS

go on, turn them (they don't make noise here)

ANGER

How much distortion.

CELLO

A real octave down. At 10 you only hear the octave: a cello.

GUTS

Synth sub bass, two octaves down.

BOTTOM

Bass boost after the fuzz, up to +14 dB.

SNARL

Tone, dark to bright.

BASEMENT

Plate reverb mix.

DECAY

How long the reverb rings.

LOUD

Output level.

+12 dB of drive and hard clipping. Press it. You know you want to.

Next to it: BYPASS (true bypass, lined up so it doesn't jump) and MUTE (or click the tuner).

MIDI learn

Right-click any knob (or OVERKILL, BYPASS, MUTE) > MIDI learn, then turn a knob on your controller. Linked. Works in the standalone app too, so you can play live without a DAW. Map OVERKILL or BYPASS to a footswitch.

BUILT-IN TUNER

Standard violin tuning: G D A E, A = 440 Hz. It listens to your clean signal, before any fuzz, octave or reverb, so the effects never confuse it.

Note, cents and the nearest string. Goes green when you're in tune. Click it to mute the output while you tune.

PLUG IN

Standalone

Unzip, run Safety Pin.exe.
Options > Audio/MIDI Settings: ASIO, your interface (e.g. Focusrite USB ASIO), the input your violin is in, buffer 64-128.
The input is live from the start. Headphones or an amp, not a mic near the speakers.

VST3

Copy Safety Pin.vst3 to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3.
Rescan plugins in your DAW (Cubase, Reaper, Ableton...).
Put it on a mono track. It comes out stereo.

"Windows protected your PC"?

The files aren't code-signed, so SmartScreen may warn you. Click More info > Run anyway. Only download it from this page or the GitHub release.

UNDER THE HOOD

Octave down: two read heads sweep a delay line at half speed; each sweep is a whole number of the note's periods, so the splices land in phase. No warble.
Sub bass: a flip-flop divider like the old analog octave pedals.
Fuzz: bow scratch cut and low mids pushed before the clipper, 4x oversampled.
Reverb: Jon Dattorro's plate, damped darker for strings.
Tuner: YIN pitch detection.

Works on guitar and viola too, but the octave and tuner only track from about 150 Hz up, and one note at a time.