Two years. Eight processors. One very specific aesthetic. The Mongrel Rack is Tchad Blake and Audiopunks’ most ambitious collaboration yet — and if their previous joint releases are anything to go by, the wait was probably worth it.
Blake’s fingerprints are all over the plugin catalogue at Audiopunks. He co-designed the SansAmp Rack with Tech 21, built the Buenos multi-FX around early-digital textures, and unleashed Tape Eater — a physically modelled cassette deck that deliberately falls apart. The man has a consistent obsession: not with audio fidelity as an end goal, but with what interesting things happen when signals get bent, coloured, and pushed.
Eight Processors, Two Philosophies
The Mongrel Rack bundles two emulations of actual hardware from Blake’s own studio with six original designs — a structure that tells you something about how this was built. This is not a catalogue of vintage gear recreations with Blake’s name on the box. It’s more like a touring mixer’s signal chain: the old warhorses that keep appearing on sessions, combined with tools that didn’t exist yet but should have.
The emulations cover Tchad’s vintage Analog Delay 680 (warm BBD repeats) and his Roland VB-2 Vibrato — a much-loved but discontinued pedal that produces deep, warped pitch modulation that sits somewhere between a Leslie cabinet and analogue drift. If you’ve heard Blake’s work on Binaural (Pearl Jam), Brothers (The Black Keys) or The Globe Sessions (Sheryl Crow), you’ve already heard what these tools do in context.
The six original processors are where the name starts making sense:
- Mongrel Mask — a character EQ that shapes tone while imparting harmonic colour, in the tradition of filters that do something rather than just cut and boost
- Tremola — rhythmic tremolo with a syncopated quality, not the smooth sine-wave variety; more like the irregular pulse of a vintage amp on its last legs
- The Shaft — described as “crushed, hard-hitting limiting.” The name does not suggest subtlety, and that’s the point
- Mongrelizer — a source enhancement processor; the vaguest name in the bundle, which in plugin design usually means saturation, harmonic enrichment, and low-level dynamic shaping working in combination
- Tesla — a revived and expanded stereoizer, described as a “revival,” suggesting it draws on a specific historical circuit approach to stereo widening
- Gator — rhythmic shaping and gating; the creative kind, for movement and stuttering, not just noise reduction
Watch It In Action
The Presets Tell You Who This Is For
Audiopunks recruited four preset designers: Eric J, Greg Wells, Migui Molales, and Jacob Shea. Greg Wells has production credits across Katy Perry, OneRepublic, and Adele. Jacob Shea is a composer whose work spans film and television. These aren’t promotional figures — they’re working professionals with specific aesthetic voices. Preset banks built by engineers of this calibre tend to read as starting-point philosophies rather than demonstrations.
Context: Audiopunks and Blake’s Ongoing Partnership
This is the third or fourth significant joint release between Blake and Audiopunks, following the SansAmp Rack (developed with Tech 21 and Blake), the Buenos multi-FX, and Tape Eater — the cassette-mangling plugin from late 2025. Each release has pushed further into sonic character and further away from transparent utility. The Mongrel Rack is the clearest expression yet of what this collaboration is actually about: building the kind of tools you’d find on an analogue console’s patchbay at 2am — things that make decisions for you, not just carry out instructions. I don’t know about you, but I’m very excited about this one.
Lo-Fi With a Purpose
This isn’t lo-fi for nostalgia’s sake. The degradation tools in the Mongrel Rack — the BBD delay drift, the VB-2 vibrato warble, the cassette-adjacent saturation of the Mongrelizer — exist because Blake uses them to make mixes breathe. It’s the same instinct behind plugins like the Chase Bliss Generation Loss MkII pedal: intentional imperfection as an expressive tool, not a workaround for limited gear.
Pricing and Availability
The Mongrel Rack is available now from Audiopunks at an introductory price of $99 (regular price $149) until May 30, 2026.
- Product page: audiopunks.com/plugins/mongrel-rack
- Formats: AU, VST3, AAX
- A free 14-day trial is available via the Audiopunks downloads page
- Existing Audiopunks customers with more than one plugin can apply loyalty coupon loy1Oxahz at checkout
