Spitfire Audio Releases Mercury, “Hollywood’s Secret Weapon”

Spitfire Audio has introduced Mercury, a new virtual instrument created in close collaboration with Hollywood instrument-builder Chas Smith, who is known for transforming disused metal into instruments frequently used by film composers.

The company describes Smith’s instruments as “Hollywood’s secret weapon”. They have been used to create the unearthly soundscapes of Hans Zimmer’s Dune and Interstellar, featured in James Newton Howard’s The Hunger Games score, and to score the terrors of Charlie Clouser’s soundtrack for the Saw film franchise.

Spitfire Audio sampled 14 Smith’s acoustic instruments, then incorporated them into Solar, Spitfire Audio’s new eDNA-powered synthesiser, to deliver 600+ organic and synthesized textures, tones, and pads.

Getting those 14 unique, handmade instruments into Mercury meant sampling the unusual instruments, including:

  • Bertolia — inspired by Italian-born American artist, sound art sculptor, and modern furniture designer Harry Bertolia, Inconel rods with aluminium resonators on a turbine blade are all tuned to 14 tone scales;
  • Dado — machined steel plates that can spin over pickups;
  • Towers — nine titanium rods, tuned to be ‘friendly’ with each other, with titanium plates on each end;
  • Lockhead — titanium parts welded into a structure and a titanium sheet acting as a resonator;
  • Mantis — titanium parts welded into a structure that can rotate;
  • Copper Box — rods, plates, and a folded horn resonator, whereby each rod is 36 inches long and the helix of rods continues under the resonator plates;
  • Paraboloid — a titanium sheet with added rods;
  • The Pez Eater — tuned steel rods and pickups;
  • Sceptre — saw blades, plates, and things that can rotate; AD — springs welded to saw blades over pickups;
  • Bass Steel Guitar — machined from aluminum; and
  • Que Lastas — stainless steel sheet with rods and bass piano strings.

Here’s an in-depth walkthrough:

Pricing and Availability

Mercury is available now as an AAX-, AU-, VST2-, and VST3-compatible, NKS (NATIVE KONTROL STANDARD®)-ready plug-in that loads directly into a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) for a time-limited promo price of £99.00 GBP (inc. VAT)/$99.00 USD/€99.00 EUR (inc. VAT) until September 15, 2022 — returning thereafter to its RRP (Recommended Retail Price) of £149.00 GBP (inc. VAT)/$149.00 USD/€149.00 EUR (inc. VAT) .

16 thoughts on “Spitfire Audio Releases Mercury, “Hollywood’s Secret Weapon””

  4. I’m not buying anything from Spitfire after they stuck a knife in Christian Hedson’s back for having his own opinion. I urge everyone to look into what happened and see if they still feel ok buying from that company.

    1. People have had enough of the whining and ‘canceling’ from right-wingers when racists, misogynists, transphobes face consequences for their action. If you announce that you’re a dick, people are going to trust you on that.

      Also – it’s extremely hypocritical and self-unaware to criticize Spitefire for ‘cancel culture’ and then immediately say you’re cancelling them.

      1. Agree or not, that action is ultimately not always rooted in hate, is typically expressed in words and the idea that anyone should surrender to your preferred orthodoxy is totalitarian. The vast majority of the Earth’s cultures have their own values and codes of behaviour that don’t tesselate with recent conclusions about modes of being we might find more tolerable. I don’t understand why consequence for being relatively wrong has to be semi-starvation.

        That being said, everything is ultimately temporary in this life, and who would give up freedom of thought for freedom of speech?

    2. You’ve got the knife in the wrong hands. The aggressor & the victim are one and the same when people fall into self-destructive behavior. He undid a lot of goodwill with completely unnecessary foolishness.

      I feel great buying from Spitfire, and I’m sorry that Christian won’t be a part of that due to extremely poor choices.

      His employer didn’t force him to bring harm & embarrassment to the company. That was a a voluntary act, and companies are free to disassociate from individuals whose actions disrupt or devalue the organizations they’re affiliated with.

    3. Agree with you, I don’t buy from people that encourage the cancel culture.
      Left wingers want the right to do what they want but they don’t admit different opinions, even if it’s slighty different than theirs. You have to agree 100% and be completly submissive!
      Freedom and equality has become an excuse for obtaining privileges, denying others freedom of speech and cancelling everyone that doesn´t comply with their rainbow rules.
      In the end, as expected, they throw in the cherry and accuse everybody of being racists, misogynists, transphobes in order to gain the automatic support of an egocentric community that marginalises who doesn´t follow blindly the flock.

