i been thinking about this for some time now.. but i feel like real guitars sound best.. electric, acoustic when you record them into daw and apply effects like AMPS etc.

i have alot of kontakt guitar sound libraries but i feel like they never reach that quality a real guitar does give

i have tried during the years lots of guitar libraries like sample logic guitars, sunburst deluxe. acoustic legends hd and more but it doesnt get there.. do you agree or disagree? what is your experience. do you use plugin guitars or real ones?

 

Being a guitarist for 50 plus years I am going to of course agree with you. Real guitar just feels different. I have many of the Kontakt Guitar libraries and find myself always going back to "being real" with using some of the wonderful vst's out there (I LOVE Mercurial AmpBox) but I do something I don't know if others do..

After I get a good live Guitar track pieced together I go back and basically "re-amp" the audio with anything I like to try... The point is, I started with a live performace.. Cannot beat a live perfomance to capture the feel, the touch, of a live performance, IMHO

CubeDude

 

No prerecorded library is going to give you any of the subtleties you can do with with your hands on the strings.

 

i would say that if you don't own a guitar and you can't play a guitar, then maybe a kontakt library is your best bet. i think it is possible to achieve a realistic sound (in context, probably not by itself). i have heard recordings that sounded convincing within the context of a rock track, and even in a mellow track with not a whole lot going on. but i would be willing to bet that those tracks took a lot of work to achieve the desired result, whereas an actual guitarist could have done it in a couple takes.

 

Of course the real thing (in any context) will sound better than canned. Then there's the deal where not every one plays guitar or bass just as not every one plays drums & percussion or keyboards. This is where good plugins, with some work, will carry the day.

 

Okay people stop replying to these troll "I don't like X, I like Y" posts by this guy cause this is gonna go on until he gets to "I think sound is better than no sound" lmao

 

Getting a convincing tone on a plugin takes as much work as learning the instrument itself (granted you already have musical experience). The reason why you don't get a better sound from those plugins is because your knowledge about them is still surface level. Not that I'm firing shots here, there's nothing wrong with that. I'd rather pick up a guitar if the guitar is the main character of the song. If it's just some chords or some notes that aren't at the top of the song, the plugin saves me time. People seriously underestimate that plugins have a learning curve, some more than others, but it's still there. It's also completely fine to not like a plugin because you didn't connect with it immediately. I mainly play piano, but if a piano library doesn't inspire me or feels comfortable to play from the get-go, I have very little interest in carving something out of that instrument. It all depends on how much effort you want to put into it.

 

Strictly real guitars only but I'm a guitar player. Unfortunately for those who want guitar and don't play, guitar isn't an instrument that
virtualizes very well at all. Far less well than drums, piano, and arguably to a somewhat lesser degree, bowed string instruments. You can do far less sort of parts than with these instruments in a virtual form, in comparison. With fake guitar you can maybe get away with simple single note spaghetti western type melody parts, or with slow picked out arpeggios kind of a thing, distorted power chords in simple rhythm at most, definitely if they just ring out on the down beat or whatever with little to no rhythm, but you're pretty much stuck with these kinds of parts and everything else/more is either for the greater part not possible or sounds terrible and artificial, both in equal measure. Unless you make it a sound designed, heavily fx oriented ear candy sort of part. I think synths emulating guitar can get you further with wild distorted leads or the like than any Kontakt sample library and can actually sound really great even, to the extent that even being a guitar player of many years I've swapped out an actually played on guitar distorted, off kilter, dissonant sort of lead for a version of it I did on synth in Luna's Shape plug and liked that better so used that instead, mod wheel "string" bending and all

Side note : Since it came out in '94 or whatever, I always thought the guitar in NIN's "Hurt" sounded weird, stiff and unnatural, but I did think it was a played guitar made to sound that way as a creative decision after effing with it, as they are wont to do with things. Found out many years later that it isn't a real played guitar after all, but again, it's very simple and does sound odd and unnatural but yet in this case also very good and very powerful at the same time. Really whether fake guitar is going to work or not depends a lot on the genre, as in this case, where a lot of instrumentation is in this grey area between real played instruments that are then sampled and/or effed with editing and or fx wise, or programmed sample instruments that are also effed with, etc. If you want to get into doing old school country or folk music, I think you are in trouble

