gh0st Typ3.exe

Master

• In 1 / In 2 / Stereo picks which input of your interface to use. A guitar on input 1 is In 1.
• Input and Output set levels, each with a meter. The red lamp on top lights for a moment if that signal clips; turn down until it stays dark. A safety limiter sits at the very end, so what leaves Ghost Type can't go over full level however hard you push it, but it does turn your sound down to do that. While it's working, the Output lamp glows amber instead of red. It only touches the loudest peaks, so you won't hear it pumping in normal playing; if the lamp stays amber, turn the Output knob down a little and turn up your interface or speakers instead. Right-click the Output knob to switch the limiter off (handy in a DAW that has its own limiter); then the lamp goes red if the output really clips.
• Gate mutes hiss and hum between notes, before any effects. Turn it up until the noise goes away when you stop playing. 0 is off. Right-click the Gate knob for its roll-off: how gently it fades out when you stop playing, from 10 ms (tight and choppy, for staccato high gain) to 2 s (smooth tails).
• Hum removes the mains hum and buzz that single-coil pickups pick up, even while you play. It works out whether your power is 60 Hz or 50 Hz by listening between notes; the frequency it has locked on to shows under the switch. It runs before the amp and pedals, so distortion never gets the chance to amplify the buzz. It can't remove hiss, so use it together with the Gate.

Skins

Right-click any empty spot on the Master panel (not a knob or switch) to change its look: Rusted steel, or Atomic Purple, see-through purple plastic with the circuit board showing inside. It's saved with your session and presets.

Tuner

Flip Tuner up and play a note. The lamps show how sharp or flat you are; the note name and centre lamp turn green when you're in tune. With Mute on, the output is silent while you tune.

Analyzer

The title above the window follows what it's showing: Tuner, Ectoplasm (the ECTO tab), Stained Glass, Oscilloscope, The Ether, Ghost Boy (or the built-in game you're playing), Crypt FM, Phantom TV, Familiar, Magic Mirror or Mausoleum.

While the tuner is off, its window shows what's coming out of Ghost Type. Click the tabs along the bottom (or anywhere in the window) to change the view. The row shows as many tabs as fit, evenly spaced: click the little arrows at its ends, or roll the mouse wheel over it, to reach the rest.

Colours: right-click Ecto or Scope and a colour panel opens below the screen. Drag in the colour square and the strip under it, or type a colour code like #FFB84A, and the screen follows as you go. The eight slots are shared by both views: click one to use it, or right-click one to save the current colour into it. The first slot is always the original amber, so you can get back. Right-click Glass for its palettes: Cathedral (the original), Blood Moon, Drowned, Witchlight, Dusk, and Bone and Ash. Colours save with your session and with presets, but presets leave your slots alone.

Pop out: any screen can go big over the dimmed rig. On Ecto, Glass and Scope, right-click and press Pop out bigger. On Ether, Radio, Familiar and the tuner, right-click and choose it from the menu. On Mirror, it's the button at the bottom of its panel; on Synth, it's EDIT, which opens the full editor. (Game and TV have their own, below.) To go back, press Esc or click outside it, or double-click it, except on Radio and Familiar, where clicks work the controls. Radio and Familiar stay fully playable while big.

• Ecto: a glowing spectrum curve, lows on the left, highs on the right. Right-click it to change its colour.
• Glass: the spectrum as stained-glass panes. Right-click it to choose a palette.
• Scope: an oscilloscope of the waveform. Right-click it to change its colour.
• Ether: trippy, colourful visuals in the spirit of Windows Media Player. They follow your playing: low notes throb, pick attacks fire rings, highs throw sparks, and a brighter tone shifts the colours. Each effect that's on changes the picture too: fuzz burns hot and tears the image, chorus wobbles it between pink and aqua, a phaser or flanger swirls the colours, delay repeats the rings, reverb makes everything linger, Reliquary folds it into a kaleidoscope, an octave adds a second giant shape, and a synth throws square sparks. It also wanders through scenes by itself and keeps dreaming when you stop. Click the picture to jump to another scene. You might spot someone drifting through.
• Game: Ghost Boy, the handheld, or one of the two built-in games, Sunken Rings and Grave Flipper (below).
• Radio: a vintage AM / FM radio (below).
• Familiar: a little pet you raise by playing (below).
• Mirror: your webcam, haunted, with looks and glitch knobs (below).
• Synth: Mausoleum, an FM synthesizer you play from a MIDI keyboard or your computer keys (below).

Ghost Boy

Game Boy & Game Boy Color · the emulation is SameBoy's

A handheld built into the tuner's window. Click the Ghost Boy tab, then click the screen to load a game: a .gb or .gbc cartridge file of your own (Ghost Type doesn't come with any games; there's plenty of free homebrew around). The last game you played goes back in next time. Turning the Tuner on, or switching tabs, pauses the game; switching back carries on where you left off.

• Controller: any Xbox-style pad (a PAD label lights beside the screen when one is found). D-pad or left stick to move, Start and Back/View for Start and Select. A and B go by position, like on a Game Boy: the right-hand buttons (Xbox B and Y) are A, the left-hand ones (Xbox A and X) are B. You can swap that in the menu.
• Keyboard: arrow keys, X = A, Z = B, Enter = Start, Shift = Select.
• Pop out: double-click the screen (or right-click > Pop out bigger) and Ghost Boy fades up big in the middle of the window while the rest of the rig dims. Double-click again (or press Esc, or right-click > Back to normal size) to fade back. It's drawn at a whole number of screen pixels per game pixel, so it stays sharp.
• Right-click the screen for: Pop out, Load cartridge, Reset, Eject; where the sound goes, and its volume; screen colours; and whether to play black-and-white games in colour.
• Sound: Out plays the game beside your guitar, straight to the output. Through the rig sends it into your pedals and amp, like a guitar would be (so it gets distorted, echoed and looped!). Off silences it.
• Colours: Color games are always in colour. Black-and-white games use the screen colours you pick (Pea soup, the original green; Pocket grey; Ectoplasm; Bone & emerald), or, with Play black-and-white games in colour, get tinted the way a real Game Boy Color would.
• Saves: games with a battery save keep it, written a few seconds after the game saves, in %APPDATA%\Ghost Haus\Ghost Type\Saves (the menu opens the folder). Cartridge clocks keep real time.

Built-in games: Sunken Rings & Grave Flipper

two little games that need no cartridge · no sound yet

Right-click the game screen and pick from the Game section at the top: Ghost Boy, Sunken Rings or Grave Flipper. Your choice is remembered. While a built-in game is on, Ghost Boy waits, paused, with its cartridge still in. To play big, right-click > Pop out bigger; press Esc or double-click outside the game to go back (double-clicking the game itself doesn't, because quick clicks are its controls). Both games are drawn as shapes, so they stay sharp at any size.

• Sunken Rings, a haunted water ring-toss. Rings tumble in a murky tank. ← and → (or the pad's left / B and right / A, or clicking the left or right half of the screen) each squirt a burst of bubbles from a nozzle in a bottom corner. Each press is one burst; holding the key down doesn't keep it going, so tap. A ring that sinks down fairly flat with a spike's tip inside its hole hooks on and slides down. Rings on their edge slide off the tip, and a strong jet can lift a ring back off. Hook all eight as fast as you can: the clock starts at your first pump, and your best time is saved. Enter starts again.
• Grave Flipper, pinball in a moonlit graveyard. The table is on the left, the score on the right. ← / → (also Z and /, the pad's left and right, or clicking each half of the screen) work the flippers. Hold ↓ to pull the plunger back, let go to launch (harder the further you pull). Enter starts a game. You get 3 balls. Score with the three ghost bumpers, the two slingshots above the flippers, the B-O-O lanes at the top (light all three for a bonus and a bigger multiplier, up to x5; each flipper press moves the lit lanes along, so you can aim for the dark one), the R-I-P headstones on the left (knock all three down to light the Crypt) and the Crypt itself, which grabs the ball and spits it back out (10,000 when lit). Your high score is saved. With a mouse: click a half of the screen for that flipper, click while the ball sits on the plunger to pull it, and click after a game to start the next.

