PolyChrome DSP McRocklin Suite

The GUI design may be more modern than most, but it’s still intuitive and based around familiar guitar components.

Thomas McRocklin’s first foray into the world of guitar rig emulations treads a slightly different path from the competition.

Thomas McRocklin might not be a familiar name for those outside the niche genre of instrumental guitar music. However, having done an opening slot in his hometown of Newcastle for Ozzy Osbourne at the tender age of eight, and then being taken under the wing of guitar virtuoso Steve Vai, his musical career started early in life. More recently, Thomas has created a YouTube presence and an online musical education programme, established relationships with guitar brands such as Kiesel and Fishman, and released original music as part of McRocklin & Hutch. His latest venture is a software‑based guitar rig modelling system that’s developed under his own PolyChrome DSP brand.

As a virtual guitar rig, McRocklin Suite’s role is a familiar one, but there are a number of unique aspects to the design. First, with a couple of notable exceptions, the range of virtual gear included here means it makes a good case for being your ‘all‑in‑one’ amp modeller — it caters for a very wide spectrum of potential tones, from acoustic all the way through to high‑gain. Second, the UI is not obsessively skeuomorphic and the plug‑in doesn’t attempt obvious virtual recreations of specific amps, cabs or pedals. It does, however, remain very intuitive in use, even for more traditionally minded guitar players. Third, it offers ultra‑low latency. Indeed, the documentation claims a latency of 0.045ms and, in my own testing, Cubase Pro 12’s latency monitoring showed a latency of just 2 samples. That’s impressive, making real‑time tracking through this plug‑in a very smooth experience, and suggesting some pretty efficient coding under the hood.

The Heatpressor and Synth Oct options are both excellent, and the presets are bountiful and organised helpfully.

Go With The Flow

While the GUI doesn’t try to capture the appearance of an amp, cab or pedalboard, the layout of the modern design is instantly familiar. A control strip at the top caters for the input and output levels, access to the extensive preset list, a very usable tuner, a noise gate and the somewhat addictive Wide option. As with any virtual guitar rig software, you need to pay attention to the quality and level of your DI signal, although noise is only really noticeable with higher gain settings and the noise gate itself is very effective.

The rest of the upper half of the GUI provides buttons to toggle between the four different amp models, controls associated with each of those amps, and five buttons that toggle the bottom half of the GUI between pages for the various pedal/effects options. The signal flow follows the layout of these buttons, with the amp models themselves situated before the speaker chain section. The labels for the four amps, Acoustic, Clean, Edge and Gain, give an accurate sense of their respective flavours but no real indication as to whether each is based on a specific real‑world amp.

In terms of the effects, the first page provides a very interesting compressor (the Heatpressor, with both tone and saturation options included) and a synth‑based octaver that can be blended in with your main guitar signal. The latter might not be as flexible as the synth found in the Neural DSP Archetype: Rabea plug‑in I reviewed last month, but it does sound great and is very easy to use. The next page offers four different styles of drive pedal, Attacker, Shredder, Riffer and Viber, that span light boost‑style overdrive to full‑on distortion. These can, of course, be stacked, just as you might on a real pedalboard.

The Speaker Chains page provides the user with a streamlined approach for selecting the style of cabinet and microphone modelling.

The Speaker Chains page offers an interesting approach. For the three electric guitar amps, you essentially get a choice of seven pre‑configured ‘mix ready’ options, rather than detailed controls to select between different speaker/cab types, virtual mics and placements, or load third‑party IRs. This obviously deliberate design choice provides a very streamline user experience, and might be one means by which the low latency is achieved, but it’s not at the cost of the actual sound — there are plenty of tonal options here. You also get Resonance, Air and both Lo Cut and Hi Cut controls to further shape the sound and, via the next EQs page, a choice between a four‑band parametric or eight‑band graphic EQ.

Finally, there’s a Post‑FX page, with reverb, delay, a simple chorus and a final compression stage. These all work well but the reverb and delay are particularly impressive, spanning both conventional treatments and a whole smorgasbord of more creative effects. If ambient guitarscapes are your thing, there are plenty of options to indulge that.

Without it ever feeling like parameter paralysis might set in, McRocklin Suite covers a huge amount of sonic ground.

The Sound Of (Mc)Rock

There are perhaps a few effects that are absent and would be nice to have here. For example, there’s currently no fuzz effect or wah‑wah, and the chorus is the only modulation option on offer. But the list of virtual equipment that is available here has been very well chosen. Without it ever feeling like parameter paralysis might set in, it covers a huge amount of sonic ground, and proof of this comes from the extensive collection of supplied presets. These are neatly organised into themed categories such as Acoustic, Clean, Low Gain, Dry and Riff/Shred, and there’s a cool selection of ‘sounds like’ presets whose titles provide obvious hints as to the guitar tone target.

The various presets based around the acoustic amp are impressive. Yes, used with a DI’ed electric, these are more akin to hearing a ‘produced’ acoustic sound, but they can be big, bold, and more than ready to find their way in a busy mix. The cleaner and low‑gain electric options are also very good, and you can easily find something that delivers a more traditional vibe — even if you’re not looking at a (virtual) Fender, Vox or Marshall‑style graphic!

Thomas’ own guitar style definitely pays homage to his original inspirations such as Steve Vai, but it also brings things very much up to the modern day (think Tosin Abasi, Tim Henson, Mateus Asato and similar), and many of the presets reflect these references. So, for example, there are lots of very clean lead tones with prominent attack, and options for rich ambient textures, and there are also plenty of examples of saturated lead tones that are ideal for speedy legato‑style shredding. If these kinds of guitar tones are what you’re chasing, the McRocklin Suite will be right on the money.

In use, while the amp models provide plenty of gain options on their own, the various drive pedals mean you can create almost any level of gain that you might desire. The plug‑in does seem to respond well to playing dynamics, so you can control the overdrive with a combination of guitar volume and picking style. Of the other pedals, I found the Heatpressor particularly impressive, especially with cleaner sounds, while the reverb and delay are both excellent. Also worth mentioning is that, whether used as a plug‑in or standalone (where you get options for configuring audio and MIDI, as well as tempo), the low‑latency operation worked just as advertised: I really didn’t notice it.

Whether you want conventional or experimental effects, the McRocklin Suite’s ambience options provide plenty of flexibility.

Suite Choice?

If you’re prepared to look beyond the established names, McRocklin Suite is most certainly worth exploring. Some users might initially find the lack of ‘identifiable’ amps, cabs or pedals a bit unsettling, while others might wish for a little more control over the speaker simulation. But these are design choices that have been made carefully and deliberately — in practice they do not limit the tonal possibilities at all. The overall result is a compact virtual rig that’s easy on the eye, has an intuitive GUI, and offers both immensely flexible tone creation/sound design possibilities and low latency for real‑time tracking. Sonically, it’s fair to say that it’s something of a Swiss Army knife, and it will most certainly appeal to more modern, technical guitar players, with its very impressive clean and high‑gain tones. It’s also competitively priced. Oh, and did I mention that it sounds very good indeed?

Sensibly for a new brand, PolyChrome DSP are happy to let you try before you buy; there is a free demo version available for download from their website. That’s well worth doing. For those happy to embrace both the classic and the cutting‑edge, the McRocklin Suite really is a bit of a gem.