Steel-string at home almost always means going direct from the piezo, because a mic asks for time and a quiet room you don't have. Except the piezo hands you that thin, nasal, plastic sound. Then Magic Bronze steps in: it dresses your signal in captured bodies from Martin, Taylor, Gibson and Collings guitars, learns YOUR room's noise in 2 seconds and you hear your own guitar sounding like a studio, now.
That one below is the real plugin, straight from version 0.2.0. The demos with real steel-string recordings are being finished and land on this page soon.
Find your sound
Twelve banks: Sertanejo, Worship, Pop Acoustic, Folk, Country, Acoustic Rock, MPB, Voice & Guitar, Fingerstyle and Stage, plus Essentials and the 7 captured bodies in the Guitars bank. Eight character tags filter on top. Favorites and Recent one click away. Try it.
Interactive mockup. Filters, search, favorites and recent all work with the same logic that ships in the plugin.
The BODY fader carries 7 real studio guitars we captured ourselves, each with the microphone that flatters that body most: a Martin HD-28 through a Neumann U47, a Gibson Hummingbird through a DPA 4011, a Collings D2H through a Sanken CU31. In DI mode, your piezo's line sound is shaped into the body you pick, and plastic turns into close-miked wood.
The most recorded steel-string in the history of popular music: big body, deep lows, present mids. Captured with a tube Neumann U47, the microphone behind the classic records. First call for band beds and strumming.
In the selector: DREAD · Neumann U47
Balance between body and definition, the contemporary sound of pop and worship. Captured with a Shure SM57 right up on the body, the way stages and studios have recorded Taylors for decades. Sits in the mix without fighting the vocal.
In the selector: MOD GA · Shure SM57
The most famous square-shoulder in the world, a sweet voice built to back a singer. Captured with a DPA 4011, a surgical condenser that keeps the mids honest. The guitar of writers who compose on the couch and release from the bedroom.
In the selector: SONGBIRD · DPA 4011
An orchestra model of fine construction: fast response, separated notes, touch dynamics. Captured with an AKG CS1000. The fingerstyle favorite.
In the selector: BOUT OM · AKG CS1000
Dreadnought power with handcrafted refinement: firm lows that never blur, sweet highs without ice. Captured with a Sanken CU31, a rare Japanese studio condenser.
In the selector: BOUT DR · Sanken CU31
A neutral, reliable grand auditorium, captured clean with a Soundelux E47, the modern take on the classic tube design. When you don't know which to pick, start here.
In the selector: STD GA · Soundelux E47
The slope-shoulder of the old folk and country records: velvet low mids, vintage character. Captured with an AKG CS1000, clean enough to let the wood do the talking.
In the selector: ROUND SH · AKG CS1000
7 bodies in the BODY selector. Captures apply in DI mode; in Mic mode, BODY becomes a warm low shelf.
All instrument and microphone names are trademarks of their respective owners, used only to identify the instruments and microphones captured. No affiliation or endorsement is implied.
This is a mockup of the plugin: try the buttons, roll the body and space selectors, run LEARN. Icons are per-effect bypasses; faders light up as you push each effect. Mixing becomes a sonic, tactile process, simple and fun.
Presets cover ~90% of the cases. The other 10%: learning YOUR room's noise, bypassing one effect, letting AUTO match the volume. All one click away, in the same plugin.
Click LEARN and stay silent for ~2 seconds: the plugin captures your room's noise fingerprint (fan, AC, cable hum) and cleans deeper with fewer side effects. One fader handles the rest.
Clean Up zone → LEARN pill under the Noise fader.
Every effect icon is a bypass button. Zone titles too: tap 2 Creative and the whole group goes silent at once. Useful to hear exactly what each piece does without undoing the preset.
Icons and zone labels are bypass switches.
The AUTO pill matches the processed level to the raw signal. If a fader move sounds better, it is actually better, not just louder. The kind of honesty plugins almost never have.
