How's your vibrato? When I think of guitar notes "coming alive" I think of vibrato.

 

in a room filled with. guitars it just seems wrong to use a plug in... les Pauls ,EVH wolfgang, Ibanez RG 350 EX.Fender Strat and a couple acoustis. my mail amp sim is the Otto 11

 

VST-wise, my Personal favourites are MusicLabs and AAS Strum GS-2. Ample Sound is very good too, but I rarely use them, except for the Ethno Ukulele. I really like this one.

When using Kontakt libraries, I like the already mentioned Ilya Efimov libraries and Shreddage. Sometimes even the NI Session Guitar/Bass libraries.

Now talking about FX, my goto are NeuralDSP and GuitarRig.

 

Acoustic guitars are amazing instruments, and you just have to keep plugging away until you get some kind of control over them. Playing through a microphone and monitoring with headphones may help.

Ah, the old VST versus real amps! VST are similar to recorded sounds, while amp cabs move lot's of air. Just choose what works best for you. I must say the new AI stuff is interesting (NAM, etc), but you'll still have to play through a suitable speaker to get the sound you are looking for.

I'm interested in recorded sound, so my Kemper is good enough for me, and my neighbours really appreciate it .. In fact, they don't even know I play guitar!

At the end of the day, it all comes down to playing styles. Do you want your own unique individual style, or somebody else's? Both choices are valid.

 

Last edited: Jul 6, 2024

When it comes to being able to recreate, I've tried for a very long time using telecaster vst to replicate that Status Quo sound with vst amps too. Hours and hours go by until I realise I'm no closer to it than if I'd used spaghetti for strings on a banjo!

 

A lot of the guitar sound is created in the studio during mixing, via doubling, stacking, shelving, EQ, compression, etc. That's why I like the Kemper, as you you are already dealing with a mic'd sound. I've played through a full Marshall stack too and it sounds glorious, but it's not very practical

 

The Odin III 3.1 update added a palm mute layer and pinch squeals. Allegedly they're recording new tremolo samples for 3.2. Starting to feel a bit like an early access release.

 

Odin III because it's pretty light on space and hardware (having a very weak PC is... not a good) but in overall quality I prefer Shreddage guitars for something modern like 8strings and Electri6ty for classics.

 

What's comical is that I can easily just play what I want on my guitars. But nope... I need to do things the ridiculous way.

 

That said, they all seem useful for the most part. It all depends on how you brain works and how you hear things. Ample Sound is impressive. It's amazing how far the state of the art has come. Amazing like a black hole is amazing.

 

Yep. Live music is all about how it dances around the intended note(s). That's a key aspect in my opinion of determining "real" vs. whatever the opposite of "real" is supposed to be. If you know what I mean.

 

I would add slide in and out to vibrato... but lately I've been thinking that timbre is as important as articulation. When I get the tone right, it 'comes to life'. I've tested many VST simulations and emulations of pedals, amps and cabinets, but nothing makes a virtual guitar instrument sound as real as NAM. I suppose real DI guitar parts 'come to life' too? Granted, that's the only engine of its kind I've used, so maybe it's not necessarily NAM (could be true of BYOD or Proteus too, idk). THU comes close, and it's much more practical than browsing 1000 unrelated models and IRs... but NAM does have some magic going on.

Curiously, it doesn't seem to have that big (or even positive) effect on bass parts, at least to my ears.