KVR Audio

dickiefunk · Post by **dickiefunk** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 7:24 pm

Hi,

I'm not a guitarist but record guitars from time to time and noticed there is just stacks of freeware amp sims out there!!?

Because I have no experience with real guitar amps and their tone and response I need some help in getting some free amp sims for my setup.

I heard about these :-

1/ LePou amp sms
2/ ABG amp sims
3/ Aradaz amp sims
4/ Nick Crow amp sims
5/ Freeamp 3.5
6/ Auraplugs California Sun
7/ Simanalog Guitar Suite
8/ Voxengo Boogex
9/ DirtHead 0.8
10/ Juicy 77
11/ Studio Devil BVC

Which are the best of these and which would you pick to cover a wide variety of tones?

Thanks

JerGoertz · Post by **JerGoertz** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 8:18 pm

GreenMachine Amp II was recently given freeware status by its developer.

You might check that one out.

pandashake · Post by **pandashake** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 8:27 pm

dickiefunk wrote:3/ Aradaz amp sims
10/ Juicy 77
11/ Studio Devil BVC

There's my narrowed down list. Make the Aradaz the Green Amp which is good for both clean and crunch sounds. Juicy 77 (with tweaking) is great for "metal"/heavier tones. BVC mops up in the clean-to-crunch area.

But for an all-in-one package, Revalver is still the king.

Worth paying for.

Mudcat007 · Post by **Mudcat007** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 8:50 pm

You are going to get a variety of opinions on this.

Lately I have been using Voxengo's Boogex in conjunction with LePou's LeCab. I turn off the speaker cabinet in Boogex and load two speaker cabinet IRs into LeCab. This is a lot more flexible as you can blend different speaker models, run them in stereo or mono, reverse phase, and apply hi-pass or lo-pass filtering. I find this combination works great for everything from clean to crunchy to pretty hi-gain (although I don't venture into this territory very often).

I recommend the speaker cabinet IR samples (both the free samples and the commercial packages) from Recabinet: http://recabi.net/site/

The free samples cover most of your basic sounds so you don't have to drop any coin if you don't want to.

blueman · Post by **blueman** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 8:53 pm

dickiefunk wrote:
Which are the best of these and which would you pick to cover a wide variety of tones?

Well, it's an easy pick for me. Have you heard LePou's latest?!

LePou - between his 3 amps and cab loader you can get most needs met (minus the jangly Fender and Vox tones)

http://lepouplugins.blogspot.com/

pattonfreak1 · Post by **pattonfreak1** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 8:58 pm

I can speak only of high gain sims. And as such here's my list:
1: LePou's new LE456 emu
2: ABG Metal Heads (Particularly C-60)
3: Dirthead

Mudcat007 · Post by **Mudcat007** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:25 pm

blueman wrote:...LePou - between his 3 amps and cab loader you can get most needs met (minus the jangly Fender and Vox tones)

http://lepouplugins.blogspot.com/

With the right cabinet IRs I think it's possible to get a semi-VOXy sound out of the Hy-Brit stack thingy he came out with recently.

shogger · Post by **shogger** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:26 pm

The 3 LePou amps would give you a great variety from vintage to modern, from jazz to metal.
Don't forget that a good amp is worth zero without a good speaker cabinet. So get a nice plugin which can load cabinet impulses and feed that with good impulses. Do a search, there are quite a few floating around.
And then take a few dozen hours time to get started to know the gear. If you don't know what you're doing no good amp will give you the desired results. If you don't do that the only real chance to come close is to buy an amp sim pack by one of the big boys. They have presets with everything set up.

Shogger

The Chase · Post by **The Chase** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:49 am

Boogex by a considerable margin.

glokraw · Post by **glokraw** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:21 am

Never tried Boogex, but now its on the to-do list, I like the Lepou collection, and Acmebargigs, and also the variety with Freeamp 2.5/3.0, but the free CamelCrusher/CMFuzz, and linux Rakarrack are the ones I use most often.
Cheers

tomg · Post by **tomg** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:41 am

I'm not much into the newer sims. Most of them sound harsh to my hears. I just cleaned out my free amps and this is what I've got left.

Studio Devil BVC - Fender/Marshall
Green Amp II - Clean and distortion
ABG - DIG 2.0 - Rockman/GK

Nick Crow - 7170 - Marshall/Bigger amps
+ keFIRv1 or Boogex - Impulse Loader
+ Beamsonic Impulses

EDIT: Forgot California Sun.. Very quick and easy.

dickiefunk · Post by **dickiefunk** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:38 am

The Chase wrote:Boogex by a considerable margin.

Doesn't LePou's LeCab do the same job?

obstgegenrechz · Post by **obstgegenrechz** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 10:47 am

My favorite is the Simulanalog GuitarSuite and i tried your whole list

recently found some GUIs for it: http://requietus.blogspot.com/2008/12/s ... e-gui.html

Mudcat007 · Post by **Mudcat007** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:43 pm

dickiefunk wrote:
The Chase wrote:Boogex by a considerable margin.
Doesn't LePou's LeCab do the same job?

Boogex can load one IR and it has the amp simulation built in. It is possible to load any IR into Boogex or you can switch the speaker cabinet off and use a separate convo based plug to load cabinet IRs.

LeCab can load two separate IRs which can then be manipulated and blended. LeCab does not include an amp sim or preamp sim. You have to stick one in front of it.

LePou's HyBrit Full-Stack and Solo C Full-Stack are amp sims with LeCab incorporated into the plugin.

Andywanders · Post by **Andywanders** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:32 pm

mgrata wrote:
The Chase wrote:Boogex by a considerable margin.
Yes, a very considerable margin

Indeed... An extremely considerable margin...

Best of the freeware amp sims?