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Lowdown Black Friday pricing puts Cherry Audio's floor-pedal bass synth at $14, 51% off, with the deal running until Dec 1, 2026.
This Lowdown plugin is a bass synthesizer built to reproduce the huge, room-rattling tone of a dual-oscillator bass pedal synth from the 70s and 80s. Until now, that instrument only lived on the floor. This is its first desktop version.
The original was the first dedicated foot-controlled bass synthesizer, apart from a handful of organ-oriented instruments. Cherry Audio calls its tone unquestionably the best sounding of the lot.
It turned up on records by Rush, Yes, Genesis, U2 and The Police. The maker points to the intro of "Don't Stand So Close To Me" and Phil Collins' "I Don't Care Anymore" as examples.
Cherry Audio's Lowdown recreates the original's dual "constant-beat" oscillators and its ladder filter. DSP developer Mark Barton (MRB) modelled the circuits after analysing the hardware, and the maker says the result is accurate to an exceptional degree.
The original design scaled its oscillators in Hz per octave, not the more common volts per octave. That keeps the amount of detune between the two oscillators constant from the bottom of the keyboard to the top.
A constant detune means less phase cancellation when both oscillators play at once. Cherry Audio credits this, along with a couple of other engineering tricks, for the beefy low end.
The maker describes it as fun and easy to use. For a bass-only voice, that suits a quick session: load it, play low notes and dial in the filter.
The Lowdown VST comes in several plugin formats, depending on your platform:
A demo is available. It plays white noise periodically but is otherwise unlimited.
Yes. The Lowdown Black Friday deal takes 51% off Cherry Audio's bass synth plugin, bringing it to $14. The offer ends Dec 1, 2026.
Lowdown is a bass synthesizer plugin that recreates a classic dual-oscillator bass pedal synth from the 70s and 80s. It brings that floor instrument to the desktop for the first time, with dual constant-beat oscillators and a ladder filter.
On Mac it comes as AU, VST, VST3, AAX and Standalone. On Windows it comes as VST, VST3, AAX and Standalone. Both platforms require a 64-bit system, and Mac includes native Apple M1 support.
Yes, there is a demo of Lowdown. It plays white noise periodically but is otherwise unlimited, so you can work with the bass synth in your signal chain before committing.
Prices and end dates are checked at publishing time and can change, so confirm them at the store before you buy.