 

Last edited: Mar 9, 2026 at 1:30 AM

I would use both, and for bass I use Modo Bass since it’s a physical model which uses much less space than bass guitar libraries, I would use ujam guitars and Kontakt at least till I learn to play well and get a dedicated recording spot like a Mac mini with the audio interface always connected on a desk that’s not going anywhere, and I can make use of guitar effects now even if I don’t have the real deal accessible… I’m hoping for an electric guitar physical modeling plugin to come soon I can save space and can have a guitar at my fingertips anytime anywhere

 

No sound at all is the key!

Debussy: ”Music is the space between the notes“
Miles Davis: "It's the notes you don't play"

...but they weren't guitarist, so.....

Written for any number of performers and any instrument, this score can be performed in any manner the performer wishes, including aurally, visually. kinesthetically, synesthetically, interactively, literally, symbolically, or philosophically.
A deep awareness of the performer's surroundings and the soundscape is suggested.
This score does not need to be performed to be performed, and is performed by being regarded.
This score is being performed constantly.

 

Yes, I completely agree that playing a real guitar sounded, sounds, and will always sound best. In any case, I am one of those who do not play the guitar, and Ample Guitars has proven to be very useful for me.

 

Mental gymnastics to rectify any ideology ... music is music is music is music ... this kind of discussion arises when you care more about ideology and religiousness than music. The result is what counts, not the tools that someone used. This is as stupid as it can get. And Kate Middleton is as it is often the case the center of the stupidity.

 

I'm a keyboarder, so I have to take refuge to VST guitars. My favourites are Ample Guitars and to a lesser degree Real Guitars. I have achieved quite astounding results by playing them "naked" into Amplitube or NI's Guitarrig. But it takes an enormous amount of time and tweaking to achieve plausible results for demo purposes. So, whenever possible I ask a friend of mine to do the real thing based on my ideas.
I have collected a number of templates with pitchbends, modulations and vibratos that sound reasonably convincing. Inserting them in the respective cubase track helps a lot.

 

It's like asking if Miles Davis sounds better with a real trumpet or a kid's plastic trumpet.

 

A guitar sounds good or bad depending on the wood, string type, pickup, amplifier, and effects used. There are thousands of ways to adjust things. Ultimately, you send everything through your USB audio interface or other devices to your digital audio workstation.

 

Last edited: Mar 9, 2026 at 12:44 PM

Cage was such a pretentious cuck... I'm more into this kind of stuff :

 

Real sex vs porn website.

Suit yourself.

 

Find a friend who can play the guitar parts for you...

 

Where did you get this? Not doubting you, I've always thought it sounded like Trent probably sampled each note and then played it back on a keyboard. Especially since one of the NIN guys confirmed that was something they did moreso during the Fragile era.

But I've never seen any confirmation about how that part was actually played. And I've seen or read practically every interview from the Downward Spiral/Fragile era lineup.

Just curious if I missed something worth reading/watching, Charlie Clouser may have said something about it in the gearslutz thread that has been ongoing for however many years now but afaik he only joined the band at the tail end of the Spiral era so he never really had much to say about those days

 

This bloke knows 'is stuff, sensible no nonense Yank, gets to the point, lots of ideas info etc.

I'm a fairly decent strummer and that strumming can't be replicated on keys, main reason being, when strumming you create micro pulses with the intricate up down strokes, i only use open chords for their inherent richness, their vibe or ringing harmonies they that resound by strumming, that is also impossible to replicate.

Pitch bend, distortion, delays, modulation, any trad geetar type pedals, coupled with the right synth patch will be the most convincing.

Or take a leaf outa Da Dude's book, be cheap as chips, as us musicians earn a pittance, or nowt.