ASTAROTH

Overview

ASTAROTH is a monolithic single-knob doom machine that melts two legendary circuits into one apocalyptic voice. At the center sits an always-on emulation of an early-70s first-gen Sunn O))) Model T JFET preamp — a three-stage cascaded topology delivering roughly +31 dB of cumulative pre-gain, characteristic bass shelf and upper-mid honk, and the tube-like compression of 36V of simulated internal headroom. Rotate the GRIMM knob clockwise and an equal-power crossfade progressively blends in a boosted, modified ProCo RAT — Ruetz-mod open bass, +18 dB drive, LM308 soft-knee into silicon hard-clip, doom-clamped at 3.3 kHz — carrying the signal from guttural Model T crunch into shrieking fuzz. Built-in IN/OUT trims let it work as a pedal slammed into an amp sim or as a standalone preamp into a cab IR, and four-way HQ oversampling keeps the cascaded nonlinearities alias-free.

5 parameters. One knob that matters. Infinite depths.

Features

• The GRIMM Knob — A single equal-power blend that crossfades a boosted RAT into the always-on Model T. At 0% the RAT leaves the circuit entirely for pure Sunn-platform crunch; at 100% it’s full RAT-into-Model-T double-distortion.
• 3-Stage JFET Cascade — A Q1/Q2/Q3 mirror of the real tube topology with per-stage gains and progressively tightening headroom, summing to ~+31 dB of authentic Sunn pre-gain and dense, creamy harmonic breakup.
• Modified ProCo RAT Stage — Ruetz-mod input high-pass, fixed +18 dB boost, LM308-style soft-knee feeding silicon hard-clip, a DC blocker, doom-clamped 3.3 kHz low-pass and +6 dB makeup — the shriek that rides in on GRIMM.
• Preamp-Grade IN/OUT — Symmetric ±20 dB input and output trims with smoothed gain, so ASTAROTH doubles as a front-of-amp pedal or a full preamp into FX returns and cab sims.
• HQ Oversampling — Four selectable modes (Off / 2x / 4x / 8x) with latency-compensated switching, taming the aliasing of two serial saturators; 4x by default, 8x for studio bounces.
• Click-Free Bypass — A dedicated bypass wired to the host’s native bypass button, with a 10 ms crossfade and a true zero-DSP fast path when stably bypassed.

What People Say

“I dropped ASTAROTH on a detuned bass riff, left GRIMM at zero, and the room shook — it’s the closest thing to standing in front of a Model T stack that’s ever lived inside my DAW.”

— Knut Halvorsen, doom & sludge producer