- Product: TG100 Reverb
- Developer: Martinic
- Version: 1.0.0
- Format: VST, VST3, AU, CLAP
- Requirements: Windows 7 or later, Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) or later
- Source: https://www.martinic.com/en/products/tg100-reverb
I don’t get a lot of time for content like this these days — most of my work has shifted toward composing music for video games. But the developer behind this plugin reached out and asked if I’d take a look at it, and I genuinely liked what I found. Enough that it was worth taking the time to write about.
An Interesting History
The TG100 reverb plugin has an interesting backstory worth knowing before getting into how it sounds. In 1991, Yamaha released the TG100 tone generator — a pint-sized half-rack unit that looked a bit like a car radio. Beyond being a popular expansion module for keyboard players, it was widely used by video game composers of the era, and by bands like Nine Inch Nails and The Prodigy. It’s 16-part multitimbral, 28-voice polyphonic, and compatible with General MIDI Level 1 — which, among other things, made it a natural fit for hooking up to a PC via mini-DIN and playing Doom’s soundtrack through it.
It shipped with 192 instruments, 10 drum kits, and — most relevant here — eight reverb and delay effects that were very well regarded at the time. Martinic already has a free software model of the original TG100 available on their site. But those effects could only ever be applied to the module’s own internal sounds. What Martinic has done with this new plugin is extract just the reverbs from that software model, so they can now be applied to any instrument you want.
It’s a paid plugin, with a 30-day free trial available from Martinic directly.
Perfect Timing
I don’t actually own a real TG100, but I’m a big fan of Yamaha’s black boxes from the ’80s and ’90s, and I’ve got a handful in my studio. Around the same time the developer reached out, I happened to be working on a dark, synthy track for a game called CryoCore, being developed by 3HM Studios at the Techno Shed, coming to Steam soon. Most of the instruments on that track are those same Yamaha black boxes, none of which have any onboard reverb of their own — so this plugin showed up at exactly the right moment. It’s the only reverb used anywhere on that track.
The Beauty of Simplicity
The real strength of this plugin is its simplicity — it doesn’t take long to get a feel for. In effects view, it behaves like an early-’90s rack module, buttons and all. Flip to settings view, and the same adjustments go faster, with knobs replacing the buttons.
You pick one of eight effect types. Send/depth sets the input level going into the reverb. Time controls the decay length. Output level sets how loud the effect is before it reaches the dry/wet control, which blends the processed signal back with the dry one — something you’d typically only be doing if using the plugin as an insert rather than a send. Used on a send, you’d just set that dry/wet knob to 100%. There’s a bypass knob too, and a set of genuinely usable presets.
Why It Works for Me
There’s no shortage of great reverb plugins out there — you probably already own a stack of them. So why this one? I can’t speak to what anyone else needs from a reverb, but here’s why it works for me, for two reasons.
First, it sounds like the late ’80s and early ’90s — an era that means a lot to me personally. If you’re chasing that specific sound, this plugin does it very well.
Second: a lot of reverbs, brilliant as they are, do a huge amount — all kinds of creative, elaborate things. Most of the time, though, that’s not actually what I need. Most of the time I just want a simple, basic reverb sound, without turning twenty different knobs to get there. Normally my go-to for that is the reverb built into Cubase, which is genuinely underrated and overlooked — it sounds great on its own. But when I’m specifically trying to recreate that late-’80s/early-’90s feel, this is the plugin I reach for instead.
