cloph-dsp has released Grungr, a free/pay-what-you-want drive pedal emulation for guitar, bass, and anything else that needs more bite.

You might remember Pedro Castro from Freeze95, the fun little stochastic stutter and freeze effect we featured on BPB earlier this year. I loved that one, so Grungr is another interesting free effect from the same developer.

I have said it many times, but I love using simple guitar pedal-style effects. Maybe it is because I was a guitarist many years ago, or at least tried to be one in a few bands, and guitar pedals grew on me.

I continued using them, or at least their digital recreations, in my sound design workflow because they are so easy to stack. You can put a few pedal-style effects on synths, basses, drums, or whichever other source to add texture and turn it into something more interesting.

And unsurprisingly, Grungr fits that workflow well. It is streamlined and built like a simple drive pedal rather than some giant distortion workstation.

The plugin has three voicing modes. RAW is the open, direct crunch mode and the closest route to the core drive sound. MOD is more focused and forward, with tighter mids for parts that need to sit up front. BASS adds more body for bass and heavier sources while trying to avoid low-end flub.

The four main controls are Grunge, Body, Bite, and Level. There are no menus and no setup, so the workflow is pretty much what you would expect from a pedal. Pick a voicing, turn the knobs, and listen.

Under the hood, Grungr uses hard clipping with subsonic filtering and limiting. It also supports stereo processing, true bypass, and zero-latency operation, which should make it usable for tracking and live monitoring.

Pedro says Grungr was inspired by a classic grunge pedal he owned and used a lot, especially on bass. Of course, it’s not hard to guess that it is based on the DigiTech Grunge, but he also notes that it is an independent plugin and is not affiliated with or endorsed by DOD or DigiTech.

Grungr is available as a VST3, CLAP, and AUv2 plugin for Windows 10/11 and macOS. The macOS Universal build supports Intel and Apple Silicon, but it is still marked as beta. There is no installer and no DRM.

Download: cloph-dsp Grungr (FREE / Pay What You Want)

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Last Updated on July 21, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.