@triggerflipper
Yes, Neural DSP make good stuff (soft and hard).
Another big advantage is there is no filler.
Disadvantage : it is not a complete suite with "all effects".

I compared effects from Amplitube, THU and Helix yesterday.
THU : good but not enough models, sadly
Amplitube : some AMAZING ones, like Fender Blender. But a lot of "generic" sounding ones too.
Helix : very complete, with some "special" ones, like Fuzz Factory with oscillator (sound almost like mine), Whammy is very nice ...

You can't really get "all in one". But very close with Helix (amps AND effects).

I retried all Amplitube amps too, they are behind THU Rig Player and Helix amps for sure.
THU algos amps are so-so too.

In algos amps, i only found one amazing in Amplitube : ENGL Powerball (very close).
THU algo : Modern Metal Beast, Heavy 51 Lead, Overloud Custom Boost canal
Helix : there are 9 high gain amps i like

If you want algos amps and good effects "all in one" : Helix
If you want profiled amps AND no fuss testing thousands profiles : THU Rig Player (but you loose Helix effects superiority)

You will get a LITTLE better attack feel on THU rig player.
But it is easier to tweak algos amps than finding the best profile between 50 of the same amp

May be i will go back to Helix finally
Ratio between fun AND sound is balanced between THU Rig Player and Helix.

PS : passive pickups are a b*tch with interferences. My bridge hum bucker is very noisy, because it uses two different single pickups, so they don't match noise wise.
It is time for a copper foil fix

 

To be fair most of their effects are the same stuff with different UI : you always have the same delay and reverb in post, and usually a compressor, two overdrives in pre by default -the configurations vary a bit from model to model.

But yeah, a Neural DSP all-in-one plugin would be awesome. However it would probably cost more than a real boutique amp

I need to spend more time with Parallax.
I feel like bass amp sims are almost all geared towards modern metal sounds.
I've never found a bass amp sim that made me go "A-HA ! THAT'S IT !"
I wonder if it has anything to do with me not having a sub woofer lol.

Like I said, I tend to go for VST effects if I'm looking for something extra. Sometimes you get surprisingly good results from effects not necessarily associated with electric guitar (Valhalla Supermassive can yield soooooooooo many different sounds that sound great with guitar).

TH-U's Brunetti od/dist/fuzz pedals are really cool though.
When it comes to algo stuff, it seems like Overloud put more effort in their Brunetti emulations than everything else

Yeah, the only ones I enjoyed using were Brunetti Metropolitan, DVmark Little GH25, and I find it kinda cool that they let you change tubes as a novelty, but RigPlayer all the way.

That, plus the fact that they have so many similar amps profiled. It's almost like "Hey, so here's our new Fender Twin library. It's different from the last one because this particular amp had the treble knob replaced in 1973. We've meticulously captured 34 billion mic placements for each gain setting, and we've used every mic invented since the 19th century, so you'll have enough options to explore till the end of time! And we're gonna release 500 more libraries next week!"

Same thing with IR libraries. Sometimes I spend hours testing each IR until I find my favorite. Next day, it sounds like shit lol.

So nowadays when I use RigLibrary, or look for an IR, I don't spend more than 5 minutes. I just pick one that sounds good enough, or it totally kills the flow lol.

It's not an interface issue, I get the same hum even with a 5w battery powered practice amp lol. And I have copper foiled my guitar already lol.
And I have an old Laney bass amp I rarely use (cause it's 100 fucking watts lol) and it can get super noisy too with my bass guitar (which, granted, has passive pickups).

The Pro-Q3 at the start of the chain works fine. I wish real amps came with a parametric eq before the preamp lol.

 

Last edited: Sep 10, 2023

The Ampeg Suite is pretty solid for non-metal bass tones. Pretty solid for metal bass tones, too. Tonex has some pretty damn great clean bass tones. And I just tried STL ToneHub, and there are a ton of bass rigs in it, and while A LOT of them lean deep into metal tones, there are a bunch of really great clean tones. Overloud has Mark Studio, which is good if you like the MarkBass sound. Audified GK Amplification is pretty great too.

 

I've tried almost all of them.
I'm not saying they sound bad, not at all.
But there's something I'm searching for in bass tones that I just can't get. I've never owned a great bass, but I've had more than decent ones. On the rare occasions I play thru my 100w Laney (which I've never used at more than 50% gain, and even that was an exception), I enjoy it very much. It's not the perfect tone I'm looking for (would probably cost several thousand bucks to achieve it lol) but it makes my spine vibrate the way I like.

When I play thru an amp sim, I never get that feeling, and my HS-8s can make the walls shake when cranked up. I've even tried panning hard to one channel so it's in mono, and it did help a bit, but overall, meh. However, when it's in a full mix, I can get very nice tones.

So in my opinion guitar amp sims are getting really close, but you can't cheat the bass.. yet. I'm talking about playing solo.

Maybe it's really about the cab more than the amp.

 

About Neural DSP, if you want to buy a lot of their soft products, you can simply buy a Quad Cortex instead
About bass freqs, it is a tricky thing.

HS-8s is bass reflex 8inch
Bass combos/cabs are a LOT different. Most are closed/open but not bass reflex.

Bass reflex cut abruptly at tuned frequency, not other designs.
And there are strange effects on sound (phase, impulse response ...), even more than open design.

