So i know "BEST" is a very subjective term, hence "Favourite".

2023 was a dream year as a bedroom guitarist. We have had a lot of Amp sims being released or updated lately, and i want to know from my fellow guitarist's and musicians what has been their most used Amp sim last year. If possible let us know why as well.

For me personally, the top 3 would have to be :
1- Gojira (The best Rhythm Tone ive heard in a plugin)
2- Otto Audio II II II II ( Brutal, yet sits well in a mix )
3 - NAM ( Cant belive stuff like this is free. Funnily, playing through the models has made me find the amp which i wanna buy next)

 

I do almost everything with Tonex & Helix Native.

 

Neural Nolly and Cory Wong cover 90% of everything I need.

 

It depends a bit whether you want to use guitars in a mix or if you just want to jam. For straight jamming with the sound of an amp in the room, I prefer Tonex and NAM (sometimes with a Room IR in the Chain). For finished songs, at least for my projects, or if you use your own Cab IRs anyway, it pretty much doesn't matter in this day and age (hence I always chuckle a bit when someone writes: "Dude, that amp sim sounds so much better with good IRs!". Yeah, pretty much every amp sim sounds good with good IRs). Personally, I especially find distorted guitar sounds to hardly ever fit into mixes perfectly just as they are from an amp or amp sim. Consequently, they always get heavily worked over, and in that regard pretty much all of the current sims do a good enough job of delivering a starting point for that.

 

I haven't kept up to date with the latest so i'll be following this thread, but i really liked Tonex when it first came out. I've always liked Amplitube and Tonex felt like a step up from that.

I also quite like Cory Wong's suite and some other Neural DSP stuff.

There's another amp sim company that i remember liking but the name escapes me now. I think they're Italian.

I've seen people rave about the NAM stuff, and now that i've got a new PC i'll be able to run pretty much anything i throw at it CPU-wise so i'll give that a shot.
I've heard good thing about Scuffham too.

I think with this stuff you've gotta ask yourself what you want: High gain / metal stuff? Or clean / edge-of-breakup dirty-clean sound? Different companies excel at different things

 

1. OMEGA Ampworks Granophyre from Neural DSP - The grimiest chug that ever was
2. Purple Nightmare Driftwood Amplifier from STL Tonality Lasse Lammert - Best tone from STL
3. OTTO Audio || || || || - When you crave that filthy low end

 

Last edited: Jan 3, 2024

Been slowly going from using almost exclusively Neural DSP to almost exclusively NAM. I still use Softube Amp Room for bass (great Ampeg SVT and RAT distortion emulations), but as soon as I find an SVT model for NAM that sounds as good as Amp Room I will probably stop using Amp Room.

 

2024 = peak neural captures before everyone goes back to sims.. for a while.

 

I'm a smiple guy, most of my guitaring revolves around three "tones" and slight variations of them, so it's very minimal:

-Softube Marshall Plexi Superlead 1959: I prefer playing on my real gear when possible, and i find it hard to replicate on ampsims (even Tonex), But this one for some reason can get really close with the right knob twisting, which is a surprise considering my gear has nothing to do with plexis or anything marshall.
-Amplitube 5: for pedal emulations (to use in combination with the Softube marshall), cabinet emulation, or just general use. Sometimes i use BIAS FX 2 for pedals instead of this.

I am tempted to tap into metal tones just to have something around if i ever need it, but i know that's like saying "i want to try meth" so...Yeah, i'm open to suggestions.

 

I honestly don't get the hype for Neural DSP and NAM. I tried them for a long time and they sound really stiff and lacking in expression/dynamics. I really like Blue Cat Axiom and THU Overloud.

 

Audio Assault Amp Locker.

 

My go-to for few years and lately for the past few months been sticking with the PA Friedman Dirty Shirley too. I think the Softube 1959 sounds exactly like the real thing, not just sound, the response of the knobs, how the amp react when pushed with my pedals too. I've been touring with the full stack 1959 for 10 years and I know that amp super well and rarely turning them on since R2R released the Softube version. Mad how close it is. It's not just plug and play amp, you gotta find the sweet spot and play with pre/power volume combo, matching cabs and stuff or else it would sound like how 1959 would sound if not setup correctly, thin with an army of mosquitoes.