There's deliberately no Space key: in a DAW, Space starts and stops playback.

Crypt FM

Real internet stations · from radio-browser.info

Click the Radio tab and it switches on. Real stations from around the world are laid out along a backlit dial; sweep the red needle between them and you hear static, just like an old set. FM is music in clean stereo; AM is talk, news, sports and old-time radio, through a narrow, slightly crunchy mono speaker.

• Tune: drag sideways on the dial, or scroll the mouse wheel. Stations show as dots under the scale. The readout shows the frequency, the station's name, then its genre, country and quality, with the signal bars on the right.
• Band: click FM or AM on the left of the dial.
• Presets 1-6: right-click one to save the station you're on; click it to go back there. Saved presets stay on the dial whatever genre the band is filled with.
• Right-click the dial for: Turn on / off; what genre fills each band (FM: Rock, Metal, Funk, Jazz, Blues, Lo-fi and more; AM: News, Talk, Sports, Old time radio...); Find new stations; and where the sound goes, with its volume: Out beside the rig, Through the rig to play along through your pedals and amp, or Off.
• Power: click the POWER lamp. It keeps playing when you switch tabs; switch it off when you're done.

The radio needs the internet. Station lists come from Radio Browser, a free, open directory (which sees your IP address, like any website). Stations come and go; if one says "can't get this one", tune to the next.

Phantom TV

Real TV over the internet · cartoons, anime and classics

Click the TV tab: a little wood-cased set with a curved glass tube. Channels start with Reruns, public-domain cartoons and films from the Internet Archive (Cartoon Crypt, Betty Boop Hour, Popeye Theatre, Fleischer Superman, Horror Matinee, Classic TV), shuffled together and joined part way through, like a live channel, with no ads. After them come free live channels (anime such as Naruto, Toonami Aftermath and Yu-Gi-Oh!; cartoons; classic films and TV), which have their own ads.

• Change channel: click ▲ / ▼ beside the screen, or scroll the mouse wheel. You'll see static and the channel number while it tunes in. Click the picture to see the channel and what's on.
• Pop out: double-click the picture to make it big; double-click, Esc or click outside to put it back.
• Right-click for the channel list, Find new channels, and where the sound goes (Out, Through the rig or Off) and its volume.
• It only plays while you're watching it: switch to another tab, or turn the tuner on, and it stops completely.

It needs the internet. It takes the smallest picture a channel offers, so it's light on your computer and your connection. Live channels come from the iptv-org list and come and go; if one shows "no signal", try the next. Some channels send their sound separately and aren't supported yet. Séance can sample it too (Source: Phantom TV).

Magic Mirror

Your webcam, haunted · looks and video-synth glitches

Click the Mirror tab and you'll see a dark hand mirror. Click it to wake the mirror: your camera turns on and you appear in it, flipped like a real mirror. A red LIVE lamp in the corner, and a red dot on the tab, show whenever the camera is on.

• Looks (one at a time): Clear; Ectoplasm, glowing in Ecto's colour; Spirit Photo, an 1890s séance plate; Cold Spot, a ghost-hunter's heat camera; Night Vision; Stained Glass, in Glass's palette; Planchette, glowing outlines only; and Ghost Boy, four greens like the handheld. Click the picture for the next look.
• Glitch knobs (use as many as you like): Apparition (a faint you, a moment behind), Feedback (trails that zoom away), RGB Split, Scan Tear, Datamosh (blocks smear and stick), Posterize, Colour Cycle and Pixel Sort (bright runs melt into streaks). Tick a knob's ♪ and it follows your playing: silent, it does nothing; dig in, and it goes up to where you set it. Shake it up sets every knob somewhere new; All clean turns them all off.
• Right-click the picture for the panel: Looks, Glitch and Camera pages, and Pop out bigger. On the Camera page, pick which camera to use, turn the mirror flip on or off, and wake the mirror or put it to sleep.
• Turning it off: click the LIVE lamp. It also turns off by itself when you switch tabs, turn the tuner on, or close or minimise the window. It always starts off when Ghost Type opens.

Private: nothing is recorded, saved or sent anywhere. The picture only goes to the screen. Your looks and knobs save with your session and presets; the camera being on never does. If the mirror says Windows is keeping the camera private, open Windows Settings > Privacy & security > Camera and turn on Let desktop apps access your camera. In a DAW, Windows lists the DAW as the app using the camera. If another app (a video call) is using the camera, close it and click the mirror to try again.

Mausoleum

6-operator FM synth · after the M-Vave FM-1 and the Yamaha DX7

Click the Synth tab. The screen shows the patch's name, a little picture of how its six operators are wired (the boxes on the bottom row are the ones you hear; the ones above bend their sound), four quick knobs, a light for each of the 16 voices and a small keyboard. It comes with 32 patches of its own: electric pianos, bells, brass, organs, basses, pads, plucks and strange things.

• Playing: a MIDI keyboard (in the Standalone, tick it in Options > Audio/MIDI Settings; in a DAW, put Ghost Type on a track that gets MIDI). Velocity, the sustain pedal, the pitch-bend wheel (two semitones) and the mod wheel (vibrato) all work. Or click the keys on the screen (lower on a key plays louder), or click the screen once and play your computer keys: A S D F G H J K are the white keys from middle C, W E T Y U the black ones, and Z / X move down or up an octave. The MIDI lamp blinks when notes arrive.
• Patches: the arrows beside the name (or the mouse wheel over it) step through the bank. Banks: Ghost (the 32 built-in), My patches and any you load.
• Quick knobs: Tone (darker to brighter), Attack (softer to snappier), Release (shorter to longer ring) and Level. Drag up and down, or scroll. Tone, Attack and Release leave the patch itself alone; at 5 it plays as written.
• Sound: OUT plays it beside your guitar, RIG sends it through your pedals and amp like a guitar (and then the looper records it), OFF silences it. Séance can sample it either way (Source: Mausoleum).
• The editor: click EDIT (or right-click > Open the editor) and every part of the patch pops out big: the algorithm (32 ways of wiring the operators) and its feedback; the LFO (wave, speed, delay, pitch and amp depth); the pitch envelope; and six operator columns, each with its frequency (a ratio of the note, or a fixed Hz), detune, level, velocity, its own envelope (four rates and four levels, drawn as a picture), and how it changes across the keyboard. Each operator has an ON switch to hear what it adds. Drag any number up or down, or scroll it; ones with only a few choices change when you click them. A * after the name means you've changed it.
• Also in the editor: Chorus and Reverb, Mono (one note at a time, gliding between them, with Glide for how long), and the MIDI channel it listens to (All, or 1 to 16). Click the name to rename the patch.
• Saving: SAVE puts the patch in My patches (the next empty slot, or over the one you're on if you're in My patches). Your session and presets also remember the patch you're playing, edits and all.
• DX7 patches: LOAD .SYX reads any Yamaha DX7 patch file, a whole 32-voice bank or a single voice; it becomes a bank of its own and stays there next time. EXPORT saves the bank you're on as a .syx a DX7 editor (or a real DX7) can read. Your banks live in %APPDATA%\Ghost Haus\Ghost Type\FM.

There are thousands of free DX7 patch banks online made by fans, and many of Yamaha's own sounds are passed around too. Ghost Type doesn't come with Yamaha's patches because they're Yamaha's, but any .syx you have will load. Mausoleum costs nothing while it's quiet: it only works when a note is playing.

