Advice for free or inexpensive guitar amp/cab software

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VariKusBrainZ wrote: The Behringer V amp range is pretty cheap, cheaper than some software and is pretty good.
Ive had a Vamp2 for about 15 years and just got the Bass Amp Pro for £69 new (actually designed as a Bass, Guitar, Keyboard solution, despite its name, even has a built is synth that can be played via midi!)
Think my Bass Amp Pro is 10 years old now too, think I paid like 230US back in the day. If you can look past the name, it's serious bang for buck, the editor software is pretty decent too. I use it for bass and mono synths quite a lot. The 'British 80's' Trace Elliot and the 'Californian' Mesa Boogie 400+ is my favorites.

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Is the Plug n Mix $50 sale still going?

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The Ignite amps plugins are very good.

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so many choices listed above . . . I'll add a couple that I've found to work for me (for free)
Boogex2 - both amp & cab emulations included
Heavy Tone & Deep Crunch - both have a cab emulation included

peace
expert only on what it feels like to be me
https://soundcloud.com/mrnatural-1/tracks

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Thank you all for your time and advice!

1. I noticed no one mentioned Revalver Free. Anyone had experience with the few things that come with it?

Also, it seems like there were a LOT of simple pedal emulations that floated around like the BTE stuff.

2. Are there any great VST pedals that could be added to the mix?

3. And are there IR's that are worth the money or are the ones that are freely available high-quality enough to work with?

THANKS!
_____________

Tim Henderson
The Music & Recording Toolbox

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timandmonica wrote:Thank you all for your time and advice!

1. I noticed no one mentioned Revalver Free. Anyone had experience with the few things that come with it?

Also, it seems like there were a LOT of simple pedal emulations that floated around like the BTE stuff.

2. Are there any great VST pedals that could be added to the mix?

3. And are there IR's that are worth the money or are the ones that are freely available high-quality enough to work with?

THANKS!
I like the free GutarRig Player and AmpliTube. ReValver isn't bad, but it seemed to be geared more toward Peavey's amps/combos, and those are generally more harder-sounding with the distortion options. They have some nice amps, and you can't really go wrong with the free stuff they offer, though.

AmpliTube has "pedals" you can add to the mix, but they're IKMMs own pedals; they're not third-party VST plug-ins.

There are some pretty good cabinet IRs available if you do a search.

Otherwise, what others have mentioned here is all good stuff. Just dive in, try a few, and see what you like best. But keep in mind that you do need to "load" the guitar signal properly to get a good sound out of any of the amp sims. You can't just plug the guitar into a mixer (or mic input on your audio device) and have it sound good through the amp sims. You need the proper impedance wherever you're guitar is plugged in; the amp sim can shape the sound after that.

Steve
Here's some of my stuff: https://soundcloud.com/shadowsoflife. If you hear something you like, I'm looking for collaborators.

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planetearth wrote:You can't just plug the guitar into a mixer (or mic input on your audio device) and have it sound good through the amp sims.
That is exactly what we are doing in my studio: Gibson Explorer direct-in to my Fasttrack Ultra 8R (without using the build-in Octane pre-amps) and then into Reaper and straight into Greenmachine II.

Also, most examples of getting a good tone involves chaining a lot of plugins, including a cab-impulse in a loader, while GreenMachine does it all in one plugin, and sounds top notch to boot. Most digital distortion FX (including the drive-options on amp-sims) sound pretty harsh, but so far Greenmachine is the only one I've found that let me dial in that soft fuzzy slightly distorted but almost clean sound. The other impressive thing it does is the combination of drive/distortion with chorus and delivering again a very impressive sound, something I've found very hard to do (or near impossible) with most other (free) stuff I tried.

FreeAmp3 can also do some pretty fine sounds. Listen to my latest track where all the guitar parts where done through FreeAmp3:

https://soundcloud.com/gridlockmomentum/bright-lights
CrimsonWarlock aka TechnoGremlin, using Reaper and a fine selection of freeware plugins.

Ragnarök VST-synthesizer co-creator with Full Bucket

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crimsonwarlock wrote:
planetearth wrote:You can't just plug the guitar into a mixer (or mic input on your audio device) and have it sound good through the amp sims.
That is exactly what we are doing in my studio: Gibson Explorer direct-in to my Fasttrack Ultra 8R (without using the build-in Octane pre-amps) and then into Reaper and straight into Greenmachine II.
The M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8R has a 1 megOhm instrument jack. Therefore, it's already delivering the load the guitar signal needs. Not all audio interfaces have that. You don't need the on-board pre-amps necessarily, but that input is already keeping your guitar from sounding "flat" and dull.

Steve
Here's some of my stuff: https://soundcloud.com/shadowsoflife. If you hear something you like, I'm looking for collaborators.

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planetearth wrote:
crimsonwarlock wrote:
planetearth wrote:You can't just plug the guitar into a mixer (or mic input on your audio device) and have it sound good through the amp sims.
That is exactly what we are doing in my studio: Gibson Explorer direct-in to my Fasttrack Ultra 8R (without using the build-in Octane pre-amps) and then into Reaper and straight into Greenmachine II.
The M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8R has a 1 megOhm instrument jack. Therefore, it's already delivering the load the guitar signal needs. Not all audio interfaces have that. You don't need the on-board pre-amps necessarily, but that input is already keeping your guitar from sounding "flat" and dull.
Agreed. I should have said that if you have a 'good' audio interface, then you can do DI. Also, admittedly the Gibson Explorer has a pretty high level output of its own as well :D

One trick to tackle the impedance problem is to have a stompbox lined up and set it to minimum (or if possible no) effect while keeping it in the signal path.
CrimsonWarlock aka TechnoGremlin, using Reaper and a fine selection of freeware plugins.

Ragnarök VST-synthesizer co-creator with Full Bucket

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Voxengo Boogex
Free and works great.

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Thanks & God Bless,
Bro. Charles
Reviewer's Revival Blogsite | Facebook

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As much as I don't like their points shenanigans, Amplitube is good for the money. A lot of times they have sales on their site or you can find it in marketplace like someone else said.

My favorites are the Orange and the Fender suites.

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crimsonwarlock wrote: It's what I use for my guitarplayer, he's playing a vintage (and incredibly expensive) early sixties Gibson Explorer and we record him DI with Greenmachine as the only processing.
Ta for the hint about GreenMachine

But early 60s (1963 presumably) Explorer :love: That is a holy grail guitar, any chance of a pic?

http://www.gbase.com/gear/gibson-explor ... ral-korina

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Don't know if it's "the best", but Audio Assault has Grind Machine Free and a few other free distortion plugins that might work nicely with it:

http://audio-assault.com/downloads.html

(PC/Mac/32/64/VST/AU/AAX/RTAS)
Logic Pro | PolyBrute | MatrixBrute | MiniFreak | Prophet 6 | Trigon 6 | OB-6 | Rev2 | Pro 3 | SE-1X | Polar TI2 | Blofeld | RYTMmk2 | Digitone | Syntakt | Digitakt | SX7

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Fleer wrote:AmpliTube. You may be able to find it for $50 at KVR Market.
Doesn't Amplitube have a free version? Get that, then use it to demo the paid models and pick a few (they're pretty cheap) that you like and you're done. I think it's the best sounding guitar amp modeling software out there. Scufflaw's is really good to, but I think that's just a paid all at once package and I'm not sure how expensive it is.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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