Drive that goes too far.
Cone breakup, low-mid bark, grime and crackle. From a hint of grit on the drum bus to total destruction.
Out now. Instant download, one-time purchase, owned forever with every future update included.
Not for you? Email us within 30 days and we'll refund it. No questions.
VST3 · AU · AAX on macOS (universal) · VST3 on Windows
A driver worked
too hard.
Grot is what happens to a speaker pushed way past what it was built for. The low mids compress earlier and harder as you turn, a bark digs in and gets meaner, and past noon an HM-2 style chainsaw layer ramps in over the top. The last quarter of this knob is stupid. That's the point.
Pick the box.
Then break it.
Three cabinets, three ways to suffer. Direct gives you the damage with no box at all. Full bandwidth, nowhere to hide. Grotbox is a cheap PA column driver, honky and mid-forward, and it rattles like a blown practice amp the harder you run it. Boombox is a big ported cab with a low end that swells until the woofer feels about to let go. Same knobs, different corpse.
A razor through
the cone.
In 1964 Dave Davies slashed his amp's speaker with a razor blade and recorded You Really Got Me through the wound. That's the bottom half of this knob. The torn cone flaps against your signal, so the buzz is the note itself, not a fuzz layer dumped on top. Push into the red and the driver starts dying for real. The voice coil slams the back plate and a chaotic octave-down blat flaps underneath, like a blown woofer motorboating its last.
Neglect you
can hear.
Grime, crackle and corrosion. Gear that hasn't been serviced since 1987. A noise floor keyed to your signal breathes under the audio and shuts up the moment you stop. Random crackles sound like dried-out solder and dirty contacts, with a fine grain over the top. It builds slowly. Then it takes over. Perfect for chill, ambient or noise music.
Parallel wreckage,
built in.
Not a mix knob. Two faders, each running from silent to too loud. Full destruction, New York parallel crush, or a whisper of dirt under an untouched signal. All one move.
Flip the VU.
Tilt, Gain & Sidechain.
Flip the VU meter and a second panel slides out. Route distortion to trigger on the sidechain, or duck out of the way of every transient, so kicks and snares punch through clean while the grot fills the gaps behind them. A tilt leans the tone into or away from the dirt before it hits, and an input gain sets how hard you drive the whole thing.
What Engineers Are Saying
The plugin is great! Really unique. I have a lot of sat/distortion/redux plugins and nothing is quite like this. I’m able to get a cool vibe quickly which I like.
Sounds absolutely fantastic! I use a ton of different distos, sats and futzes, and this is a sound I’ve been searching for for a long time, especially on vocals. It seems easy to slap something like that on a vox track, but so often it’s just not convincing. This is super easy to dial in and, for whatever reason (the speakers, I presume), it just sounds right.
We’ve been loving GROT. We’re swapping it in for our usual saturation, distortion and vibey things, and preferring how it interacts with and expands sounds. It adds a lot of interest and depth without flattening sounds or mushing them together. It’s a brilliant concept, and it’s been on my last three jobs, all of which the clients have loved.
Hear It Break.
The warmth of a cone setting itself on fire. The glue tearing at the seams. Same performance, dry against wrecked. Headphones on.
Acid 303
Driven well past overdrive until the resonance screams and the coil bottoms out. Brings out all the character of an analog 303.
Big Synth Riser
Automate a filter into the distortion and hear it react. Super fat low end with loads of energy.
Big Drums
Already a huge kit, and you need something bigger? Grot glues the room together and hands the whole thing attitude. Wall of drums.
Gabba Kick
Instant gabba kick generator. A clean kick pushed until the cone gives up, all distortion and menace. The best tool for extreme music.
Warm Bass
A gentle hand on a DI bass. The low end thickens and the top grows a little dirt, nothing more.
Rock Drums
The clean kit stays mixed in underneath while the sidechain ducks the distortion on every kick and snare, adding weight to the hits. Transients stay clean and punchy, grot fills the space between them. Massive parallel drum compression vibes.
Chill Plucks
Run through a grimey bit of noisy outboard, with the distortion sidechained to the plucks. Instant chill.
Guitar
Remember when Dave Davies took a razor to his speaker cone to get that sound? This is what you get, no razor required. Bite where there was none.
Got a better example of GROT in use?
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Get GROT
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There is no activation limit. Install GROT on every machine you own.
Buy NowNot for you? Email us within 30 days and we'll refund it. No questions.