EDIT : forgot to add THU exclusively for the supercabinet.

 

Last edited: Jan 4, 2024

I use Neural Cory Wong for cleans but crunchs too. It's a clinical sounding amp with a very good response. Tube King for organic Fender tones and Morello for plexi clean/crunch. But it's clear that I love the Softube SLP and Bluesbreaker, it seems to me that the room mics are a big part of the realism of this amps. But I can't explain why I don't use them too much... just the room mics of the bluesbreaker with other sims but if you want the Hendrix's studio sound, this amp is a go to !

Recently I have discovered the "MixWave Benson Chimera Collection" with a fabulous reverb and few germanium boxes... Killer tones from clean to stoner and more. I have the sensation to rediscover what it is to play on a real amp... full feeling !!!

 

Kemper Rig Manager.

 

Are you using the right input levels? NAM is good, but it has to be dialled in correctly. That's why I mostly use a Kemper as it's plug n play. However, I do use some NAM FX pedals when reamping, or with Helix Native, etc. NAM is fun to play around with on my laptop though, and it's going to get better with more development.

 

Last edited: Jan 4, 2024

I pretty much always use the TH-U Rig player, mostly their herbert, plexi, ac30 and deluxe captures to which I add a bit of room sim. Other than that I sometimes use NAM with captures of my own gear... when I'm too lazy to plug in the real thing.

 

the updated plini from neural is great. been using it alot recently. such a well rounded plugin. i use the patrucci suite for leads quite a bit. i use the cory wong alot for cleans. i have licensed copies of all the neural plugins except for the 3 most recent. i demoed the asato recently and it sounds incredible. it's on my must buy list for the near future. i'm currently demoing the newest release from neural, the morgan amplification suite. it's blowing me away and has also made my list for must buys (i'm on mac so i don't get blessed with the neural stuff like all you windows guys sadly). my music is all pretty guitar driven and i'd say neural dsp, whether it be plugins or my quad cortex, is responsible for about 90% of the tones used in my stuff.

i have the otto as well and really like it for the heavy heavys.

i have stl tonehub as well and quite a few of their artist packs but just have yet to find anything guitar-wise to make recurring appearances in my mixes. but their bass tones are regulars in my tracks. specifically the chris crummet bass stuff.

ml soundlab stuff sounds nearly neural quality but they have a blaring downside and that is that they don't have a stereo option like neural so that you can buss multiple gtr tracks to a gtr buss with a single instance of the plugin. you have to run an instance for every individual gtr track and its a bit resource heavy so after buying maybe 7-8 of their suites i've stopped. which is a shame bc their modeling is top tier.

 

NAM and Scuffham S Gear of course with bunch of IRs

 

I've many favourites simply because I enjoy playing classical to metal.
Softube: JCM800 within Amproom. JMP2203 outside Amproom.
Nembrini: Mrh810v2, Beta Gamma, HiVolt & Extasy (Bogner). I really like Nembrini's amps though I've an email from 2022 stating they were releasing an Orange model in 2023 - which didn't happen - boooooo!
Bogren: MLC Sub Zero is excellent.
Brainworx: Rockergain 100 (Orange) & Gallien Krueger 800RB.
NeuralDSP: PliniX (Archetype/ suite) & occasionally Nameless (Fortin/ Marshall). I also have Cali & Granophyre but they just sound too hi-fi after a while - and NDSP are idiotically priced once you've purchased a couple you realise you're only paying for a new UI and 10% of code or thereabouts. If you know you know.
Mercuriall: SS-11X (AMT).

As for an AIO... it's flaky & occasionally unstable and the company should be punched in the face for their tier structure. Never the less, BiasFX2 is very good. I'm slowly swallowing my pride however and using Neural Amp Modeller more and more.

Regardless of amp plugins, I'm nearly always using Nembrini's IR Loader or Softube's Celestion Speaker Shaper

nb: These are just my preferences and nothing more. I've licenses to them all and as many more again that I no longer use. I only ever purchased at intro or sale prices and some were bundled with h/ware. Around $1000AUD over ~5 years isn't as bad as it sounds (till I consider what else I could have done with it ;)

 

UAD Waterfall Leslie