SPITFIRE AUDIO Joey Santiago Guitars

Monstrous distortion from a guitar innovator

We teamed up with guitar innovator and prolific composer Joey Santiago (lead guitarist, The Pixies) to create a library of beautifully distorted filth — the bedrock of The Pixies' epic sound – with extra warped content from the Spitfire team. Joey's signature sounds and playing styles created using his enviable guitar, pedal and amp collection will provide you with endless inspiration, while Spitfire's technology will enable you to make each sound your own.

Treasure trove of sounds

Recorded in LA, re-amped in London and mutated in Edinburgh, this library is a well-travelled treasure trove of the coolest sounds you’re likely to find in any sample library.

Joey Santiago Guitars contains a variety of multi-sampled guitars, recorded and performed by Joey through his fabled board and his much-toured amp rig, re-amped back in London’s legendary Pool Studios. In addition to multi-sampled virtual instruments, we also captured hours of Joey's shredding, gating, twisting and distorting, turning it into raw materials for new sonic adventures.

Joey Santiago

Choose your preferred amp, and use our popular Mercury Synth and eDNA engines to take our work and make it your own. Designed to inspire all musicians, from media composers, to producers in every genre, from rock to pop and electronic, wanting to harness the sound of a guitar legend in their work,.

Following on from our work with rock god drummers Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Matt Sorum (Guns n Roses) and Roger Taylor (Queen), a legendary rock guitarist was our next logical step. One of the most inventive and influential guitarists of a generation and a composer in his own right, Joey Santiago knows what goes into creating virtual magic. Santiago describes his playing style as 'angular and bent', while MTV's Laurel Bowman stated "Santiago's sonic plough was the key element in the Pixies' monstrous presence".

Spitfire decamped to a vibey space in East LA, rigged up six amps and Joey’s extraordinary pedal board via the finest valve and ribbon mics into a rare vintage Neve console. The aim was not to create a ‘virtual’ guitar — although there are multi-sampled instruments in the library — but to create an environment where Joey’s rich sound world could be captured authentically.

The overview panel

This is the main interface for melodic instruments. Its default view displays all available playing techniques, has a simple microphone mixer and includes the main feature controllers.

General controls panel

This view allows further in-depth control of the instrument, showing all available signals and feature controllers, as well as the ability to purge techniques from memory to reduce system usage.

The Ostinatum

In this view you can add notes to a pattern sequencer, select which key it triggers on and then play for instant ostinato creation. It’s like an arpeggiator on a synthesiser.

eDNA engine

This interface houses our own sample-synthesiser engine. You can use it to combine two sounds and modulate between them with envelopes, filters and wobbles per sound, as well as a gate sequencer and a selection of go-to FX.

Mercury Synth

This ingenious user interface features a range of organic sounds and specially curated warped sounds. All of the controls are assignable to your control surface, giving you the ability to instantly make our sounds your own.