Familiar

A pet that grows as you play · silent, and it never touches your sound

Click the Familiar tab (use the arrows to reach it). You'll find four coffins: point at one to see who's inside, and click to choose a Ghost, a Cat (a stitched kitten, not the room's cat), a Skeleton or a Zombie. The choice is final, so look at them all first. Then play your guitar or bass and the coffin slowly wakes: after about 10 minutes of real playing something wants out, and it hatches the next time you look at the tab.

• Levels: your playing earns XP, whichever tab is showing, and even with the window closed in a DAW. The gold bar shows how close the next level is. Level 5 takes about 1.5 hours of playing, level 10 about 6, level 30 about 80.
• What counts: it listens for real notes: new attacks, and changing notes or chords. Chugging on one note counts for a bit less. Hum, hiss, a held note and silence earn nothing, and neither do looped parts, backing tracks or the tuner being on. If you're unsure whether something counts, it probably does: it gives you the benefit of the doubt, and it never tells you off.
• Moods: the three bars along the top are Spirits (pink), Tidiness (blue) and Energy (green). Point at a bar for its name. They fall slowly while Ghost Type is open, and much more slowly while it's closed. Playing cheers it up.
• Care: the four buttons are Bath, Clean (clears away one poop), Feed and Play. Click the pet itself for a little fuss.
• Escape (from level 5): a fifth button with a down arrow appears. Press it and the pet leaps out of the screen onto the top of the amp, between the candles and the handle. It wanders about up there on any tab: warming itself at the candles, gazing at the window, staring when a window ghost comes out, and sulking at the cat. It still dances when you play. To bring it home, click it, or press the up arrow on its tab. You can't feed or wash it while it's out. If you close Ghost Type while it's out, it's back home next time.
• It can't die. Ignore it for a year and it'll be sad, grubby and surrounded by flies, and it cheers up when you come back. Nothing is ever lost by being away.
• Watch it: it blinks, looks around, wanders, hops and naps, and it dances when you play. Each creature has habits of its own. The Ghost fades half away and peeks in from the edge of the screen. The Cat flicks its tail, washes a paw and comes down to pat at the tabs. The Skeleton's jaw clatters, and its skull falls off and gets put back. The Zombie sways, drops its arm and groans at nothing.
• It notices the rest of the plugin:
  • Crypt FM: with a station playing, it goes over to a little radio on its own tab and bops along.
  • Visits: on the TV, Radio and Game tabs it comes up in a corner for about 14 seconds, about once a minute, while something's playing. It watches the TV from beside the picture and the game from the bezel, and bops along on the radio. Your clicks go straight through it.
  • Games: it cheers when you hook a ring, finish Sunken Rings, score big in Grave Flipper or set a high score. It can't see inside a Ghost Boy cartridge, so there it just cheers you on once a visit.
  • Clipping: if the output clips, it covers its ears on its own tab or on those three.
  On any other tab it stays out of sight and costs nothing, and it still earns XP.
• The room's black cat has opinions: every 5 to 10 minutes, in a quiet moment, it makes a dry remark in a small speech bubble about your playing, your tuning or your pet. It never speaks while you're playing, and if you start while a bubble is up, the bubble goes straight away. Clicking the cat to pet it sometimes gets a remark as well. It has no level or stats, and it refuses to acknowledge your pet until level 15, when it admits, once, that the thing exists.
• Ghosts at the window (from level 5): about every 5 minutes of playing, the stained glass glows softly. It never interrupts you and it waits as long as you like. With your pet out on the amp, click the window and a ghost appears, and the Familiar tab opens to show what it wants. If you were on another tab, it opens only after that click, and you go back afterwards (a TV stream stops and Ghost Boy pauses, as with any change of tab). With your pet at home, the Escape button beckons, and clicking the window does what it always did. A ghost may:
  • Give you a gift: something for your pockets, or now and then something for your pet to wear.
  • Hum a note (capture): play that note and let it ring, in any octave. The closer you are, the faster its soul jar fills, like a tuner. Or hold the Hold to hum button instead.
  • Want a duel (battle): it shows four notes and you play them back, three rounds in all. The more you get right, the more it takes; 8 right beats it. The note buttons on the screen work just as well. Your notes stay visible, so it's no memory test.
  • Want to swap (trade): one of your items for one of its own, and you see both first.
  • Keep coming back (befriend): after you've met it five times it may offer to be friends. Friends will help on journeys in a later version.
  • Curse you (haunt): your pet wears a silly hat for an hour. Afterwards the hat is yours to keep.
  Say no, or ignore it, and it just floats off. Nothing is ever lost, a lost duel still earns its star in the Ledger (a won one earns an item too), and being out of tune is only ever "it drifts nearer". Your pet earns no XP from ghosts, so skipping them doesn't hold it back.
• The Ghost Ledger: the book button on the Familiar tab opens a big book over the rig. It lists every ghost you've met, with a star for each kind of encounter you've had with it, a little jar if you caught it and a heart if you're friends. Its Pockets page shows your items, and its Looks page is what your pet can wear. Close it with Close or Esc.

Growing up

Your pet grows as it levels up: a Fledgling at level 5, Grown at level 15 and an Elder at level 30. It never happens while you're playing. A faint sparkle means it's ready, and the change comes in the next quiet moment. If you start playing first, it simply waits. Growing up only changes how it looks.

• What you play decides what it becomes. While you're really playing, Ghost Type notes which way your sound leans, and at level 15 your pet grows into whichever is furthest ahead. High gain makes it Armoured. Clean tones, chorus and reverb make it Glowing. Fuzz, synth and strange pedals make it Mutated. Bass makes it Huge. Once it has grown, that's for good, and its Elder form follows the same path. Each creature has its own four forms and four Elders.
• Keep an eye on it. The bars on the Looks page show how it's leaning. Turning knobs doesn't count, and neither does anything else without real playing.
• An older pet has nothing counted yet, so if it's already past level 15 it stays a Fledgling for 30 minutes of playing, then grows into what you've been playing.
• At level 30 it may sometimes go and sleep beside the room's cat, if the cat will have it.

Looks

There are hats, skins and trails to find: a few from ghosts at the window, some from enemies on journeys, and the best chance from bosses. Wear one of each from the Looks page, in the Ghost Ledger or the Camp Chest: click to put it on, and click again to take it off. They show wherever your pet goes, including on the amp and in the corner visits. They change how it looks and nothing else, so they make no difference on journeys or to your sound.

The Nether (from level 10)

At level 10 a seventh button appears on the Familiar tab: a little purple portal. It takes your pet to base camp, in front of a way down into the Nether. From there you send it off on journeys, and it fights by itself. It can't die: if it falls, it floats back to camp with everything it found.

• Set Off sends it into the region shown at the top of camp. It walks, meets a wave, fights, and walks on, getting further each time as it gets stronger. Call Home brings it straight back with everything it found. After a fall it rests for half an hour and goes again by itself. To stop that, use the switch on the chest's Regions page.
• Your playing helps. While you play, the screen says Boost!, and it hits harder, moves quicker and heals. It doesn't need you, though. It carries on more slowly without you, even with Ghost Type closed, for up to 8 hours of your time away. If you've been gone a while, a "While you were gone" scroll tells you what happened when you next open the tab. Skip closes it.
• Your pedals flavour its spells. Play through a pedal and the spell takes on its element: fuzz is fire (burns), reverb is spirit (heals), delay is echo (hits twice), chorus is shimmer (dodges) and octave is earth (sometimes stops an enemy). The pedal you switched on last wins. Loading a preset alone doesn't change it: you have to play.
• Each creature fights its own way. The Ghost has strong magic and a weak body. The Cat is lucky, finds the most and has three Nine Lives each trip. The Skeleton gets the most from armour and hits back. The Zombie hits hard and slowly and heals itself.
• The Camp Chest (the Chest button at camp) has five pages. Gear: a weapon, a charm and a spell, and bones to Improve them. Every enemy drops bones, and better gear comes mostly from bosses, which come every 10 waves. Helpers: bring one ghost you've befriended at the window. Regions: beat a region's boss at wave 20 to open the next one, then choose where it goes. Story: what it's been up to. Looks: what it's wearing. Close the chest with Close or Esc.