To prove my point, put a bass amp sim into the FX loop return of your real bass amp

 

Wasn't there some kind of hassle with that one? I don't remember whether it was supply not meeting demand, the manufacturing being too slow, some internal software issue... but people were disappointed at some point, no?
Maybe it has changed. Hopefully.
And trust me my friend, if I could afford one I wouldn't hesitate one second

Yeah exactly, that's what I meant by it's really about the cab With guitar, good monitors + fx work fine (although I've played a friend's Kemper through a Mesa cab, and was in awe), but with bass you can't cheat IMO.

Again, I'm talking about playing solo. In a full mix I'm more than satisfied.

I know you're right. But I'm not gonna do that Too much of a hassle, would need to move a lot of stuff around the house, the move everything back once I'm done playing.. not practical for me lol.
And like I said earlier, it's pretty rare that I use my amp anyway. Between the neighbors, my partners and my erratic inspiration to play bass, the planets align only once in a blue moon

I'll say this though : out of everything I tried with the bass, my two favorites are Fuse Audio's F-59 with a bass cab IR, or just DI bass > tone shaping (sat, comp, eq etc.) and maybe an IR. It doesn't feel like playing though a real amp, but it's the closest I can get to isolated bass tracks from players I admire.

I wonder what GR7 has to offer for bass? lol

 

my eyes was bigger than my experience i just tried it ......i was thinking the lofi stuff was going to be really good but naw ima stick with the lofi stuff i already have

 

@Trurl i need to stop boosting myself up for new releases and updates i get all hyped just because it looks good and the features i keep upsetting myself

 

Yeah, I know what you mean. Bass is definitely as much feeling the tone as it is hearing it, and sims (or even an amp) through monitors or headphones just can't provide the feeling portion of that. Bass tone is also a bit of a dragon we always chase around. Way more than guitar, the "perfect" bass tone really lives in the fingers. Victor Wooten has demonstrated his ability before to make a cheap bass through a cheap amp sound miles ahead in terms of tone than my $1200 bass through an Ampeg. It's almost enough to make me want to take up the harmonica or something.

 

Victor Wooten could probably make a Sears ukulele sound better than me playing with Mike Gordon's gear

 

Fingers AND settings.
Best players know how to set something "meh" to an acceptable audio quality.
Because they played a lot of different, and even crappy, gear.

It remembers me Patrick Rondat playing on a cheap modeler, getting almost the same sound than his multi thousand bucks set.
Paradise Lost main guitarist explaining he started his carrer gigging with a crappy 5 watt cube amp.
Steve Vai started playing crappy guitars and amps in Zappa band.

Left Hand Path - Entombed recorded with a Peavey Bandit with DS1 and HM2 pedals : they set the 'swedish chain saw' sound standard with some hundreds bucks only.

And more ...

Always remember almost all well known/rich musicians started by playing crappy gear.

 

For real? I have a hard time imagining Zappa contending with a band member playing crappy gear on stage, especially in the 80s.

I ain't no rich or famous musician, but I cut my teeth on a second Squier I got for 100 bucks, amp included haha.
Today I have a custom shop US Strat (which I got for 50 bucks, but that's a story for another day) and there definitely was a quantum leap in tone by virtue of pickups alone, but if I it'd disappear and I'd have to go back to the Squier, I know I can make it sing. Spent so much time with that guitar that our DNAs are intertwined.

 

Yeah for real.
Zappa was convinced sound was in the head ... so he gave only a BUNCH of crappy guitars and amps to Steve Vai.
Vai was probably too shy and poor at this time to buy all his gear.

I will add : Hendrix first guitar was an acoustic ... 5 bucks

https://www.quora.com/What-was-Jimi-Hendrixs-very-first-guitar

 

Just watched an interview with Vai. He tells it a bit differently
It's not like Frank threw a bunch of shitty gear at him and said "tone is only in your head" lol
He even gave him his Hendrix Strat apparently

 

This would have been a good update to GR6, but those who already have GR5 and GR6 loaded on their computers, a third iteration is absurd. Guitar Rig has some stiff competition that makes better-sounding amp/cab emulations, but GR7 has a cab IR loader, which helps a bit. The effects-chain sidebar is an interesting and useful addition – and the bass amp is welcome. Still, these could have been added as updates, which would have sustained interest in NI as a consistent developer of this sort of stuff. I still prefer GR5 for its more straightforward (albeit "antiquated") GUI and browser. It's easier to use as an effects rack on other sorts of instruments, and it had more of a "feel" of an actual "guitar rig," like its current competitors do.

 

I uninstalled GR6 because it had too many boring amps, but I quite like this update. Their new Fender amp has a lot of the qualities of the Twin Reverbs I've played - more than other VSTs. The Vox is nice too. It's got some great effects (and a lot of not-so-good ones), and the way it's arranged is so much nicer than the usual clunky guitar VST UI where they try to make you feel like it's 'authentic'. Being able to modulate everything also makes it easy to create really unique guitar sounds.

Maybe my tastes are different to other people here though. I think Neural DSP and ToneX suck. They sound great on default presets but when you adjust the sound they don't respond anywhere close to the way a real amp does. They don't even respond to pickup and tone adjustments on your guitar the way a real amp (or an algo amp) does. These new modelling amps make me feel like I'm just triggering samples sometimes.

I just tried TH-U after seeing someone mention it in this thread and I'm blown away already. Crappy UI but it really has so much of the dynamics and texture of the real thing - and with such a low hit on CPU as well!

 

My only issue with TH-U is that they wont allow oversampling to be disabled. It's always locked ON in some shape or form and I have yet to be able to find a way to disable it. Otherwise great plugin IMO...

 

One thing I miss from the old GR5 days, is the preset browser, where you could make your own folders and sub-folders.