I remember downloading Shreddage 1 and hating it, thinking it was too simple and didn't have all the sounds I'd need for an electric guitar library. I downloaded Shreddage 3 Legacy and in about five minutes found that I was able to do a surprising amount of stuff with it. It's really amazing. I wound up picking up Stratus and might end up getting either Serpent or Jupiter. Despite some of that GUI wonkiness and only having one pickup selector (bridge, except for Stratus, which is weird, considering they're designed to primarily be rhythm guitar instruments!), they're probably some of the best electric guitar libraries I've ever come across.

I also have Electri6city and have been struggling to get it to work the way I want it to for years ... still struggling with it, actually. I get that it's for tone tweakers, and you can adjust every single parameter however you want, but there at least be a base setup for rhythm and lead guitars with minimal hassle. They also don't provide you with just a sustain and just a muted option; you only get a velocity-triggered hybrid of either/or, which limits its versatility. As far as I can figure, most of the actual playing for rhythm guitar is done via keyswitch, and you're just selecting chords or single notes with the rest of the keyboard.

I like the Musiclab stuff mainly for leads, as their strummed chords are a bit hard to access (you actually have to program in MIDI CCs to switch from sustains to chords and back again, unless you're like me and just play actual strummed chords manually), and their doubling engine is pretty weird, but the amount of things you can do with all their guitar VIs are pretty outstanding.

Shreddage 3 Legacy is their update for Shreddage 2 Classic, and if you're a fan of Classic, I think they added a few things for the Legacy library. I'm hoping they resolve the GUI issue (stretches the Kontakt GUI past the edge of the screen upon opening, at least on my MBP) and whatever the problem was that I experienced when installing it on the Mac (I tried adding two different installs as libraries in Kontakt v5.6.6 and kept crashing it without actually adding it, then opened v6.0.4 to discover that the library was actually added), but even without the update, it sounds phenomenal and really, really easy to use.

 

you are wrong brother , because it was simple stretch with pitch /up down /down up
you can do it with automations with a volume / stretch bpm / pitch
i just give him example to play with it !
i will show a video tutorial to prove it !
if you take a guitar and try to understand it in depth
how it happen you can do it easy
when he doing it with really guitar is simple catching the signal of the stretch and pitch and it's fact !

 

Last edited: Oct 23, 2019

They're really great since v2 but v3 adds a lot of playability/productivity, and some few new articulations for the new ones (choke, tapping,... not 100% sure).

My favorite (hard-rock/metal) guitar VSTi by far. Mi biggest (slow PC) problem with v3 is the slow GUI and I suspect, besides the GUI complexity itself, that also is due to the extensive scripting behind all these improvements. And responsible of the bugs and updates of course

The fact of having only one pickup is due to legacy reasons. As I've told the samples for v3 are at least very similar to the v2 ones. They sampled the guitars quite a few years ago. That doesn't happen with the v3 new ones, Stratus and Archtop. Freshly sampled.

I'd love to see new samples for the most (old) lacking one, Shreddage Classic/Legacy. Sounds like a blast. I usually keep always ready the standard/Jupiter and the Classic/Legacy. Sometimes IBZ too, but that is more a matter of taste.

Same with me with Prominy V-Metal, but from what you told is still easier than Electricity. Both show its age.

 

I have V-Metal, never used it, but I think the scripting is a little more comprehensive than Electri6ity's. I'd love to figure Electri6ity out, because it seems like you can do a lot with it, but when you can just load up Shreddage and start playing a decent rhythm guitar part in a couple of minutes, it's kind of hard to resist.

 

V-Metal has an incredibly good set of samples, but it's a keyswitch nightmare which could be improved with modern scripting.
A big letdown, I bought the bastard lol

About new articulations/samples in Shreddage v3, a very interesting quote in Shreddage Legacy:
"However, the original instrument had a somewhat limited sample pool, lacking per-fret sampliçng and the note range to perform convincing leads.
That all changes with Shreddage 3 Legacy. Using state-of-the-art tools and a pinch of audio magic, we’ve taken the original sample pool and expanded it via meticulous offline pitch-shifting to cover every fret on all six strings."
So the sample pool is the original plus additional samples obtained processing the original. Interesting.