Rewards for any schedule

• Rested Spirit: time away banks up double XP, a minute for each hour away, up to two hours' worth. When you have some, the screen shows X2 and the time left, and it runs down as you play.
• Daily Offering: the first real play of each day brings a gift of bones, a little better each day, and every seventh day an item for your pockets. Missing a day only pauses the run. It never resets.

The pet lives in one file of its own, %APPDATA%\Ghost Haus\Ghost Type\Familiar\pet.xml, shared by the app and the plugin, so loading a preset or a DAW project can't change it. If two copies of Ghost Type are open, one runs the pet and the other shows it asleep. While a DAW plays back without recording, XP drops to about a third, in case it's a recording of a guitar.

Room

The room your amp and cab are playing in, picked up by a room mic and blended with the close mic. Flip On to switch it in. Pick a room with the arrows, or click the brass plate for a list:

• Chapel: mid-sized, bright and sweet.
• Crypt: a low stone vault, tight and thick.
• Catacombs: long passages, dark, with echoes chasing down the tunnels.
• Bell Tower: a tall stone shaft that rings.
• Great Hall: vast and lush.

Distance moves the room mic from close to far (later, darker, more room). Room blends it in. Decay makes the room ring shorter or longer.

Looper

Records the whole rig at the very end of the chain, up to 60 seconds.

• Rec: start recording. Press again to close the loop and play it, again to overdub, and again to stop overdubbing.
• Play: stop the loop, or play it from the top.
• Undo: take back the last overdub. Press again to redo it.
• Erase: clear the loop. Level sets its volume.

Count-in: click Count-in on the Loop page to choose Off, 1 bar or 2 bars (right-click for the list). With a count-in set, pressing Rec on an empty loop counts you in with the metronome (at the tempo and time signature set on Tap, even if the metronome is off), the plate counting down, and recording starts exactly on the next downbeat. Press Rec again during the count to cancel it.

The bar shows where you are in the loop (red while recording, amber while overdubbing). A small lamp on the Loop ribbon tells you a loop is running while you're on the Room page. Loops aren't saved with presets.

Saving a loop to a file: click Export Loop on the Loop page, choose WAV or MP3, then choose where to save it. You get the loop with all its layers, and it keeps playing while it saves. The button is greyed out and says why while the loop is empty, recording or overdubbing, so stop overdubbing first. The Level knob and Output don't change the file.

• WAV is the exact loop, sample for sample (24-bit, at your session's sample rate). Use it to bring a loop into a DAW or to loop it elsewhere.
• MP3 is much smaller and good for sharing (320 kbps). The format adds a tiny bit of silence around the sound, so it won't loop seamlessly, and it tops out at 48 kHz, so a higher-rate session's MP3 comes out at 44.1 or 48 kHz.
• If overdubs have pushed the loop past full scale, the whole file is turned down just enough to fit instead of clipping. Hover over the button after saving to see by how much.

Séance

Pocket sampler and 16-step sequencer · after the Pocket Operator K.O!

The third ribbon. A little glowing screen (with a ghost that dances to the beat), three knobs, eight brass buttons and 16 bone pads. Click Open, or double-click the screen, to pop it out big; there you also get the sample's waveform and a grid of every sound's 16 steps, and your computer keys play the pads (1-4, Q-R, A-F, Z-V; Space plays). Click outside it, Back or Esc to put it away.

16 sounds. Sounds 1-8 play notes: the 16 pads are a scale (minor to start with; right-click for major, harmonic minor or chromatic). Sounds 9-16 are kits: each sample is cut into 16 parts, one per pad.

The buttons. With none lit, the pads play the chosen sound. Click a button to light it, and again to put it out:

• Sound: pick a sound with a pad. The knobs work on that sound: Pitch (in semitones), Filter (left darker, right thinner, middle open) and Level. Double-click a knob to reset it.
• Pattern: pick one of 16 patterns. Pick more before putting the button out to chain them; the chain plays round and round, a bar each.
• FX: hold a pad for a punch-in effect on everything Séance plays: Loop 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 and triplet, Stutter, Reverse, Tape stop, Octave up, Octave down, Low pass, High pass, Crush, Echo, Wobble, Haunt (a huge reverb). Echo and Haunt ring on after you let go.
• Write: stopped, the pads become the 16 steps of the chosen sound; click one to add or take away the pad you played last. Playing, whatever you play is recorded into the pattern, on the nearest step.
• Sample: hold a pad to record into that sound (up to 12 seconds), from the Source shown: your Guitar (dry), the Rig (through the pedals), Crypt FM, Ghost Boy or Phantom TV. With Loop, clicking a pad takes the whole loop; with File, it asks for an audio file. You can also drag an audio file onto any pad. Click Source to step through them, or right-click it for the list.
• Play: start and stop.

Tempo and click, in the big window: a strip under the knobs has Tap (or press T), the BPM (use - and +, drag it, or double-click for 120) and Click, the metronome. Right-click Click or Tap for its sound and time signature. While Séance plays, the click stays locked to its steps, even if you turn it on part way through or tap a new tempo.

A quick tap on a pad in Sample mode won't replace its sound: hold for at least a fifth of a second. Sample start and end handles on the waveform only move if you grab them directly.

It plays at the tempo on Tap (in a DAW, it follows the DAW's beat while the DAW plays). Right-click it for where its sound goes (Out, Through the rig so the pedals and the looper hear it, or Off), its volume, swing, the keys, Restart with the loop (back to step 1 each time the loop goes round), clearing or copying patterns, putting a built-in sound back, and the samples folder.

Your patterns, knobs and sounds are saved with your session and your presets. Samples are kept as WAV files in %APPDATA%\Ghost Haus\Ghost Type\Samples.

Presets

The bar under the title. The arrows step through your saved rigs. Click the name for the full list, Save as..., Delete (to the Recycle Bin) and Open presets folder. Save saves over the current preset, or asks for a name when you're on Default.

At the bottom of the list: Ghost Type and its version number, Check for updates daily and Check for updates now (see Updates).

A preset is the whole rig: every knob, every pedal swap, the pedal order, the amp channel, the cab and the room. They live in %APPDATA%\Ghost Haus\Ghost Type\Presets; copy that folder to take your rigs to another computer. Default puts everything back to how Ghost Type starts: input 1, Input, Output and Gate at noon, Wisp through the Crypt 4x12 with a Bone 57 and a Candle 414, and eight pedals on the board, all switched off: Rigor, Boogeyman, Horseman and Will o' Wisp into the amp, Ouija, Apparition, Revenant and Purgatory in the Afterlife.

Metronome

Right-click Tap for the metronome window: switch it On, pick a Sound, a Time signature (2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/8, 7/8, 12/8), the Clicks (beats only, eighths, triplets or sixteenths), whether to Accent the 1, and the Volume.

• The usual sounds: Click, Beep, Wood block, Cowbell, Hi-hat (open on the 1), Rimshot.
• Something different: Grandfather clock (tick... tock, with a chime on the 1), Typewriter (the bell rings at the end of every bar), Ghost bell, Heartbeat (lub-dub), Coffin knock (a double knock on the 1).
• In x/8 time it clicks every eighth note and leans on each group of three. With a DAW playing, it follows the DAW's beat and tempo.
• The clicks go straight to the output, beside your guitar: they're never recorded by the looper.

