Describe a sound.
Get a rig that makes it.

Say what you want to sound like, in whatever words you think in, and RigShed builds you the rig — not a preset with a clever name, the actual boxes, which you can then open up and take apart. Eight amps fitted against measured references, 41 pedals, and a chain you can reorder.

Join the TestFlight beta — link pending

iPhone · iPad · Mac · AUv3 plug-in
Requires an audio interface to plug a guitar in.

The Describe a tone screen on iPhone. It asks “Who do you want to sound like?”, with “Glassy clean funk, squashy compressor, slight room” typed into the field, a choice of pickup type, and a Build it button

What comes back

A rig, and the reason for every piece in it

It names the rig, tells you what it is for, and then explains each choice one line at a time — why that amp, why that gate, why that reverb and not a bigger one. Then you change it by saying what is wrong.

The Describe a tone result on iPad: a rig called Tight Downpicked Rhythm, a one-line description, then each piece of gear with a sentence saying why it is there, followed by buttons for more drive, less drive, brighter, darker and tighter, and a free text field
Every piece comes with its reason. The chips underneath change it without you having to know the vocabulary — and there is a text field if you do.

How Describe a tone works →

Why it can be trusted

It can only build what the rig can actually make

That is the whole pitch. A tone builder sitting on a weak engine is a toy — it will promise you anything and hand you a preset. This one is restricted to the eight amps, the 41 pedals and the five cabs that are already there, which is why what it gives you behaves like gear when you start turning the knobs.

  • Red Squeeze, a compressor, photographed in its own setting

    Red Squeeze

    Compressor

  • Chapel, a amp, photographed in its own setting

    Chapel

    Amp

  • Studio EQ, a equaliser, photographed in its own setting

    Studio EQ

    Equaliser

  • Room Verb, a reverb, photographed in its own setting

    Room Verb

    Reverb

Four of the pieces behind “glassy clean funk, squashy compressor, slight room”. Each one was photographed somewhere that suits it, and in the app the piece you are editing fills the panel as its own photograph.

Measured, not claimed

Numbers, because we took them

The amps were not dialled in by ear until they sounded about right. They were fitted numerically against measured references, and these are the numbers that came out of doing it that way.

More saturation

4.4dB

Foundry against the clean amp driven by the hottest distortion pedal flat out, measured on a power chord — for 1.5 dB more intermodulation.

Optimisation passes

2,600

The clean amp’s parameters were fitted numerically against a stepped-sine and third-octave reference. Not dialled in by ear.

Of one core

0.10%

What the clean amp costs to run — roughly 30× cheaper than a neural capture, which is what buys the headroom for everything else.

Every factory rig

−18dBFS

All 28 factory rigs land at the same RMS on the same played phrase, so switching compares tone rather than loudness. Before matching, the set spanned 12.1 dB.

The signal path

A real chain, in an order you can change

Ten blocks, and you can move them. The amp is an anchor rather than an effect — it is where the signal splits, so every valid order contains it exactly once, and everything you drag is either in front of the amp or after it.

The order the app starts in.

  1. In
  2. Gate
  3. Comp
  4. Wah
  5. Octave
  6. Drive
  7. Amp
  8. Cab
  9. EQ
  10. Mod
  11. Delay
  12. Reverb
  13. Looper
  14. Out
The board on iPhone: pedals stacked one above another with their own photographs, the chain running across the top
The whole board on a phone.

Where a box sits changes what the next one hears. A drive pushing an amp is a different sound from a drive chewing on the amp’s output — measured at 74.5% of reference level between those two. Not a nuance; a different tone.

Every amp, cab and pedal →

On stage

A screen for playing, not for editing

On stage you look at a phone from standing height, with a guitar in the way, and touch it once between phrases. Knobs are the wrong size for that. Stage mode is a separate screen with big targets and nothing fiddly: the preset you are playing in type you can read from across a room, the next and previous preset, and a footswitch for every block in your rig that can be switched on and off.

Stage mode on iPad: the preset name across the top, then a grid of large footswitch tiles — Silencer, Red Squeeze, Cry Wolf, Basement, Green Scream, the cab, the EQ, the modulation, the delay and the reverb — each with its name, what kind of block it is and a lit indicator when it is on. Record, play and stop run along the bottom.
Tap tempo and the tuner are up there too, and the looper's three most-used buttons are along the bottom.

It changes nothing that is not already a button somewhere else, so a MIDI footswitch and this screen always agree with each other.

The vocal channel

And it is not only the guitar any more

Put a microphone in the second input and you get a second chain beside the guitar’s — its own gate, EQ, compressor, de-esser, delay and reverb, in any order you like. Ten blocks, and every one is its own instance: the gate here is not the guitar’s gate.

The vocal board on iPad: ten panels — gate, low cut, EQ, compressor, de-esser, harmony, character, modulation, delay, reverb and doubler — each with its own knobs, and a Vocal FX switch at the top
The vocal board. Harmony reads “Sings the chord you play on guitar”, with a choice of above, below or both.
  • Harmony follows your playing. It listens to the guitar’s own input, names the chord on screen, and puts a voice above it, below it, or both.
  • One button for talking to the room. Vocal FX drops the harmony, delay and reverb and keeps the gate, EQ and compressor, so talking to an audience sounds like a person and not a stadium.
  • Two outputs, two channels on the desk. Guitar to output 1, voice to output 2.

If you sing and play at once →

What’s free

The whole tone engine is free. Forever.

Every amp, every pedal, every voicing, all five cabs and the microphone in front of each one stay free — and so do as many captures and impulse responses as you care to load. There is no paywalled tone, no timed trial to fall off, and no advertising on any tier.

Stop paying and you keep every amp, every pedal, every voicing and all your rigs. What lapses is capacity and the stage features — never your sound, and never your work.

The presets list on iPhone, each factory rig named with a line describing its sound
28 factory rigs across all eight amps, free on every tier. They are level-matched to each other, so switching between them compares tone and not loudness.

Pricing

Free plays at home. Pro keeps your work. Stage plays to other people.

Three tiers, and the tone engine is in all of them. What you pay for is capacity and the things you need in front of an audience.

  • Play at home

    Free

    Free, permanently

    The whole tone engine, and enough of everything else to play for as long as you like. This is the trial, and it does not end.

  • Keep your work

    Pro

    £4.99/month

    For when three saved rigs stops being enough — which happens in about a week if you are using it properly.

  • Play to other people

    Stage

    £12.99/month

    For a gig: the vocal channel in full, a footswitch that works, and two outputs going to two channels on the desk.

Each tier is sold monthly or annually, and the annual works out at two months free. There is no one-off purchase and no trial: the free tier is the trial, permanently.

Prices are confirmed but not yet switched on. The App Store is the authority on what anything costs on the day you buy it.

What is in each tier, line by line →

Be told when it opens

A guitar rig that behaves like gear, not like software

RigShed is in TestFlight now. Leave an address and you will hear when there is a public link.

Sign-up isn't switched on yet — the list is still being set up.