Hey everyone,

I'm looking for the best electric guitar VST instrument that sounds as realistic as possible when played with a MIDI keyboard. I mainly produce rock and reggae music and want to create guitar solos and licks that sound as close as possible to the real thing.

I’d prefer a VST that automatically adds articulations like slides, vibrato, and hammer-ons based on how I play (if there is one), rather than requiring a lot of manual tweaking or keyswitching. The goal is to have a clean, realistic sound that I can later process with amp simulators if needed.

I’d love to hear your recommendations and experiences. Which VST do you think works best for realistic soloing and expressive playing straight from a MIDI keyboard?

 

I researched a lot before settling with Ample Sound. If you learn how to play it, you'll have little tweaking to do in post. Me, I'd rather program it in Riffer, in the atomic level. Ample Sound finds a good middle ground between sampled articulation VSTis (huge libraries, little flexibility, as realistic as a recorded part can sound) and modeled VSTis like Real Guitar (huge amount of articulations, very versatile, light in size, but tends to sound more synthy). Do check out a YouTube channel called HiFiMidi, you can learn a lot from Rubens. Also, pay close attention to how live guitar players solo: they abuse vibrato, hammer-ons, slide-outs, and so should you when programming a guitar solo. Lastly, I feel that amp sims play a huge part in getting a realistic sound and for that, nothing beats NAM, in my opinion.

 

For me, Shreddage all day... if you're willing to put in a lot of time tweaking, and you'll want to reamp it as well and not used their internal processing. I know they have a reputation for doing metal but they can be pretty versatile.
(IMHO RealGuitar is unusable hot garbage.)

 

Thanks for the suggestions.
Do you recommend any specific library from Ample Sound that sounds the most realistic for guitar solos?
I mainly produce rock and reggae.

 

I think they're all good, but after some testing I narrowed it down to AGTC, AGSC and, for jazz, AGSH. The AGSC has 4 libraries, corresponding to the 4 pickup combinations of a real strat. If I had to pick one guitar from Ample Sound, this would be the one.