Tap tempo

Tap Tap in time, two taps or more; its lamp blinks on the beat (green when the metronome is on, brighter on the 1). Beat 1 lands on your last tap. Drag the BPM window up or down to fine-tune, or double-click it for 120. With Sync on, Revenant, Bakeneko, Eidolon, Brood's Relay echo and Reliquary follow the tempo, and their Time knobs are ignored. Revenant can only reach 300 ms, so at slow tempos it plays an eighth or sixteenth note.

Rigor

Compressor · after the Xotic SP

Volume (noon is about the same level as bypassed), Blend (dry to compressed; leave a little dry for pick attack) and Lo / Mid / Hi compression. Right-click it for the internal switches: Fast attack / release (snappier, more country squish) and High cut (rounds off the top).

Golem synth slot

Guitar synth · after the EHX Synth9

Turns your guitar into a synth, chords included, with no delay. Pick one of nine machines with Machine: Old Saw, Brass, Cold Keys, Vibrato, Mono Lead, Solar, Mood, Square or Reso. Dry and Synth set the guitar and synth levels. The other two knobs change job with the machine, and their labels change to match. Decay sets how long notes linger after you let go. Clean, separate notes track best.

Medium synth slot

Vocoder · after the Boss VO-1

Talk or sing into a mic while you play, and your guitar speaks the words. It only makes sound while you're both playing and talking: talking alone gives silence, because your voice shapes the guitar rather than coming through itself.

• Setting up: choose your mic's input with Mic: In 1 or Mic: In 2. Set the Master input selector to your guitar's input, not Stereo, or the mic goes through the whole rig too. In the app, both inputs must be switched on under Options > Audio/MIDI Settings. In a DAW, use a stereo track that takes both inputs; a mono track only brings in one of them.
• The MIC light: next to the footswitch, and it works even with the pedal off, so you can set your level first. Talk and turn up Mic until it reaches the green. Dark means no mic is arriving (check the cable, your interface's gain and phantom power), amber is quiet, and red is too loud. If it shows Same input as guitar or No input 2 open instead, fix the setup above.
• Where it goes: anywhere before the amp, it actually plays just after the amp and cab, because distortion would flatten the words. Your guitar's tone, fuzz and amp included, is what speaks. Drag it past the amp to put it later among the pedals there.
• Modes: Vintage is robotic, Clear is the most understandable, Choir adds octaves above and below, and Talk is like a talk box.
• Knobs: Mic is your mic's volume (0 is off, and it has plenty of boost for a quiet mic), Tone tilts it darker or brighter, Blend adds your plain guitar, and Level is the vocoder's volume.

Use headphones: a live mic near speakers can feed back. Phantom power, if your mic needs it, is set on your interface.

Hollow synth slot

Wind synth · an original, not based on a real pedal

Listens to the note you're playing and has a small wind instrument blow it. Choose the instrument with Voice: Ocarina, Pan Pipes, Flute, Shakuhachi, Tin Whistle or Clarinet.

• Playing it: it plays one note at a time, so single notes work best. Your picking is the breath: dig in for a louder, brighter note. Long notes hold as if blown and stop when the string stops. Bends and slides follow. On a chord it holds the last clear note for a moment, then fades out.
• Knobs: Dry adds your plain guitar (it starts at 0), Wind is the instrument's volume, Breath is how much air you hear, Vibrato comes in a moment into a held note, and Glide sets how smoothly one note slides into the next.
• Octave: plays the instrument from one octave below your note to two above. A real ocarina sits high, so it starts at +1.

It sounds best on a clean amp, or dragged to the Afterlife side after the cab, because a driven amp distorts it. Add some Purgatory reverb for a faraway sound.

Gremlin bitcrusher slot

Bitcrusher and step sequencer · after the Meris Ottobit Jr.

Chews your sound up like an old games console, and can play rhythms and melodies with it.

• The crush: Rate lowers the sample rate and Bits lowers the detail. Filter and Reso are a resonant low-pass that tames the fizz or adds a squelch, and Mix blends in your clean sound. With Rate, Bits and Filter all the way up, you hear your guitar untouched.
• The sequencer: turn up Seq to start it (at 0 it's off). The six faders are the six steps, and the buttons pick what they move: Rate, Filter or Pitch. Pitch steps always land on a minor pentatonic scale. Mult sets how many steps play per beat of the TAP tempo.
• Stutter and Freeze: turn up Stutter and every second beat repeats a slice of what you just played, with shorter slices further up the knob. Freeze holds a slice for as long as it's on.

The right side of the board is its home on a new board, but you can drag it anywhere. In front of a driven amp it turns into a gnarly fuzz. If your saved session doesn't show it, add it with the + button.

Boogeyman boost group

Clean boost · after the BBE Boosta Grande

Makes your sound louder and changes nothing else. One knob, Boost: 0 adds nothing and 10 adds 20 dB, with each number worth 2 dB. It starts at 5, which is +10 dB. It runs at the same time as a fuzz or overdrive. Right-click it to swap it for Dead Air, which shares its place on the board.

• Where it goes changes what it does: before a drive pedal it makes that pedal distort harder. After the drive and before the amp, it hits the amp harder for more gain and a thicker lead. After the cab, on the Afterlife side, it's simply a louder sound, such as a solo volume.

On a new board it sits right after the Fuzz / Drive pedal. If your saved session doesn't show it, add it with the + button. On the Afterlife side, full boost can overload the output, so watch the Output meter.

Dead Air boost group

Preamp · after the JHS 424 Gain Stage

One channel of a cassette four-track's mixer as a pedal. It colours your sound even at low settings, and gets rough and elastic when pushed. It has no tape effects, such as wobble or hiss. Right-click Boogeyman to swap it in. The two share a place on the board, so only one can be there at a time. It runs at the same time as a fuzz or overdrive.

• Gain 1 is the main drive. Up to noon it stays clean unless you hit it hard. From about 7 (2 o'clock) your picking starts to break it up.
• Gain 2 is the second stage: turn it down to calm the drive, or up to push it harder. It clips in a different way from Gain 1, so the same loudness can sound different depending on which you lean on. At 0 it's silent.
• Volume sets the output level. It gets loud, and at 0 it's silent.
• Bass and Treble are flat at noon. They sit between the two gains, so they also change how the second one distorts.

With every knob at noon it's a small boost of about 7 dB. Try it pushing a driven amp, or in front of a drive pedal. It starts switched off.

Doppelgänger octave slot

Octave · after the Boss OC-5

Poly follows chords with no delay on the lower octave, adding an octave below (Oct 1) and an octave above (Oct 2). Vintage is for single notes, with a tight, analog-style octave below (Oct 1) and two octaves below (Oct 2). Direct is your dry guitar (5 is its normal level). Range sets how high up the neck the lower octaves reach. It sits right after Rigor, before anything that distorts.

Requiem octave slot

Harmonist · after the BOSS PS-6 Harmonist

Adds a second voice at another pitch. Right-click Doppelgänger and choose Requiem to swap it in. Pick a mode with the four buttons. Balance blends your guitar (0) with the effect (10); in the middle you hear both at an even level. The other knobs change job with the mode, and their labels change to match (a knob a mode doesn't use goes dim).

