R&D: An Interview with Shane McFee, The Mad Scientist behind Kazrog Plugins

“I try to focus on doing one thing well, it also helps to like what you’re working on.”

Shane McFee of Kazrog plugins at his “other” job.

These are true words, and ones to live by, spoken by self-proclaimed guitar geek and Kazrog Plugins CEO, Shane McFee.

McFee founded Kazrog Plugins in 2008 with the release of “Recabinet”, a comprehensive speaker cabinet impulse response library.

“All I wanted were some good sounding speaker cabinet emulations for my own productions,” he says, “and I figured that even if the product failed commercially, it would prove very useful for me personally in the studio. Thankfully, the product succeeded beyond my expectations, and served as a springboard to launch my own pro audio software company.”

Fast-forward to 2017 and Kazrog has released a line of amp modelers, a pristine limiter, a baxandall EQ, and a subtle but effective dither.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Shane about his company, guitars and amps, and the future of the audio tech industry. Kazrog’s slogan is “Obsessively Engineered Audio Plugins” and after talking with Shane, it’s clear that the man is sharp as a tack and completely devoted to releasing unique, quality plugins you won’t find anywhere else—and that don’t sound quite like anything else either.

Tell me about the software/process used to make the plugins and how you get the ideas.

I build what I’m inspired to make. I create things that I want to exist, so that they can exist.

Like most other plugin developers, I’m using C++ to create cross-platform code. The JUCE framework helps tie everything together in terms of the GUI and compatibility with the various major plugin formats.

Why did you wait so long to branch out of the amp simulator world and dive into dynamic/eq processors?

[Laughs] Loaded question! This assumes I was waiting in the first place!

Emulating 40 guitar amps took a few years of [research and development], both to get the process to where it fooled me in blind tests, and to gain access to that many amps, thanks to some very generous people who let me borrow or sample their gear. Only a handful of the amps were from my (small) personal collection.

Making other kinds of plugins was really just a natural byproduct of the rest of it. Each plugin I’ve made is unique in important ways, or it won’t get built. There are certain things I will never make, because I feel that existing solutions from other companies are already more than good enough. I never want to be redundant.

What are some of your favorite amps, guitars and pedals?

Amps? Really, the Peavey 5150/6505 series has always been a mainstay for me. For high-gain guitar, it’s still a desert island [amp]—although after modeling a couple of Diezel VH4s recently, the island is now a bit less deserted.

The whole process of creating Thermionik, though, really broadened my horizons in terms of my appreciation for a wide range of amp sounds. You have to go with where an amp leads you. I found myself particularly inspired by the Vox AC30 non top-boost model—which I didn’t expect at all.

A view of the Thermionik amp sim by Kazrog. Minimal GUI, maximum tone.

Honestly, every amp I’ve modeled in the Thermionik collection has been great in some way, or it didn’t make it into the collection. There have been a few I tried that sounded so terrible that I saw no reason to emulate them, actually.

[For] guitars, my two main guitars are RAN Crusher 7 strings. One is loaded with EMG 707s, and the other is loaded with Fishman Fluence, which I’m really enjoying as well.

For more classic rock stuff, I have a late 80s Fernandes Burny [a Japanese-made Les Paul copy] loaded with vintage 1966 Gibson humbuckers, which are electronically identical to PAFs—just a couple of years after they got the patent.

That guitar is so much fun it’s hard to put down. I have quite a lot of guitars, but these are the main ones I’m using for day to day stuff.

For pedals, I’ve honestly never been too much of a pedal guy. I’ve really always had a pretty sparse selection. The pedals I’ve emulated are some of my favorites. I also recently brought out some of my old pedals from when I first started playing guitar: Old [made in Japan] Boss stuff that’s incredibly good-sounding. [I’ve] also got a script MXR Phase 90 that’s been blowing me away lately.

Kazrog’s K-Clip saturator.

What are some plugins we can expect to see from Kazrog in the future?

More plugins on the mixing and mastering side.

Definitely some more pedal emulations as well, and a few more amp emulations.

I’m also working on something really innovative right now with a very cool partner that I can’t discuss yet.

Where do you see the audio tech industry going?

I think we’re going to see further stagnation and customer-averse behavior from the older, larger companies—what I call the “Donglesphere.” This will drive more consumers over time to new insurgent companies who respect them and support them.

I also think that analog emulation will matter less and less the better it becomes across the board. A lot of people now are more interested in creating new sounds, and have no real interest in sounds that were popular before they were even born.

What are the challenges that come with launching a plugin company today?

Shane McFee

When I launched in 2008, the number of companies in this industry was much smaller than it is today.

I think the sheer number of choices that people have is staggering, and when there’s, for example, a dozen different emulations of an SSL bus compressor to choose from, how does an independent musician making music at home for YouTube even know what to choose?

This is especially true when real hardware units are so prohibitively costly that there’s no easy way to conduct a proper blind test. The challenge, then, is to do something truly unique.

