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The Bowed Bucket Black Friday deal takes 50% off a Soundiron Kontakt library, bringing it to $14.50 until Dec 6, 2026.
The source is a homemade instrument: a 5 gallon plastic bucket with a wooden 4×4 beam for a neck, fitted with bass tuners and cello strings. The strings pass through drilled holes in the bucket, with the bottom wall acting as the bridge, so the sound projects outward and down.
Soundiron bowed it, plucked it and hit it with drumsticks in a close, dry setting. They also bowed it from inside and outside the bucket. The maker describes the tone as a little like an electric cello, with a rawness and body of its own.
The library ships as one master NKI instrument bank in open Kontakt format. The maker lists these specs:
The percussion comes from plain bucket drumming, so expect plastic bucket drums. The raw material was also reworked into playable atmospheric pads and ambiences, plus lead, pad, drone and FX presets.
The interface offers automation-ready controls for swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, coarse and fine pitch, articulation switching, cross-fading and layering. There is also a glide control.
The LFO system lets you pick the shape, modulation target, speed, intensity, tempo sync and fade-in time. You can choose from 12 lowpass, high-pass and FX filters. You can drive modulation from how hard you play, the mod wheel, the expression pedal, channel pressure, where on the keyboard a note sits, or a table in the step sequencer.
The arpeggiator has a velocity table and controls for direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. A key and scale lock keeps your notes inside common scales and keys.
The modular FX rack has 18 DSP modules, which you can load into any of 10 slots in any order. The list includes phaser, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ and rotator.
The convolution reverb brings 99 rooms, halls, chambers and outdoor spaces, plus 40 custom FX impulses for heavier sound mangling. Factory FX rack chain presets are included as starting points.
This is an open-format Kontakt library that needs the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or later. The free Kontakt Player only runs it in a limited demo mode, and the Libraries tab does not support it. Load it through the File browser tab or the Quickload window.
The system requirements are Windows 7 or higher, or Mac OSX 10.9 or higher, with a dual core CPU and 2 GB of RAM. The maker recommends a SATA or SSD drive.
Yes. The Bowed Bucket Black Friday deal takes 50% off this Soundiron Kontakt library, so it costs $14.50 until Dec 6, 2026.
A homemade instrument: a 5 gallon plastic bucket with a wooden 4×4 beam, bass tuners and cello strings. Soundiron bowed, plucked and struck it, and the maker says the tone resembles an electric cello with extra rawness and body.
No, not fully. It needs the full retail Kontakt 5.5 or later. The free Player runs this open-format library only in a limited demo mode, though the wav samples are unlocked for use in other wav-compatible software.
One master NKI bank with 579 stereo samples (662 MB, 24 bit / 48 kHz wav). It has sustain, staccato and percussion articulations, 22 FX and ambient presets, an LFO, 12 filters, an arpeggiator and an 18-module FX rack.
Prices and end dates are checked at publishing time and can change, so confirm them at the store before you buy.