      Look what happened to Fulltone pedals, just beause the owner said that was unecessary to destroy and burn the stores of people that had no guilt whatsoever in the George Floyd murder he was canceled and accused of being racist…etc, when his comments were balance, honest and fair. He was canceled and just a couple of weeks ago Fulltone closed doors and many employees lost their jobs because of this new Toxic freedom fighters!!
      I wonder how many of them volunteered to fight against the russians who are one of the most racist and transphobic people in the world. Probably none, they the prefer going from parade to parade and show off their true colours.
      If they persist on canceling others freedom I will never again accept and fight for theirs.

      It’s amazing and at the same time dramatic how left wing thought has grown into being this Intolerate Monster and reached everyone and everything, even those who try escape the rotten world of politics and chose to be immersed in music as a way of healing.

      1. The level of hypocrisy in your comment is kind of epic.

        You spend 6 paragraphs talking about how horrible ‘cancel culture’ is……and then you use that to argue for putting Spitfire out of business.

        How about supporting business owners, and supporting their right to fire an employee that’s bad for business?

      3. It is difficult to know where to begin with this drivel you have written. Michael Fuller the Founder of Fulltone was not “cancelled” for an isolated incident. He has for decades, burned bridges, spouted bigotry, treated people horribly, both employees and business partners, and simply acted to the very base of this character. It finally caught up with him. And as noted, he has done well for himself. The closure of his business was long in the making, his antics only expedited his decision to move on.

        You simply have no idea what you are talking about.

        1. I’m european, I’m a democrat and the people of my country suffered 50 years at the hands of fascism. I believe I know a little bit about repression, freedom of speech and freedom!
          Mike Fuller didn’t said nothing wrong! He was not a racist, he simply critized the unecessary need of that type of violence. He may have been an ass in the past, and I believe it, but still is unfair to judge him and cancel him in that situation and I will not accept the argument that it was beause of the past. If a Ghandi type of person does something wrong or commits a crime he should be punished like someone else and not be given privileges by account of his past. Injustice is injustice and we are talking here about intolerance to words that were correct.
          You just don’t fight for freedom by breaking and burning others properties. I’m sure that it was a small minority of people that took advantadge of that situation and made the rightful protesters look like criminals in the end.
          I followed that situation and I was mad in anger wishing I could personally choke those policemen. Because I’m not a racist a saw it as a person killing another person that was begging for Oxygen. I don’t care if G Floyd was black, mexican or chinese. That was simply evil. But you don’t fight evilness with evilness. That’s my point!
          I believe that at the current moment we are all suffering, some more some less, the consequences of political ideas spreaded in social media in the last ten years. Left wing / right wing etc. they all explore this new subliminarly way of spreading their word. There are also those who follow certain movements because they will personally benefit from it without caring of others or caring if it has anything to do with real freedom or democracy.
          We are musicians, we are not politicians, and althought we are human beings that share the same planet we should be very carefull not to let politics drive us into this XXI century freedom madness characterized by extremism. Artists, because they are (or should be) opened to new forms of expression and different influences should have more flexibility of thought and not judge with an iron hand someone’s words that were used correctly in the right context.

          1. “Cancelled” and the pretext for it is simply a level of accountability that did not exist prior to the community, aggregation, and mobilisation that the various social media platforms provide! It seems those most fearful of “cancel culture” are prone to behave poorly and not want any level of accountability for their actions! Whilst I abhor herd mentality, words matter, and without context, those whom spew them should be held to account.

            And just because you are European, it does not mean that your personal experience, understanding, capacity, and judgement somehow place you above someone else whom may or may not have been subjugated by fascism! I’m European as well, I am also well aware how easily Europe has fallen into the same cesspool thinking time and again, where old grievances and prejudices somehow meld into a new movement for the same actions that only yielded suffering and eventual war.

            Fuller is not a good person, yes, that is a judgement on the man’s character and conduct. Whilst violence is not always the answer to oppression and injustice, and some absolutely used the events surrounding Floyd’s death to commit crimes of their own, those whom know Michael know bloody well where and what these words actually meant. The industry at large did not just turn on him for one instance, it was the last proverbial straw.

            (Side Note: Fuller claims to care about his employees as family members, however within the private letter he sent to distributors, he also instructs them not to share the news of his business closure because his employees, those he loves like family members mind you, have no idea they are about to lose their jobs.)

  5. is Spitfire the new Behringer!? is everyone falling victim to a brilliant marketing scheme by Christian and the Spitfire team to boost buzz on any post related to them!? we’ll find out in next weeks shocking episode of THE INTERNET! who else is heating up popcorn?

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