Guilt Machine
Guilt Machine is the Emotional Degradation Engine for guitar. It does not sweeten your signal. It haunts it. This manual walks every knob, every mode, every preset and the small tricks that make the plugin sing.
2. The signal chain in one paragraph
3. The Guilt knob (and the lava)
4. Shape parameters — Memory, Confession, Burden, Shame, Spiral, Erase
5. Core parameters — Punishment, Decay, Collapse, Mix
6. The six modes
7. Factory presets
8. A/B slots and copy
9. Look, size and visual effects
10. Five things worth trying tonight
11. Troubleshooting
12. Licence and support
1. Quick start
- Install the plugin (Mac instructions on install-mac).
- Drop it on a guitar bus.
- Load the Aftermath preset.
- Push the central GUILT knob to about 70%.
- Play one chord. Let the tail breathe.
That is the whole pitch. Everything below is what to do once you want more.
2. The signal chain in one paragraph
Your guitar enters an input stage, hits a preamp colouring filter, branches into a parallel network of degradation engines (reverse delay, pitch drift, granular smear, dark chamber reverb, dampening filter), gets stirred by a feedback matrix, runs through a final degradation/collapse pair, and meets your dry signal at the mix stage with a safety limiter on the way out. The GUILT macro pushes all of these toward the edge at the same time. The shape knobs around it bias which forms of damage dominate.
3. The Guilt knob
Guilt is the macro. At zero it is a clean delay/reverb. As you push it up, the engine starts to mis-remember your signal: reverse delays smear, pitch drifts, the texture collapses. The animated lava ring around the knob reflects intensity — faint at low values, fully molten at the top.
4. Shape parameters
The six knobs around Guilt each bias the damage toward a different colour. Combine them; do not treat them as solo voices.
Sets the underlying delay time in milliseconds. Short Memory (under 120 ms) feels like a small room collapsing. Long Memory (400 ms+) lets phrases come back like ghosts.
Crossfades the dry delay against a reverse delay buffer. At 100% you only hear the reversed reflection. Combined with high Guilt this is where the plugin earns its name.
Tilts the spectrum toward the low end. Heavy Burden makes the tail feel oppressive. Light Burden lets the reverb breathe.
A high-cut filter that gets more aggressive as you turn it down. Down at 1.5 kHz the tail sounds like it is hiding behind a curtain.
Subtle pitch drift and modulation on the delay taps. Past 50% the sound starts to vine around itself.
Bit-reduction, sample-rate slop and occasional dropouts. Worn-tape behaviour. Beautiful on slow chord movement.
5. Core parameters
How much of the wet bus is fed back into the delay network. High Punishment grows tails into walls. Above 85% the plugin can self-oscillate — usually beautifully.
Decoupled tail length for the reverb side of the network. Long Decay + low Burden = long, weightless tail.
Density and unpredictability of the granular smear engine. Low values keep the texture smooth; high values shatter it.
Standard parallel blend between your dry guitar and the haunted version. Past 70% you stop hearing your guitar and start hearing the room around it.
6. The six modes
The mode selector on the left re-tunes the entire feedback matrix and degradation engines. Each mode is a personality — not a preset.
// confession
Bright, articulate reversal. Words you almost meant to say.
// buried
Low, slow, suffocated. Sub-saturated tails.
// aftermath
Default. Balanced wet bus. Start here.
// relapse
High feedback bias. Things that come back wrong.
// the weight
Bottom-heavy. Slow tape drift. Cinematic.
// absolution
Bright shimmer. The redeeming side of guilt.
7. Factory presets
Each preset bank is a starting point, not a destination. Click the preset name in the top centre to browse, use the chevrons to step, or press ← → on your keyboard. Press ↓ to open the menu.
Standard bank
Six everyday starting points for guitar tracking, ambient pads and reverb beds.
Extreme bank
For when you want the plugin to do something the dry signal cannot. Includes Ghost Behind The Amp, our most-loved noisy preset.
Save your own
Hit the floppy icon in the top left to save the current state as a user preset. Saved presets appear under User in the dropdown. Delete with the bin icon.
8. A/B slots
Guilt Machine keeps two complete parameter snapshots in memory. The A/B button (top right) toggles which one is active. The A>B button copies the current snapshot to the other slot so you can branch from a state you like. There is no automatic undo — A/B is your undo.
9. Look, size and visual effects
Use the UI SIZE selector (top right) to scale between 75% and 150%. Use the THEME button to toggle dark and light. The animated lava ring around Guilt can be turned off under ⚙ Settings > Disable visual effects if you prefer a static UI or want to save CPU.
10. Five things worth trying tonight
- Load Aftermath. Push Guilt to 80%. Drop Mix to 30%. Now play a single open chord and let the reverb tail collapse.
- Mode = Confession. Confession knob at 100%. Memory at 280 ms. Play a melodic phrase — you will hear it as a backwards answer.
- Mode = The Weight. Burden full up. Shame at 1.8 kHz. This is a film score in one preset.
- Mode = Relapse. Punishment at 88%. Carefully. The plugin can self-oscillate; ride Mix as a fader.
- Automate Guilt across one bar from 0 to 90%. This is the cleanest way to arrange with the plugin instead of just decorate.
11. Troubleshooting
The plugin will not load (macOS)
Follow the steps on install-mac. A one-line Terminal command removes the Apple quarantine flag.
No sound on Mix > 0
Check that Bypass (bottom right) is off and the bypass LED is dim. Some hosts re-bypass plugins after a reload.
CPU is high
Drop the Oversample setting (bottom left) from 4x to 2x. The difference is audible only at the most extreme Guilt + Punishment combinations.
The lava ring is too distracting
⚙ Settings > Disable visual effects. The lava stops; everything else still works.
12. Licence and support
Your licence is tied to your email. You can activate up to 3 machines at once. Manage them at /account.
Found a bug, have a feature request, or just want to share something you made? Mail audio@piruzlabs.com. A human (Piruz) reads every message.