And in Shreddage 3, I'm sure I read the new tapping articulation uses hammer-on samples plus perhaps scripting. Makes sense.

 

So far, I have Legacy, Rogue and Stratus, and I think Legacy is my favorite of the three. Again, from what I recall from using the original Shreddage, it had a decent sound, but it seemed like there was a ton of stuff you couldn't do with it, so I dismissed it. This version seems like you could pretty much do everything with it, even play decent leads, although Rogue (used to be IBZ in v2) has the best metal/rock lead sounds and Stratus, which was originally just "Shreddage 3", has the most features, and it's really a full-featured guitar library (and twice the size of all the other Shreddage 3 instruments), not just a rhythm guitar that can pull off a few leads. I'm a much bigger LPC or humbucker guitar fan than a Strat fan, so I wish they'd either added more to the Legacy instrument or put out a humbucker instrument with the same features as the Stratus.

The tapping on all three instruments is decent, but I think you're right -- it does seem like just hammer-ons or regular sustains with a little script-editing to cut off the pick at the beginning.

 

That's right. The original Shreddage was a fast rhythm metal monster and not much more (the very same name comes from that). Then they added some things and it was Shreddage X. That one got updated to Shreddage Classic for v2 (first one I tried). In v3 Legacy they have matched the articulations of the others processing the original sample set. I just tried it yesterday but no time to say how much I like it.

It can't be helped that Stratus is the best sampled one, because is the newest (along with archtop). Besides, the huge size is due to having two (or three?) pickups sampled.
You should try Shreddage 3 Jupiter, that's the original Shreddage II. The closest to Legacy in tone.
Like I said before, I always keep Legacy/Classic and Shreddage II original/Jupiter, and sometimes IBZ/Rogue. The metal-head choice ;)
I felt like SRP/serpent had nothing to add to the others. For my tastes, that is.

 

I've been eyeballing Jupiter, as well as Serpent. Rogue was a great choice, as I love Ibanez guitars.

I don't know if I'd use any of these as lead instruments, but that's not what I like about them. These are the first libraries or guitar VIs I've used that just work out perfect for rock/metal rhythms.

 

Clearly their strong point. And the kings of palm-mutes/powerchords (a lot of RRobins, individually sampled powerchords). Leads with virtual guitars is another and very complex beast.

I just began to mess with RealLPC5. Incredible array of features and it barely uses RAM. Impressive.

 

I now have five of the Shreddage libraries (Stratus, Legacy, Jupiter, Serpent and Rogue) Ironically enough, Stratus, which was originally just Shreddage 3, doesn't have FX slides or scrapes. At first, I thought I just wasn't seeing it, because one of the demos on its product page was the opening to "Rock You Like A Hurricane" and I could have sworn I heard fret slides (a Scorpion staple) on it. Nope. Worst case scenario, I can load up a doubled instance of RealStrat 5 Elite just to trigger slides or scrapes and blend them in with the Stratus if I need them, but it's highly weird that it doesn't have that. Maybe in another update?

All the RealGuitar instruments are pretty great. The best thing about RealLPC and RealStrat, especially now that they have pickup selection (I think v1-4 was just middle selection, blending both pickups), is that you can customize them for any kind of lead articulation. For a while, I was using them for leads and rhythm guitars, but their strumming and chord features aren't great, and I wound up doing everything in Solo mode, which also isn't great for rhythm guitars.

 

It's weird, a Shreddage lib without scrape sounds. Perhaps because Stratus is the least metal-oriented Shreddage? Anyway, I could make you an only-FX mini Shreddage lib.

I fully agree with you. Raw sound quality aside, latest MusicLab guitars seem to be a soloist dream. For strumming and chords Ample Sound guitars are absolutely impressive, not the best in the raw quality sound though. I wish I could compose with Ample guitars and translate the MIDI to Shreddage ones, but not an easy task.

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2019