Also—at the risk of angering some very talented people who I respect immensely—I’d say that the tools for even creating audio plugins out there aren’t particularly mature, at least when compared to development tools for other, larger subsections of the software industry as a whole. You have to really want to do this. It’s brutally difficult work, and there’s not anyone getting rich from it

Conversely, what are the opportunities that you see in today’s environment?

The fact that virtually everyone has a PC capable of many tracks of very high-quality, real-time audio processing power is exciting. There are more people making music at home than ever before, and it keeps growing. Record labels are obsolete, and people can get their music out there instantly to the entire world.

What’s an example of a Kazrog plugin that proved surprisingly complex to put together and why?

Aside from Thermionik, everything else was much smoother sailing.

Emulating the characteristics of tube amps was extremely difficult. Yes, there are lots of companies doing it, but most of them don’t even get remotely close, let alone indistinguishable from the hardware.

The latter was my goal, I achieved it, and the response has been (mostly) apathetic—again, because I think the world has changed, and most people have never used the real amps, so they don’t care about authenticity as much as people did 10-15 years ago. Oops!

In all seriousness, the things I learned from that challenging project have made everything else possible, and I’m very grateful to the small, passionate user base who cared enough to help me bring it to life.

Your GUI’s are relatively simple. The amp modelers have the exact same knobs as a regular guitar amp would. What is your own personal philosophy on GUI design? What should a GUI do and not do?

GUIs in general, or my GUIs? Basically, at a certain point, I realized “I have 40 guitar amps to emulate, and I don’t want to have to make a different UI design for each one.”

My roots are in graphic design, starting on the Commodore Amiga, which was a phenomenal platform. That said, good graphic design takes time, and user interaction design is not graphic design, as so many people wrongly confuse.

My philosophy is to make the GUI as simple to use as possible but to also focus on subtle things like the taper of each individual control so that it’s easy to dial to an exact position without having to use the text box, unless you want to. I’m in the process of working on some new, more lively skins for my GUIs, but the workflow will remain the same.

As for what a plugin GUI shouldn’t do, here’s a quick list off the top of my head:

1. Force you to set up a login/password on the first launch.

2. Open an embedded web browser – for any reason.

3. Challenge/response.

4. Ask you where your dongle is. Dongles are evil.

5. Exactly replicate the look of a piece of analog gear when the gear in question is mostly
taken up by empty space.

6. Take longer than a few milliseconds to open the window.

7. Use totally unreadable fonts and/or fonts rendered as bitmaps rather than vectors.

8. Provide controls with no labels or explanations.

I don’t expect everyone to embrace my minimalist philosophy, but I think any of those things on that list should pretty much expel a plugin from regular use in heavy sessions.

Once it’s released to the public, how do you evaluate a plugin’s success?

It’s really simple—if it sells, it succeeds. If not, as is the case with some Thermionik models, I don’t really lose sleep over it. I’ve still built something I believe in, that I will use, and that’s success enough to have justified the development of it, so long as some of what I build succeeds commercially.

What are some non-Kazrog plugins that you finds inspiring, and why?

Anything by Voxengo or u-he. I always recommend their stuff to my users.

Both great companies! I recently found out about Voxengo and have been using u-he synths for years.

If your plugins could be used on the production of music by any artist, living or dead, who would that be and why?

Some of my favorite artists are already using my plugins, actually. I’m proud to be able to say, Steve Stevens, Vernon Reid, and Per Nilsson are among my user base. They’ve all been incredibly supportive and gracious.

I don’t have any desire to sort of pimp my plugins to artists and producers. In every case, they’ve come to me, by actually buying the products. That is much more meaningful than some cheesy artist relations deal that expires in a few years. I’ve made a personal connection with an artist who I respect that honestly believes in what I’ve made.

As for artists of the past, there are some classic albums that I wish I had the multi-tracks to, so that I could remix them with my plugins—among other plugins, of course. Thin Lizzy, in particular, comes to mind, as their studio productions never really did the band justice, at least in my opinion. The same goes for Cream. WTF was up with the drums, in particular? and quite a lot of classic rock stuff that wasn’t Floyd or Zeppelin.

Where did the name Kazrog come from?

It’s really a pretty absurd story, maybe someday I’ll reveal it. Only a handful of people know the origin of the name itself. Suffice it to say, Kazrog has been my internet handle since the mid 1990s, so it was a natural progression to name my company after that, as everyone who knew me on various production forums—most notably Andy Sneap’s forum—knew exactly who was making the plugins. It seemed dumb to do it any other way.

To check out more from Kazrog, visit kazrog.com.

Vinny Alfano is a composer/engineer/sound designer who works at Plush and Red Iron in NYC. Visit vinnyalfano.com for credits, work, and contact.

Please note: When you buy products through links on this page, we may earn an affiliate commission.