any suggestions on how to get this tone? i do not have an actual guitar or any pedals/amps, only VSTs and plugins

 

Wtf! My name is Jon B****** Had no idea there was an artist using that name.

I don't hear a wah guitar in that song tho. I can faintly hear a clean guitar in the background, but the whole song is mixed kinda poorly tbh. I mostly just hear that bass, some kind of organ and ofc the vocals and drums.

Pettinhouse has a free Funky Guitar sample library for Kontakt https://www.pettinhouse.com/html/download.html

If I didn't already play guitar, and didn't own a Strat, I would probably just use Ample Guitar SC and use something like Kuassa Wah Filter. You can create your own wah by automating a simple bandpass, or resonant lowpass, filter in a whatever EQ. Superfly DSP has a free Auto-Wah plugin that sounds good otherwise.

 

Last edited: Sep 21, 2023

That is a pretty specific sound from an actual guitar, which to my knowledge would be pretty hard to replicate. However there are some wah wah sounds in vst plugins with which you may be able to get something that resembles that sound. Maybe worth looking at Omnisphere and/or possibly Trilian for wah wah guitars. You may need to get the pitch bend wheel going to get some nuance to the sound also. I feel guitars are one of the hardest things to emulate on a computer at least anything with complex chords and transitions. The Roland JV1080 and Studio, have some excellent individual note sounds buried amongst the presets, which for picked patterns sound really nice and are if played correctly quite convincing. There maybe some guitarist out there with more expertise and knowledge than me, but these are my initial thoughts.

As for the response to your post, Jon B is a 90s soul legend, largely inspired by Babyface who I believe was a kind of mentor to him. Very well known in the world of Soul and R&B.