• Harmony (the Harm button): a harmony that stays in key. Set the song's major key with Key and the interval with Shift: a 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th above or below, or an octave up or down. Requiem listens for the note you play and picks the step that fits the scale, so in C a 3rd up from E is G but from F it's A. For a minor key, use its relative major (A minor is C major). It tracks single notes; play chords in Pitch instead.
• Pitch: a fixed shift. Shift goes from an octave down to an octave up, in semitones. Detune raises the shifted voice by up to 25 cents, for a thicker, slightly out-of-tune double. It holds up on chords too, though single notes are smoothest.
• Detune: a thick, chorus-like double with no wobble: one voice a few cents sharp on the left and one a few cents flat on the right. Shift sets how far (up to 30 cents).
• S-Bend: the footswitch becomes a bend. Hold it and the pitch slides up (or down) to Shift over the Rise Time (30 ms to 3 s); let go and it slides back the same way. While it's not held, your guitar passes straight through.

Like the real pedal it sits early in the chain, before anything that distorts: a harmony is clearest on a clean signal.

Legion octave slot

Poly Octave · after the EHX Micro POG

An octave below and an octave above your playing, at the same time, on chords as well as single notes. Right-click Doppelgänger and choose Legion to swap it in. It moves your guitar's own sound down or up an octave, harmonic by harmonic, rather than adding a made-up tone underneath, so the sub sounds like your guitar or bass, only lower. It works on guitar and bass.

• Dry is your guitar, untouched and with no delay (5 is its normal level, 0 takes it out).
• Sub is the octave below. At 5 it's about as loud as your guitar.
• Up is the octave above. It starts at 0.
• Filter darkens the two octaves (never the dry guitar). At 10 it's fully open, the plain Micro POG sound; turning it down rounds them off, down to a soft, organ-like low end at 0. The Micro POG has no Filter: it's borrowed from the bigger POG2.

Classic settings: organ, everything at about 5 with Filter around 6; 12-string, Dry 5, Up 5 to 7, a touch of Sub; guitar into bass, Dry 0, Sub 7 to 10. It sits early in the chain, before anything that distorts: octaves are cleanest on a clean signal, and a fuzz after it makes them growl.

Vespers octave slot

Multi Overtone · after the Boss MO-2

Adds octaves to everything you play, chords included, for organ-like, thick and shimmering sounds. Right-click Doppelgänger and choose Vespers to swap it in. Like Legion, the octaves are your own guitar's sound moved up or down, not a made-up tone.

• Balance mixes your guitar with the overtones. All the way down is only your guitar, untouched; at noon you get both at full; all the way up is only the overtones.
• Tone makes the overtones darker (down) or brighter (up). It never touches your plain guitar.
• Detune adds movement to the overtones. What it does depends on the mode.
• 1 Up: an octave above. Detune thickens it gently, like a 12-string.
• 2 Both: an octave above and an octave below together, the organ. Detune turns it into a spinning Leslie speaker, slow at first and faster as you turn it up.
• 3 Low: an octave below with a little of the octave above. Detune adds a chorus or vibrato wobble.

The three modes are set to the same loudness, so you can switch between them mid-song without a jump. For a bass-synth sound try 3 Low with Balance around 7 and Detune just past noon. Put it early in the chain, before anything that distorts. Its sound is in stereo when Detune is up.

Spirit Box

Acoustic simulator · after the Boss AC-3

Makes your electric sound like an acoustic guitar: it adds the air and resonance of a wooden body and the zing of the strings. Pick the guitar with the four buttons: Std (a dreadnought: full and balanced), Jumbo (bigger, boomier low end), Enh (enhanced: a smaller, brighter body with a crisper attack that cuts through a mix) or Piezo (an acoustic's under-saddle pickup: tighter, quackier and more percussive).

Then tell it which pickup you're playing with Neck, Mid or Bridge. A pickup near the bridge hears thin lows, so the pedal puts them back to suit.

Level sets the volume (noon is about the same as bypassed), Top the top end, pick attack and string detail, Body how much the wooden box rings and how quickly it makes your notes die away (as a real acoustic does), and Reverb a little room around it.

Tip: it sounds most convincing on the neck pickup with the amp switched off and the cab set to None, because a guitar cab removes most of the acoustic's top end. Into a clean channel (Wisp or Shade) with the Gain low also works, with the fuzz off. The bridge pickup works too with the switch on Bridge, though its hum gets more noticeable. Put it first in the chain, or just after Rigor.

Reliquary

Micro loops & grains · after the Hologram Microcosm

It records the last ten seconds or so of your playing and plays fragments of it back in one of 11 ways, picked with the selector. Each has four variations on the A–D buttons.

Activity sets how busy it is, Repeats how long or how often, and Shape each fragment's fade (sharp to swelling). Filter darkens the effect, Time sets the timing (60 ms to 2 s), and Space adds reverb. Mix blends it with your dry sound.

Poltergeist fuzz slot

Fuzz & EQ · after the Stone Deaf FX Fig Fumb

Fuzz, Volume, and a parametric EQ: Freq, Q and Cut/Boost, switched in with EQ. The EQ sits inside the fuzz, between its two clipping stages, so it shapes the distortion itself.

Plague fuzz slot

Distortion · after the JHS PackRat

Distortion, Filter (darker clockwise; on LA and Caroline it runs the other way) and Volume, plus nine RAT types on the Type selector: OG '79, White Face, Turbo (LED clipping, louder and brighter), Brat (soft), Dirty (raw, no diodes), LA (tight lows), Mo'D (fat), Caroline (fuzzy, huge lows) and Modern (clear and tight).

Horseman fuzz slot

Overdrive · after the Klon Centaur

Gain, Treble and Output. Like the Klon, a clean copy of your signal runs beside the overdriven one: turning up Gain shifts the blend towards the drive, but some clean always stays in, so it keeps its clarity and pick attack. With Gain low it's a transparent clean boost (Output has plenty of headroom), and it's lovely for pushing an amp channel like Banshee.

Lament fuzz slot

Blues Overdrive · after the BOSS BD-2 Blues Driver

Level, Tone and Gain. It feels like a small amp turned up: pick softly and it cleans up, dig in and it breaks up. Low Gain is a light crunch; turned all the way up it gets thick, with a fuzzy edge. The lows are trimmed before the clipping, so it stays tight. Tone tilts the sound: down is darker and smoother, up adds bite. Level at noon is about as loud as the pedal switched off.

Gravedigger fuzz slot

Sub Octave Fuzz · after the MXR Sub Machine

A fuzz with a second voice an octave below your note. Volume is the fuzz's level (noon is about as loud as the pedal switched off), Tone turns warmer to the right and brighter to the left, Fuzz sets how much, and Sub is how loud the low octave is (noon is about as loud as your guitar). Two switches:

• Series: off, the sub sits beside the fuzz, deep and clean-edged. On, the sub goes into the fuzz with your guitar for a gnarlier, synth-like growl, and Volume sets the whole thing.
• Octave: the fuzz jumps an octave up. It's clearest on the neck pickup above the 12th fret; low on the neck, some of the note still shows through.

The sub follows one note at a time, like the old analog octave pedals: chords turn to mud, and it fades out when the note does. Start with everything at noon, as MXR suggest.

Howler wah / filter slot

Envelope Filter · after the Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron

An auto-wah: how hard you pick opens the filter. Pick softly and it stays dark; dig in and it says "wow". Its light glows brighter the further the filter opens. It isn't on the board until you add it with the + (under "Wah / filter").

• Gain: how much your picking moves the filter. Turn it up if soft playing barely moves it, down if every note slams it open. It doesn't change the volume.
• Peak: the resonance. Low is a gentle tone sweep; high is a vocal, quacky peak.
• LP / BP / HP / Mix: low pass is round and fat, band pass is the classic quack, high pass is thin and snappy, and Mix blends band pass with your dry guitar so the lows stay.
• Lo / Hi: where the sweep sits. Hi suits guitar, Lo suits bass.
• Up / Down: Up opens the filter as you pick (the usual way); Down closes it, for a backwards "yow".
• Fast / Slow: how quickly it follows you. Slow gives a lazy, gradual sweep.
• Boost: 6 dB louder.