End Here zone → AUTO pill under Output.
Each macro does one specific, musical job, tuned by Chrys for steel strings, bronze-string shimmer, pick attack and piezo quack ask for a different calibration. No endless menu: decisions you can hear.
Feeds the whole chain harder. Low values stay transparent; past the middle it pushes density and sustain into the guitar.
In DI, it blends your line signal with a captured real steel-string studio body, the plastic sound becomes wood. In Mic, it becomes a warm low shelf that gives a thin recording its chest back.
Lifts the zing of bronze strings and the air of the attack without turning brightness into pain. Strings changed yesterday, in the right dose.
Doubles the recording into 4 voices with mono-safe stereo width. Push it in the chorus for a wall of guitar; pull it back for the intimate verse.
A short, musical delay tuned to sit behind the guitar. A subtle throw at the end of phrases, never rhythmic clutter.
56 convolution reverb spaces on the selector, amount on the fader. From bone-dry studio to cathedral without opening another plugin. The full story is right below.
Clears the low-mid buildup that makes home recordings murky and holds back the piezo's nasal quack. The guitar steps forward without getting thin.
Holds back harsh pick peaks and steel-string squeak. Works with SPARKLE: all the brightness you want, none of the sawtooth.
Gate and spectral reduction together. LO (~8 ms) to play and record while monitoring; HQ for maximum cleanup at mix time. With the LEARN button, it reads your room's noise in 2 seconds and cleans using your room's own fingerprint.
One click in the header and the tuner takes the screen: big, precise, reading the raw signal before any effect. Tune, close, record.
Almost every plugin reverb is an algorithm guessing how a room might sound. Convolution works from different raw material: an acoustic photograph of a real space. Your guitar starts sounding inside that space, with the exact character of the original. It is the most faithful reverb technology there is.
MAGICOM is our convolution engine. We captured, in true stereo, the programs of a legendary 1980s digital reverb unit, a machine you have heard on countless classic records without knowing its name. That's 56 spaces across Concert Hall, Chamber, Plate and Room, each with its measured reverb time written into its name.
Click the reverb's name inside the plugin and the full editor opens: pre-delay, decay, filters, width and gain. And if you have your own IRs, load them right there.
One click on TUNER in the header and the tuner takes over the page: giant note, cent readout, frequency in Hz. It listens to the raw signal before any effect, so what you tune is exactly what the recording receives. Tune, go back to the faders, record.
Music producer, educator, plugin developer and Full Sail University ambassador, a reference for 290k+ creators learning to make better music from home studios, not million-dollar rooms.
When I launched Magic Nylon, one question kept coming back: what about my steel-string? Everyone recording at home owns a steel acoustic with a piezo, and the line sound stays thin, nasal, with no wood in it.
Magic Bronze is the same philosophy with a different calibration: captured bodies of steel-string studio guitars, presets from worship to country, and the MAGICOM on reverb. Hit play and the guitar comes out finished.
— Chrys Gringo
After years helping creators rescue thin, muddy or noise-drowned guitar recordings, the process stays simple:
No EQ curves. No endless tutorial hole. No subscription trap. A complete guitar chain you buy once for a fair price, own forever, and reach for every time your guitar needs to sound finished.
VST3 / AU / AAX. Installs alongside your DAW in under a minute. Buy once, own forever.
Magic Nylon + Magic Bronze for $14.50 per plugin
No subscription. Buy once, it's yours forever.
Mac & Windows · VST3 · AU · AAX · Works with Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton, FL Studio, Cubase, Reaper, Studio One.
Magic Bronze by Gringo Audio — a Chrys Gringo project. Made in the United States.
Magic Nylon is the world's first plugin dedicated to nylon-string guitar: bossa, MPB, worship, classical and flamenco, with 8 captured bodies including a flamenco guitar from Córdoba and a Spanish concert instrument. And the two together cost $29 in the suite.