Bthelick Goes Retro: 30-Year-Old Plugins, Modern House Mayhem

Bthelick takes a swing at the sort of challenge only a true masochist (or synth nerd) would attempt: making house with plugins old enough to rent a car. Inspired by a Red Means Recording video and Steinberg’s re-release of their classic VSTs, he sets the rules—no modern toys, just the digital dust of 1999 and before. The result? A self-imposed limitation that’s half museum tour, half rave bunker experiment.

Instead of moaning about what’s missing, Bthelick leans into the era’s quirks. The approach is less about retro worship and more about squeezing every drop of funk from tools that barely qualify as functional by today’s standards. It’s a tightrope walk between nostalgia and outright frustration, and you can almost smell the CRT burn-in.

First up is Neon, the synth that apparently walked so Serum could run—if Serum had to run with a club foot. Filter cutoff barely works, envelopes are hardwired, and you get three whole waveforms (don’t get greedy now). The interface is so tiny you’ll be squinting, and the filter behaviour is, let’s just say, unique. But there’s a strange charm to its limitations—like dancing in a phone box with your mates.

After Neon comes a parade of plugin fossils. Detuning is surgical (read: touchy), LFO routing is fixed, and everything feels a bit delayed, like a toaster-fight on dial-up internet. Bthelick doesn’t sugar-coat the experience, but he does show that there’s still creative juice left in these primordial VSTs if you’re willing to wrestle them.

The VB1 is up next, and it’s about as subtle as a brick: basic bass, a shape knob that morphs from saw to something resembling FM, and a damper that’s basically a sustain killer. If you want 90s video game slap bass, congrats—you’ve found it. For anything else, you might be out of luck, but that’s half the fun.

Then there’s the CS-40, which finally gives you the controls Neon forgot. Multiple oscillators, actual filter modulation, and even a mono mode for those classic lead and bass lines. The sliders are fiddly, but you can at last sculpt sounds with a bit of nuance. It’s still a far cry from modern synth luxury, but paired with a dry sense of humour, it gets the job done—sometimes even with a bit of accidental brilliance.

The big question looms: are we celebrating these old plugins because they’re secretly amazing, or are we just suckers for nostalgia? Bthelick doesn’t give a straight answer, and that’s sort of the point. The gear is limited and sometimes trash, but those very limits push you into new creative corners—assuming you don’t rage-quit first.

It’s a reminder that boundaries, whether imposed by old software or self-inflicted, can spark ideas you’d never get with endless options. The verdict? If you want to test your creativity (and patience), a bit of digital archaeology might be just what your workflow needs. Or you might just want to watch someone else fight the toaster so you don’t have to.