For funk: band pass, Hi, Up, Fast, Peak around 6, and play with the Gain until your accents open it and your ghost notes don't. It works best before the amp's drive.

Will o' Wisp phaser slot

Phaser · after the MXR Phase 90

One Speed knob. Script on is the smoother vintage version; off is the more resonant, watery one.

Ossuary phaser slot

Phaser · after the Alexander La Calavera

Rate, Intensity, Mix (noon is a classic phaser, fully up is vibrato) and Tweak, whose job changes with the mode:

• Suave: a smooth 10-stage phaser. Tweak sets the resonance.
• Dinámica: your picking drives the speed. With Rate below noon, playing harder speeds it up; above noon, harder slows it down. Tweak sets the sensitivity.
• Loco: a 6-stage phaser with heavy feedback and a ring modulator. Tweak pushes both.

Spectre phaser slot

Flanger · after the Boss BF-3

Manual (where the sweep sits), Depth, Rate and Res (resonance). Modes: Std; Ultra (deeper and more intense); Pan (the sound swings between the speakers); and Mom (momentary: on only while you hold the footswitch).

Phantasm phaser slot

Analog flanger · after the Walrus Audio Polychrome

Rate, Depth, Sweep, Feedback and Mix (classic flange at noon, vibrato fully up). Shape picks Sine, Tri or Rand, and Notch switches to a more complex, notched voice.

Eight amps are listed on the Tuning Glass, the lit strip along the bottom of the panel, running from the cleanest on the left to the heaviest on the right. Click a name, scroll over the glass, or turn the Amp dial beside it. Right-click the glass to change its colour; the colour saves with your rig. Power switches the amp and cab off, so you can use Ghost Type as pedals into a real amp. Bright adds sparkle. Each amp wears its own ghost, etched on the right of the grille cloth.

The knobs are Gain, Bass, Mid, Treble, Presence, Depth and Master. Depth is the low thump of the power amp pushing against the speaker: at noon each amp sounds as it was voiced, turn it up for a bigger thump on palm mutes, down for a tighter, leaner low end.

On Shade the panel changes to Volume, Bass, Middle, Treble, Speed, Depth and Master, and the jewel lamp becomes a button. Click it to cycle Off (white), Chorus (blue) and Vibrato (violet). Chorus is the JC's spatial chorus: the dry sound stays in the left speaker and the chorused copy plays in the right, so it swirls in the air between them.

On Barghest the knobs read Pre-amp, Bass, Middle, Treble, Presence, Depth and Master, like a JCM800's panel, and the jewel glows Marshall red. The little switch beside Bright picks the era. Down: 800, a JCM800: tight and bright, with plenty of preamp gain, from crunchy rhythm to hard-rock lead. Up: Plexi, a 1959 Super Lead: looser and warmer, with less preamp gain; it gets its crunch from the power amp, so turn Master up for that cranked Plexi roar. On both, Pre-amp sets how hard the preamp tubes are driven, Presence adds bite and air from the power amp, and with Pre-amp low the amp is extra sparkly, as on the real thing (its bright cap), getting smoother as you turn it up. Middle is where a Marshall lives: turn it up for that forward British honk, down for a scooped sound.

On Ghoul the head wears chrome diamond plate and the jewel glows a cold green. It has no Bright switch (the real channel doesn't either); in its place is the Rectifier switch. Down: Diode, silicon diodes: the power supply stays stiff, so the attack is tight and immediate, best for fast, chugging rhythm. Up: Tube, a tube rectifier: the supply sags under a hard note, so the attack squashes a little and then blooms back as it recovers; looser and more touch-sensitive, lovely for leads. The second switch is the Voice. Down: Modern, the classic Rectifier: the most gain, scooped and raw. Up: Vintage, less gain, fuller mids that cut through a mix, and a smoother top. Bass is strong on this amp, as on the real one: noon is already big, so for tight palm mutes start lower and add Depth for the thump instead. Mid fills in the scoop; Presence adds bite.

On Hob the head wears tan tweed and the jewel glows like a hearth. It has eight knobs: Volume, Bass, Middle, Treble, Presence, Depth, Reverb and Master. Presence isn't on the real amp: at noon it sounds as Hob always has; turn it up for more cut and sparkle, down to round off the top. The Fat switch adds gain and a push in the mids. Turn Master up for the power amp's breakup, and set the sound with your picking. Its Bass does less than the others, like the real amp's.

On Fetch the head wears black with a red jewel. It has eight knobs: Volume, Bass, Middle, Treble, Depth, Reverb, Intensity and Master, with a small Speed knob beside the dial. Depth isn't on a real Twin: at noon it sounds as Fetch is voiced, turn it up for a bigger low end. The dip in the mids is a Twin's own; turn Middle up to fill it in. Intensity and Speed are its tremolo, and the jewel pulses along with it; at Intensity 0 there is no tremolo. Bright is strongest with the Volume low, and fades as it comes up, like the real amp's.

MEMORY, the little window at the left end of the Tuning Glass: click it to light it, and each amp keeps its own knob settings, which come back when you return to that amp (guitar amps and bass amps alike). Dark, the knobs stay where they are when you change amp, as before. Whether it’s on, and each amp’s settings, save with your rig; older rigs load with it dark.

Reverb on Hob and Fetch is a spring tank built into the amp, separate from Purgatory: a long, splashy one in Fetch and a shorter, tighter one in Hob. Turn Purgatory off or down if you only want the amp's.

Click or right-click the Haunted Head badge on the amp and choose Bass. The amp and cab fade over to the bass rig. Each instrument keeps its own settings, so switching back restores your guitar amp and cab just as you left them.

Leviathan

Black · after the Darkglass B7K Ultra

Modern and aggressive. Drive sets the overdrive, and Blend mixes it with your clean bass, so the low end stays whole. Bass, Lo Mid, Hi Mid and Treble are a powerful EQ.

Marrow

White · after the Darkglass Vintage Ultra

Warm and tube-like. Era moves it from a gentle old amp's breakup to a thick, dark grind.

Behemoth

Black and silver · after the Ampeg SVT

The classic all-tube rock head. Gain drives the preamp. Bass, Midrange and Treble are the tone stack, and Mid Hz sets where the Midrange knob works: 220, 450 or 800 Hz. Power pushes the power tubes, so notes squeeze and bloom into a growl, without much change in volume. Master is the volume. The jewel is Ultra Lo: Cut tightens the deep lows, and On lifts them and scoops the mids. The switch is Ultra Hi, which lifts the very top. It sounds most at home on the Nave 8x10.

On Leviathan and Marrow: click the jewel for Grunt (Cut, Flat or Boost: how much low end goes into the drive). Like a Darkglass, these two split your bass in two: the deep lows stay clean and evenly compressed, and only the part above them is distorted, so the low end stays solid however hard you drive it. Grunt moves the split point, and flip Attack to add a click of top end to it.

DIST switch: Leviathan and Marrow have a switch beside the Drive knob. Flip it off and you hear only your clean bass through the EQ and compressor, with Drive and Blend dimmed, and flip it back for the distortion. Behemoth doesn't have one, because its Gain is the tube preamp itself: turn Gain down for clean.

The selector on the panel chooses between the three amps.

Bass cabs: click the coffin for Tomb 4x10 (punchy, with a tweeter), Barrow 1x15 (round and vintage) or Nave 8x10 (huge), or your own IR. Right-click the coffin for microphones. Bass keeps its own mic setup, separate from guitar, and starts with a Grave 112 (after the AKG D112). The bass mics come first in the list: Sexton 52 (Shure Beta 52A), Dirge 602 (Sennheiser e602) and Knell 47 (Neumann U47 FET). Any mic works on any cab, so try the Crow 20 and Ash 421 too. Choose None for the plain cab tone.

