Clon Minotaur: Free transparent overdrive plugin by Nembrini Audio

Nembrini Audio has announced the release of a free overdrive effect plugin. The Clon Minotaur is modeled after the Klon Centaur guitar overdrive pedal from the ’90s by Bill Finnegan.

Characterized as a “transparent” overdrive, the plugin adds gain to the signal without significantly altering the tone of the guitar.

Depending on the settings of the control knobs, the Clon Minotaur Transparent Overdrive can act mostly as a clean boost, adding mostly volume and minimal coloring to the sound. This can be used to drive the input valve stage of the virtual amplifier to use the characteristic distortion sound of an overdriven guitar amp.

Clon Minotaur Transparent Overdrive controls can be set to distort the sound signal in the plugin, where two modeled germanium diodes can perform waveform clipping. The gain parameter controls the balance between the modeled diode clipping stage and the clean stage. The two signals are summed together before they interact with the other two controls, treble and volume.

Available in VST/VST3, AU and AAX plugin formats for Windows and Mac, the Clon Minotaur is a free download. Requires iLok license manager and account.