Neural DSP has closed out 2025 with an almighty mic drop, announcing a signature Archetype X guitar plugin suite for John Mayer that captures all of his high-end guitar amps, and the über-rare pedalboard candy that makes his tone a grail for countless players.
This is one for the Silver Sky ownership club. That goes without saying. But there’s a lot of treasure in a bundle that marks Neural DSP’s most high-profile artist collab so far.
Even if there is an actual Gravity Tank device that combines Mayer’s spring reverb and harmonic tremolo in one unit, this plugin is not just for those who spend their Saturday afternoons trying to nail Mayer’s Gravity solo.
Digitally adventurous blues guitar players could get a lot of use out of Neural DSP’s forensic captures of Mayer’s 1964 Fender Vibroverb, a one-of-one Two-Rock prototype Signature tube amps (serial #83), or [drum roll] his Dumble Steel String Singer (serieal #002).
Let’s face it, who but the major league pro has the kind of bread to have that in their backline? And who has the space in back of their car?
Those amps would do a trick for rock, pop, jazz, for anyone looking for those touch-sensitive dynamics. As Neural DSP co-founder and CEO Douglas Castro says, Mayer’s rig “breathes”.
It’s alive. Castro and his team wanted to capture all those nuances in this Archetype X package.
“John’s sound has inspired guitarists around the world, and it was a privilege to work with him directly to recreate the rig that anchors his tone,” said Castro. “There’s an intimacy to the way his rig responds – it breathes, it opens up, it carries emotion – and capturing that behaviour was one of the most meaningful projects we’ve taken on.
“John’s tone comes from a chain of choices made over years of playing and recording. We preserved those choices so players can begin where he begins – with a sound that feels settled, expressive, and familiar – and then make it their own.”
What’s particularly cool about the three guitar amps bundled with this software is the capability to blend them and their associated cabinets (the cabsims are on point here) just as Mayer does IRL
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“All three amplifiers run at once, routed in parallel; each perfectly matched to John’s exact settings,” says Neural DSP. “Cabinets, microphones, and routing follow the same structure as his studio setup, preserving the interaction that makes the system feel complete.”
Then you have all of his guitar effects, such as the Justa Boost, a capture of his Keeley Electronics boost pedal that’s typically used as an always-on tone sweetener, adding some beef to the snap of his single-coils, though you could of course dime this an use it to push the front end of the amps.
Mayer’s Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron+, as heard on tracks such as I Don’t Trust Myself (Loving You), is digitalised here as the Antelope Filter. There are no prizes for guessing what the Halfman OD overdrive pedal is emulating (but here’s a clue: gold box, oxblood-coloured knobs, the top half of a man, the bottom half of a horse).
The Tealbreaker combines TS-style and Bluesbreaker-style overdrives in one dual-drive unit. And then there’s the Millipede Delay aping the BBD analogue mojo of his Way Huge Aqua Puss delay pedal. And that concludes your pre-effects, the virtual stompboxes.
The post section gives you plenty of tools for gussying up the tone, with the Dream Delay and Studio Verb, a 4-band semi-parametric equalizer, a studio compressor based on Mayer’s own, and the global utilities you would expect from an Archetype package – Doubler, Transposer, guitar tuner, comprehensive preset management, and the promise that eventually this plugin will be able to run natively on a Quad Cortex unit.
The Archetype: John Mayer X comes in 64-bit VST2/VST3/AU/AAX/Standalone. It is priced €199. See Neural DSP for more details.
