MixWave Yvette Young

The GUI not only delivers an intuitive workflow, but also features graphics designed by Yvette Young.

MixWave attempt to pack the sound that underpins Yvette Young’s unique guitar performances into a signature plug‑in. Have they delivered?

While she’s gained lots of admirers within the guitar community, including many well‑established peers, Yvette Young might still be considered something of a hidden gem. She’s both a solo artist and frontwoman for math‑rock/ post‑rock‑influenced band Covet, and her playing style is unique, featuring intricate melodic patterns, complex rhythmic elements, two‑handed tapping, open tunings and a whole array of sonic textures. It’s mesmerising, to the ear and the eye alike.

She’s also earned admirers within the manufacturer community, with two signature guitars from Ibanez. And now, she also has a signature guitar rig plug‑in. Called simply Yvette Young, it’s been developed by MixWave and runs in all the popular plug‑in formats for macOS and Windows. There’s also a standalone app for anyone comfortable enough using a laptop for their guitar tones in a live performance situation. For existing fans, the plug‑in will have an obvious attraction, but does it also have a broader appeal? Let’s find out...

Rig Rundown

Sensibly, MixWave haven’t reinvented wheels here so, even on first use, this plug‑in is very easy to navigate. It includes features that are common to all of the company’s guitar rig plug‑ins, including the global controls and preset browser at the top of the display. These provide input/output level control, a nice tuner, a noise gate, a transpose function, and the usual tempo‑sync and tempo‑tap controls. Interestingly, just above the signal chain graphics, you can access pre‑ and post‑processing channel‑strip style EQ and compression. In both cases, the EQs offer four bands plus both high‑ and low‑pass filters, while the compressor has threshold, gain and wet/dry controls, the last of those allowing instant parallel compression that can add body/sustain while preserving picking transients and note onsets.

Yvette Young’s live rig has been the subject of several ‘rig rundown’ videos that you’ll find if you search YouTube, so it’s easy to see the origins of the equipment emulated by the plug‑in. The modelled amp is based on the Vox AC30 that sits at the heart of her live rig, although here it comes decked out in artwork that Yvette designed herself (she’s also a visual artist and has created artwork for a number of guitars!). The amp model includes both low‑ and high‑sensitivity inputs, so you have options in terms of working with the amp’s clean headroom, and a switch to ‘jump’ the two channels and run...