SHAPER Step Tool

Name: SHAPER Step Tool
Price: 39 USD
Author: Battersea Audio

by Battersea Audio · Modulation · Step shaper / volume sequencer

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SHAPER Step Tool is a 32-step shaping effect that slices, gates and pumps any audio with volume or filter patterns, from simple sidechain-style ducking to trance-gate rhythms.

It comes with 100+ presets and costs £39 on sale (about $52), normally £49.

Best for: Keys & Synths, Vocals, Drums, Sound Design. Genres: Electronic & EDM, Pop, Hip-Hop & Trap, Ambient & Cinematic.

Keywords: rhythmic, pumping, sidechain input, vocals, synths, cinematic, drums, ducking, pads, perpetual licence, samples & loops, CPU-light, extreme, gentle, minimal controls, mixing, preset-driven, simple, sound design, subtle.

What it does

SHAPER Step Tool is Battersea Audio's step-based shaping effect for producers, sound designers and composers. It joins two familiar ideas, sidechain-style ducking and "trancegate" sequencing, so one plugin can add rhythm, motion and texture to any track. It was first announced simply as SHAPER; news sites covered the launch in January 2026.

32-step sequencer: draw a shape for each of up to 32 steps to slice, chop and pulse the sound in time with the song.
Volume or filter: a pattern drives either the volume or a filter, so the same grid gives anything from gentle pumping to chopped gates and rhythmic filter sweeps.
Swing and Smooth: two controls that change the rhythmic feel of a pattern.
Any source: made for synths, pads, vocals and drums alike; it works on any audio track.
Presets: 100+ starting points, from subtle movement to extreme chops and cinematic pulses. You can save your own and replace the default Init preset with one of yours.
MIDI automation: every parameter can be automated in the DAW or mapped to a controller.
Light on CPU: the developer stresses that it is very efficient, so it can sit on many tracks of a large session.

It comes with a user guide and a perpetual license with lifetime updates, and Battersea offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. The bigger SHAPER Pro includes the Step Tool, and Step Tool owners get a discounted upgrade to Pro; SHAPER Pro is also part of the Complete Battersea Bundle with all the developer's plugins.

Source: Battersea Audio product page

When to use it

SHAPER Step Tool is the quick, low-cost way to get step-based movement: one pattern on volume or a filter, set up in a few seconds from a preset. Compared with ShaperBox 3, it has far fewer targets and no multiband splitting, but there is much less to learn and it costs a good deal less. Against LFO Tool it works step by step, with a shape per step, which suits trance gates and chopped rhythms better than one long free-drawn curve. Unlike Kickstart 2, which only does sidechain-style pumping from a set of curves, it can build complete gate and filter sequences. When you want panning, distortion or modulation effects on the same grid, the developer's own SHAPER Pro is the step up.

Best for: trance gates and chopped pads, sidechain-style pumping without routing a kick, rhythmic filter movement on synths and vocals, and quick motion on many tracks at once.
Genres: EDM, house and trance, pop, hip-hop and cinematic pulses.
Look elsewhere if: you need many effect targets or multiband shaping (ShaperBox 3, SHAPER Pro), smooth free-drawn LFO curves (LFO Tool), or one-knob ducking only (Kickstart 2).

Where to buy

Battersea Audio: $39 (regular $49) (£39 converted to USD (ECB rate, 29 Sep 2026))

Tutorials and reviews

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