Box of Rules has released Picking Fingers, a free bass guitar processing plugin for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Picking Fingers is designed to process a bass recording played one way so it sounds as if it were played the other way. In other words, you can push fingerstyle bass toward a picked sound, or move a picked part toward a fingerstyle tone.
I have to say the plugin and website have that vibe-coded look to me, and that has become a real filtering problem for BPB. The inbox is full of new plugins doing familiar things with less attention to quality.
That is why I recently wrote about vibe-coded plugins giving me SynthEdit déjà vu. Still, I am happy to make exceptions when a free plugin has an original idea, is well executed, or clearly shows that there’s real work behind it.
Picking Fingers fits that category for me. The interface could still use some polish in places, but the actual concept is interesting, and I have not seen many simple plugins focused on changing the pick/finger character of recorded bass guitar.
The developer says the transform is measured from real matched captures of the same basses played with a pick and with fingers, rather than being a guessed EQ curve. The low end is level-matched so the Voice control changes the character of the note without thinning out the bass.
There are also Attack and Bite controls. Attack applies more of the measured per-note character, while Bite adds a grittier front edge to the note without making the sustain too dirty. A ±6 dB Tone tilt is included for quick brightness adjustment, with standard input and output trims.
It is a small tool, but a fun one if you work with a lot of bass guitar recordings and need to adjust this side of the tone after the performance has already been captured. The download process is also easy. Simply pick your format, and you’re good to go, no registration or activation.
Picking Fingers is free for any use, including commercial productions. The plugin counts anonymous usage data, but the developer says it never collects audio or personal data.
Picking Fingers is available as a zero-latency mono/stereo plugin. The macOS installer includes VST3, AU, LV2, and PACE-signed AAX formats, while Windows is VST3 only and Linux includes VST3 and LV2 builds.
Download: Picking Fingers (FREE)
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Last Updated on August 11, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.
