Bear
Bear is a pitch-tracking resonant EQ for monophonic sources, voiced to shine on distorted lead guitar.
It listens to the note you're playing and places a narrow resonant peak around that note. Change notes and the resonance moves with you, giving lead lines a formant-like character without automating an EQ band through the solo by hand.
Think of the vowel-like color of a wah, except Bear takes its cue from the note rather than your foot. It moves when the line moves, then stays put.
One knob. That's the idea.
Controls
- Boost
Sets the strength of the resonance from 0 to 20 dB. Default: 10 dB.
This is not a volume control. More Boost means more resonance, not simply more guitar.
- Footswitch
Bypasses Bear. Bypass is crossfaded to keep switching click-free.
The status display shows the note Bear is currently tracking. The CLIP lamp lets you know if the resonance or output ceiling has had to step in.
How Bear behaves
Bear is made for single-note lead lines. It tracks from 80 to 1600 Hz, roughly E2 to G6, and works in mono or stereo.
The resonance follows pitch class rather than register. A low A and a high A therefore place the resonance in the same part of Bear's EQ range. The effect changes with the melody without sweeping up and down the neck.
Vibrato stays vibrato. Once Bear has found the center of a note, the resonance holds its ground while the string moves around it. Bends and slides are actual note movement, so Bear follows those.
If tracking gets uncertain, Bear hangs onto the last confirmed note instead of making the resonance disappear mid-phrase. When you stop playing, it closes.
Bear never filters or fades the dry guitar to create the effect. The resonance is added on top, which is why there is no wet/dry control.
There is no lookahead and no reported latency: Bear adds 0 samples of latency.
The output stage includes a -1 dBFS ceiling to keep the combined signal under control when a hot track meets a lot of Boost. If the CLIP lamp starts hanging around, back off the Boost or the level feeding Bear a little.
There are no presets. With one sound control, there isn't much worth filing away.
Features
- Real-time pitch-tracking resonant EQ.
- Designed and voiced for distorted monophonic lead guitar.
- Fixed-octave note mapping
- 80–1600 Hz tracking range — roughly covering the full range of a standard-tuned guitar.
- Narrow, formant-like resonance.
- Vibrato-aware note stability.
- Follows bends and slides.
- Holds the last confirmed note when tracking becomes uncertain.
- BOOST range of 0–20 dB.
- Dry signal remains intact.
- Mono and stereo operation.
- Zero-sample latency.
- VST3 for Windows, macOS and Linux.
- Audio Unit for macOS.
- Native Apple Silicon and Intel support on macOS.
Installing
- VST3 (Windows)
Copy Bear.vst3 to:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\
- VST3 (Linux)
Copy Bear.vst3 to:
~/.vst3/
- macOS
Run:
Bear-<version>.pkg
The installer includes both VST3 and Audio Unit. Use Customize during installation if you only want one of them.
Your host may need a plugin rescan or restart before Bear appears. Bear is listed in the Guitar category; Cubase shows it under Guitar.
By installing or using Bear you agree to the License terms.
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