Gtr Modeler recommendations

[Vaporhead]

Gearbox is, for me at least, the most realistic simulation of real amps. A lot of the others have crunchy distortion and chimey direct sounding clean stuff but not really any real tone in the midrange, which is to me where real guitar tone lives. I have most of the amps that these things model and Gearbox comes the closest to sounding like they actually sound. Nothing has however, so far, sounded exactly like any of my personal favorite real amps but it is unlikely that the individual modeling process that was applied to any of these plugins will be exactly like your own mic placement, mic choice or particular amp.

[songman]

Another vote for Eleven. I sometimes combine it with the Waves stompbox.

[badboymusic]

I have found the best combination to be Waves Stomp Axxepress in front of Eleven. Just a little bit, but what a difference it makes.

[Dylan Freud]

Eleven's the best yet, I think. The most realistic models and they seem to sit really well in the track. I've been doing a/b tests with my Voxes and Marshalls and, aside from rattling speaker cabs and ground hum, they're pretty indistinguishable from the "real" thing. Digi's own "custom" amp is promising as well.

[WildHoney]

Anybody tried this one from Softube? No TDM, which stinks I guess, but curious how it sounds aside from the demos on the site.

http://softube.com/vintage_amp_room.php

[Dizzi45Z]

I have Gearbox Gold and I think it is better than Amp Farm 3. Unfortunately, it is a pain to use in Pro Tools because there is no TDM plug-in version for it and you are required to have the interface plugged in as an ilok sort of thing. So if you want to track with it on, then Line 6 recommends running the standalone and routing a clean signal into Pro Tools (to record) along with a processed version from the interface so that you can monitor with the processed sound. I just put a TDM plug-in before Gearbox so that it will run in realtime as an RTAS. It does have a slight amount of latency, but I have never had any clients complain to me that they notice the latency.

Besides these complaints, I am very happy with Gearbox.

[sunburst79]

Digi's own "custom" amp is promising as well.

I was digging that as well.

[tal herzberg]

Any amp modeling software benefits tremendously from re-amping/mic'ing/re-recording the sounds:

*Send any guitar track into one or two re-amp boxes (www.reamp.com)

*Plug the re-amp outputs into a nice guitar power amp (tube - mesa/marshall/vht)

*Use a guitar cabinet of choice

*Mic the cabinet and re record the sound back into Pro Tools, varying the mics and recording chains for each sound (dynamics/ribbons/condensers/neve/api/etc)

*It is possible to use a silent cabinet (if late at night at the ol'apartment complex)

*Finally - offset the re recorded tracks for DA/AD latency.

[Vaporhead]

Eleven's the best yet, I think. The most realistic models and they seem to sit really well in the track. I've been doing a/b tests with my Voxes and Marshalls and, aside from rattling speaker cabs and ground hum, they're pretty indistinguishable from the "real" thing. Digi's own "custom" amp is promising as well.

Honestly, I find Eleven to sound nothing like my real amps. It, like many of the others, has more buzzy and crunchy stuff than actual midrange vowel sound tone. Just compare it to an old Cream, Tom Petty, Van Halen or any classic guitar tone record and I think it just won't stand up. For me, the Line 6 stuff just seems to get closer to what I'm talking about. I guess though that, in the end, it's subjective and it comes down to what any one person is looking for.

I did this album for a band called Priestess (on RCA) and after trying a whole bunch of real amps, we weren't looking for the standard Marshall thing, we ended up only being able to get what we were looking for with two Pods Y'd together. Worked for the whole record. The reason I mention this is because the guitar sound on that one is all about one version of the midrange thing that I'm trying to point out. But as always, some may like it, some may not.