Who Is LaceyB?

“Where did you get this song?” “Is there a link to the CDLC?” “How do I get this one?”

Almost every week the same question shows up under my bass videos on YouTube. I have recorded over 200 songs with Rocksmith 2014 by now, and a lot of them share one name: LaceyB. This is the story of that name. It starts with a file name and ends with someone who never existed.

For the non-Dutch: I’m a Dutch guy, so forgive me the occasional funny English. Most of my viewers don’t speak Dutch, so this one is for you.

Learning bass with a video game

Let me start by saying I own the game legally. From the first Rocksmith on Xbox to Rocksmith 2014 on PC: three versions in total. I started on guitar, but the bass kept pulling at me. So I went to the music store and bought a bass guitar. I’ve been a bass player ever since, taught by Rocksmith. Far from perfect, but a whole lot of fun.

The music was a letdown, though. Rocksmith mostly released rock, and the bass was often just along for the ride. Pop, disco, jazz and blues were thin on the ground. I want songs where you can hear the bass, where it carries the song. Of course I bought Radar Love by Golden Earring. For the rest, I had to look elsewhere.

When the game got more popular, the first packs of homemade songs started appearing on torrent sites. My first download had just over 50 of them. That night I played my first custom DLCs.

One name in every file name

Most of those first files were no good to me. Only a guitar track, and if there was a bass track, it was usually poor. So I started sorting. The good files in one pile, the rest gone. After a while I saw a pattern. Almost every good file had the same name in it.

Elmore-James_Dust-My-Broom_v2_L-BV_DD_LACEYB_p.psarc

• Elmore-James the artist
• Dust-My-Broom the song
• v2 second, improved version
• L-BV the tracks: Lead guitar, no Rhythm (-), Bass and Vocals (lyrics)
• DD Dynamic Difficulty, the song grows with your skill level
• LACEYB the maker
• _p.psarc the package for Rocksmith on PC

LACEYB. Finally I had a search key.

LaceyB, the bass player behind thousands of songs

Google didn’t turn up much, but a little search program of mine found a profile on CustomsForge, the big hub for Rocksmith songs. For months, “LaceyB” was my shortcut to that site. I searched for nothing else. If LaceyB made it, you knew the bass would be right. And it was exactly the kind of music Rocksmith itself never got around to.

There was even a guide written by her: How LaceyB Makes Her Bass Customs, from around Thanksgiving 2016. Read it and you see a driven hobbyist. She writes that she started as a complete beginner who didn’t even know what a measure was. That she made everything on an old Pentium 4 from 2004. That she had finished over seven hundred projects. You can’t help liking someone like that. I certainly did.

And one line reads very differently now. On the very first page she writes that she won’t be around to answer your questions.

The news that she had died

And then it stops. My link no longer works. LaceyB’s profile page is gone. I hardly ever visited the forums, but now I did. And there I read it: LaceyB had died of cancer.

That hit me. I had played her songs for years and never thanked her once. No message, no thumbs up. Only then did I realise that a thumbs up is often all these makers do it for. A little recognition. Under my videos of her songs I added R.I.P.

I still found a Google Drive with all her files and downloaded everything. After that I went looking for other makers. On CustomsForge I found JamesPrestonUK, who makes a lot in the same genres, and always for bass.

From LaceyB to SeanMo

Years later Rocksmith crashed on Steam and I lost my profile. At first I thought my custom DLCs were to blame. That’s when I decided to record my favourite songs and put them on YouTube. That way I could play along anywhere, and so could everyone else. From the Netherlands to Indonesia. No message, no politics, just playing bass together.

With a new profile I started using the CustomsForge Song Manager. It shows you who made each file. And then I noticed something. The files on that Google Drive were changing names. First they said LaceyB, later SeanMo. I searched for SeanMo on CustomsForge and got exactly one result:

LaceyB Never Existed. Then the penny dropped. That’s why I got all those questions under my videos. I removed the R.I.P. straight away.

• 2015: LaceyB starts making bass songs for Rocksmith 2014
• 2016: the guide How LaceyB Makes Her Bass Customs
• Later: LaceyB “dies”, the profile disappears from CustomsForge
• 2020: in April Ubisoft stops releasing new DLC for Rocksmith 2014
• 2020: on Reddit the maker says he used to post as LaceyB; “LaceyB Never Existed” appears on CustomsForge
• 2021: my own search and the first version of this story
• 2023: Rocksmith 2014 is removed from the online stores
• 2026: this article

The confession

I set my little search program loose again, this time on both LaceyB and SeanMo. The trail led via Twitter to a post on Reddit, written shortly after Ubisoft stopped releasing new songs. The writer calls himself the biggest custom DLC maker ever, with well over 2000 songs, and offers them through his Google Drive. And then, between brackets, this line:

…when I posted under the name LaceyB (that is a long story…

Reddit, 2020

A long story for another time. That other time never came. Lacey didn’t exist. She was made up, including her illness and her death.

There was money involved too. The description of that folder on CustomsForge, written by someone who felt cheated, says he charged 20 dollars for access to his songs. That person put everything online for free because of it.

My verdict

I’m Dutch, so I won’t beat around the bush.

I recognise a lot of myself in this man. The drive, the urge for perfection, the eye for detail. That he works under a pseudonym? Fine, that’s normal on the internet. That he wanted to earn money with it? Also fine, everyone is free to run a business. Today he would have had a Patreon and nobody would have blinked.

But making up a death goes too far. People mourned Lacey. I blamed myself for never thanking her. He could never get that recognition as Lacey, so Lacey had to die. That is wrong. Very wrong.

And the rest of the community?

CustomsForge doesn’t come out of this completely clean either. The link to his site was removed back then because it broke the rules. But the link to the folder with all his songs, put online by someone else out of revenge, stayed up for a long time. Rules are rules, and then they apply to everyone. The way this went didn’t do my trust any good.

So I stopped crediting makers in my videos. Not out of spite, but because I’m no longer sure who is behind a name.

Where do things stand now?

Rocksmith 2014 hasn’t had any new official songs since April 2020. Since October 2023 the game is no longer sold in the online stores; if you already own it, you can keep playing. Ubisoft moved on to Rocksmith+, a subscription service. Custom DLCs are still being made and shared by fans. CustomsForge is still very much alive, with new songs and posts every day. And the rule this whole story turned on still stands: in 2025 makers were still being banned for putting their songs behind a paywall. As long as those sites are around, there’s enough music to keep playing for years.

So where do I get my songs?

I hope the answer is clear by now: from fan-made custom DLCs, by lots of different makers over the years. I don’t share files myself and I don’t link to them. Want to get started? Look on the big fan sites for Rocksmith songs and check your files with the CustomsForge Song Manager. It fixes a lot of the old problems.

And want to thank the makers? Do it. A message or a thumbs up means more than you think. That much this whole story taught me.

I want to thank everyone who makes songs for Rocksmith. Him too, despite everything. Thanks to all those makers there’s enough music to keep playing for years.

Grab your bass and play along.

Houdoe! (That’s Brabant for “take care”.)

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