The cabinet. Click it to pick Lantern 1x12, Hollow 2x12, Crypt 4x12 or Off. Choose Load IR file... to use your own speaker impulse response.

Microphones

Right-click the coffin to put a studio mic on the cab. The default, None, is the classic cab tone with no mic at all, so pick it any time to go back to that sound. The mics:

Each mic is drawn as the real microphone it's based on, so you can tell which one is on the cab at a glance: the 57's short grille on a long black body, the 421's wide slotted head, the 609's flat silver face hanging by its cable, the 121's slim nickel bar, the 87's domed basket, the 414's square gold basket, the RE20's long champagne tube, the SM7B's big black foam, the D112's grey egg, the 52's black ball, the 602's flared face and the 47's tall warm-nickel body.

• Placing it: drag the mic across a speaker. At the centre (the dust cap) it's bright and aggressive; towards the cone's edge it's darker and warmer. Drag it onto another speaker to move it there; each speaker in a cab sounds slightly different.
• Distance: scroll the mouse wheel over the mic. Right up on the grille you get proximity bass; further back it thins out and picks up the comb filtering of the floor reflection. The mic draws smaller with a softer shadow the further back it is.
• Stereo (2x12 and 4x12): right-click and choose Stereo: add a second mic. Mic A is the left side, mic B the right. Right-click mic B to choose it separately (a 57 with a ribbon is the classic pair), or to remove it. Both mics are lined up in time, so the pair sounds centred and full.
• The right-click menu also has Position and Distance sliders and an On speaker choice. Mics only work on the built-in cabs, because a loaded IR already has its own mic in it.

Apparition chorus slot

Chorus · after the Boss DC-2 Dimension C

Four mode buttons, from subtle widening to deep shimmer.

Ophelia chorus slot

Chorus / vibrato · after the Walrus Audio Julianna

Rate, Depth, Lag (smooth and tight at low settings, warbling detune at high), and Mix (noon is classic chorus, fully up is pure vibrato). Shape picks Sine, Tri or Rand (a wandering random drift).

Changeling chorus slot

Chorus · after the Electro-Harmonix Small Clone

One Rate knob and a Depth switch: down for a shallow shimmer, up (where it starts) for the deep, seasick warble of early-'90s grunge. The mix is fixed at half dry, half wet. Next to Ophelia it sounds older and darker, like a vintage analogue chip: it breathes a little with your playing and roughens up when a fuzz pushes it.

Ouija

9-band graphic EQ

Nine faders from 63 Hz to 16 kHz (±12 dB each) plus a Lvl fader for the overall level.

Revenant

Analog delay · after the Boss DM-2

Repeat (20–300 ms), Echo (level) and Intensity (how many repeats; near the top it runs away into oscillation). Turning Repeat while it plays bends the pitch of the echoes.

Bakeneko delay slot

Tape delay · after the JHS Lucky Cat

Time (up to 1 s), Mix, Repeats and Darken (transparent repeats at the bottom, darker as you turn it, gritty lo-fi at the top). The bottom buttons choose the modulation (Off, Mod 1 for a little movement, Mod 2 for deep, seasick wobble) and the voice (Tape: compressed and slightly driven, with a touch of flutter; Dig: crisp and clean). Ratio is the tap-tempo subdivision (quarter, dotted eighth, eighth or eighth triplet); it works when Sync is on.

Eidolon delay slot

Digital delay · after the Boss DD-8

E.Level (echo level), F.Back (repeats) and D.Time (20 ms to 2 s), with a Mode selector:

• Standard: clean digital. Analog: dark, gritty bucket-brigade. Tape: wow, flutter and saturation. Warm: soft and round.
• Mod: chorused, wide stereo repeats. Shimmer: the first repeat is plain, then each one climbs another octave. Reverse: backwards echoes.
• Warp: repeats that bend and swoop in pitch. Glitch: repeats chopped into stutters, octave jumps and dropouts.

On Analog, Tape and Warp, F.Back near the top runs away into oscillation. Carry (carryover) lets the echoes keep ringing after you switch the pedal off. It follows the tap tempo when Sync is on.

Purgatory reverb slot

Reverb · after the EHX Oceans 11

Eleven reverb types on the Type selector. FX Level sets the amount. The other two knobs change jobs with the type, and their labels follow. Flip 2nd to reach each type's hidden second functions. Inf holds the reverb while you play over it.

Mode has two jobs. On Dyna it cycles Swell (green), Gate (red) and Duck (orange). On Shimmer and Poly it switches the second page to their intervals (violet).

Shimmer feeds the tail through a pitch shifter and back into the reverb, so the sound climbs octave by octave and blooms upward as the note fades. Give it a second or two to arrive. Decay runs from 2 to 20 seconds. Tone sets how bright the climb gets. Shimmer sets how fast it climbs, and there's always a little even at 0. Voice balance moves between the two intervals (an octave and a fifth to begin with). Inf holds what's there and stops the climb. It's built so the tail always ends, at any setting.

Brood reverb slot

Ambient reverb · after the Chase Bliss Bad Mood

Pick a mode with the three buttons. Time, Length and Modify change jobs with it:

Mix blends dry and wet. Clock is the engine's sample rate: turn it down and everything gets longer, darker and grittier at once. Glue saturates the wet sound.

With the Ghost Type plugin for the Stream Deck app, your keys work the rig and show what it's doing: pedal lamps, the loop's state and progress, the count-in, the beat and the note you're playing. It works with the app or the plugin in your DAW. If both are open, the first one opened has the keys. It all stays on your computer.

Setting up: install the plugin, then drag any Ghost Type action from the Stream Deck app's list onto a key. Or double-click a ready-made layout: Ghost Type for the 15-key Stream Deck, Ghost Type Mini for the Mini. The app adds it to whichever device is selected, so pick the right one first.

If Ghost Type isn't open, the keys show their own pictures, a little dimmer, and they connect again as soon as you open it.

Play with big knobs on your phone. The phone opens Ghost Type in its web browser over your home Wi-Fi. There's nothing to install, and nothing goes over the internet.

Setting up: click the preset name and choose Phone remote..., then tick On. Point the phone's camera at the QR code and tap the link, or type ghosttype.local into the phone's browser. The first time, it pairs itself with the 4-digit code shown beside the QR code; after that, the phone is remembered. If Windows asks about the firewall, tick Private networks only. On an iPhone, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen, to open it like an app.

Knobs: drag up or right to turn up, and double-tap for the default. The phone ticks under your thumb at each number. The half-moon button at the top switches between the rig look and a plain one, and the arrows and name at the top change presets.

Only phones on your home network can connect, each one pairs once, and five wrong codes lock that phone out for a minute. Forget all phones unpairs them all and makes a new code.

When a new version of Ghost Type is out, the black cat on the amp tells you, in its own way, in a quiet moment. It never interrupts your playing: start playing and the message steps aside, and it comes back in the next pause. Underneath are a few lines on what's new, and three buttons:

• Get it opens the download page in your web browser. Download the new installer and run it as before: your presets, your pet and your settings are kept.
• Remind me later asks again tomorrow.
• Skip this version never mentions that version again. A later one will still be announced.

Ghost Type looks for a new version at most once a day, while its window is open. It only downloads a tiny note saying what the newest version is, and sends nothing about you or your computer. Without internet it simply says nothing. New versions, and what changed in each, are also on ghosthausaudio.com.

Your version number is at the bottom of the preset list (click the preset name). Untick Check for updates daily there to turn the check off, or choose Check for updates now to ask straight away: the cat will tell you either way.