Steven Wilson’s Secret Weapon: How a $36 Lo-Fi Cassette Plugin Defined the Guitar Tone on The Overview

Steven Wilson Reveals His Go-To Plugin for Gritty, Character-Filled Guitar Tones

The debate between digital and analog in music production is ongoing, but progressive rock maestro Steven Wilson believes we no longer need to choose between the two. Instead, he argues that modern technology enables us to combine the best aspects of both worlds. His latest album, The Overview, is a testament to this philosophy, and one digital tool in particular played a significant role in shaping its sound.

Wilson revealed in an interview with Guitarist magazine that his go-to plugin for achieving warmth and character is SketchCassette by Aberrant DSP, a lo-fi cassette tape emulator now in its second version. Priced at just $36, this deceptively simple plugin was used extensively on both electric and acoustic guitars across the album. Wilson even applied it to some of the keyboard tracks.

“You can choose the brand of tape—Ferric, Chrome, or Metal—adjust wow and flutter, saturation, hiss, and how old the tape sounds,” said Wilson. “I love it because sometimes the problem with digital sounds is they just lack a little bit of character. A little bit of what you would think of as imperfection can make things have character.”

A Blend of Digital Precision and Analog Soul

SketchCassette offers users a range of options to degrade the sound intentionally. It includes twelve different tape types and four tape quality levels: Cheap, Value, Standard, and Master. Each imparts its own sonic fingerprint. There’s also a mix control that lets users blend the effect into the original signal subtly or aggressively.

“Very often, I just load up this cassette plugin and add a little bit of flutter or warble or saturation,” Wilson explained. “Or just make it sound like it’s coming off a tape that’s been recorded over three or four times, and suddenly it gives the sound character. It adds just a little more grain and that organic quality you associate with analog tape.”

This approach aligns with Wilson’s belief that producers should embrace the strengths of digital tools while using plugins like SketchCassette to inject the unpredictable, textured character of analog gear.

Crafting a Modern Conceptual Masterpiece

Wilson’s use of SketchCassette is apparent throughout The Overview, a sweeping conceptual album whose title references the psychological transformation astronauts experience after viewing Earth from space. Speaking with NME, Wilson described the album as “an old-fashioned piece of conceptual rock, in the tradition of The Dark Side Of The Moon and Tubular Bells.”

Guitarist Randy McStine plays a major role in bringing Wilson’s vision to life. “I told Randy: ‘This is going to be the not ‘Comfortably Numb’ solo,’” Wilson said. “I wanted something with the same feeling of drama, but which is a million light years away from it. What Randy did is one of the highlights of the record.”

By combining modern digital production tools with the nostalgic tones of analog-era imperfection, Wilson continues to push the boundaries of progressive rock. The Overview is out now via Fiction Records, and for those looking to recreate its signature sound, SketchCassette v2 is a small investment that delivers big, character-rich results.