Neural DSP Recommendations?

[bharris22]

Hi Everyone,

I was thinking of picking up 2 or 3 of the Neural DSP guitar amp sims during the current BF sale, and was wondering what this esteemed group thought of the various models? As this will likely be my last Neural purchase until (hopefully) the next BF sale, I would like to cover as many bases as possible - clean, to crunch, to high gain. While I respect Tosin Abasi, for example, I will never be able to play like him and don't necessarily want to sound like him. I would just like a wide range of good guitar tones, and I am assuming that 2 or 3 of the Neural suites will get me there.

Thanks!

[poonna]

I think Archetype Gojira + Cory Wong will cover a lot of ground.

[bharris22]

Thanks! I was thinking of something along those lines - Cory Wong + Nolly, for example.

[releasefromwithin]

Download the trials of each and see what works best for you. I have a few. I prefer Plain over Nolly as I can dial in tones quicker but both are absolutely fantastic. Cory Wong has excellent cleans but I only use 2 of the 3 amps and has a great wah if you have an expression pedal. Gojira does wayyy more than just heavy and the whammy pedal is a lot of fun. Soldano is more limited but can do a LOT of things very well. Tim Henson has the multivoicer which is really fun to play with. The Cali suite is very highly regarded but there's something in there that doesn't work for me. I wasn't a fan of the Abasi.

So for the ones I own, I tend to use Plain and Gojira the most. For my needs, I'd rank them like this: Plini, Gojira, Soldano, Nolly, Tim Henson, Cory Wong. I'm into everything from sparkling cleans to pretty brutal.

[zvenx]

Indeed I think the best answer is above my post.. Download and try them.

I have six of them.

Abasi, Cory Wong, Gojira, Plini, Tim Henson and Slo 100, I only bought the last two this sale (yesterday) but had tried them and had put them on my to buy list.

I tend to lean more towards clean sounds most of the times and I dont find many amp simulators do clean well (the only other one that I use now all the time is Fuse Audio's F59, but I digress).

If I had to repurchase them I would in this order:

Gojria for sure is my favourite.

Tim Henson I like a lot especially for clean tones.

Slo 100

Plini

Cory Wong

Abasi

I think they have gotten better over time hence why their newer ones Gojira and tim Henson are at the top of my list.

They are slowly moving the older ones (Plini, Cory Wong, etc) to their newer technology.
I think Abasi has already been 'moved' to the newer technology.

rsp

[medienhexer]

Don’t forget about the Nameless. For me, it’s the logical progression of a Marshall with great crunch.

[darkogav]

I picked up Cory Wong a while ago. It was fun at first, but TBH.. I hardy ever use it now. I use AT5 and STARK much more. They seem better to me. I don't know, maybe Neural make better heavy gain amp sims.

[GreyLion]

Like zvenx, I just bought Tim Henson and SLO-100. The SLO is great, as expected, but the Tim was a surprise. I hadn't demo'ed it before the BF sale kicked in. The promo video is extremely off-putting, making it sound like a gimmick plug. And it's not. Yeah, the Multivoicer works fine, but I mostly find it to be annoying. The three amps have great clean and dirty sounds, with the trademark Neural glorious tone. The acoustic amp actually sounds kinda acoustic-y. Highly advise to check it out, if you haven't already!

[MogwaiBoy]

Bought the Soldano yesterday on sale - sounds absolutely great. Not super versatile, but the most convincing high gain I've heard in a sim yet (and cleans are surprisingly good). I also have Plini and Cory Wong. Plini is definitely versatile. Was interested in Nolly but I saw a SLO vs Nolly video and decided the SLO had the edge. Might demo the Fortin stuff and compare to Mercuriall Spark today.

I'm still waiting for Neural or anyone to do a proper blackface Fender (Twin or Deluxe) that breaks up correctly - apparently there might be one in Gojira?

[voidhead23]

Really depends on the music you're into, and the amp sound you like. Also keep in mind that any Archetype is going to give you between 3-4 amps...which is a crazy amount of versatility just in one purchase. Three Archetypes would be utter overload for me. Every plugin can do cleans, crunch and hi-gain pretty well, with the exception of Cory Wong (cleans to light dirt) and the Granophyre (great gain sound but nearly impossible to get a passable clean tone out of it).

I've tried just about their entire catalog and find most of their stuff really...generic. Like every guitarist they team up with is in that djent/prog camp and, since they all have similar aesthetics, a lot of the amp sims just come out sounding the same. Lots of saturation in the hi-gain (think Peavey and Mesa) and pretty sterile cleans. I think if you're a part of that sound or appreciate it, you'll notice the subtle differences better than i can. But most of that stuff just doesn't excite me.

I think the new Tim Henson plugin is a great all-rounder...a great and pretty complete suite of effects, a good range of actually characterful dirt, it does the normal clean sound as well as that super-hifi Godin LGX acoustic thing (the Abasi does this as well, and a little better, but the gain heads in Abasi are boring to useless), and there are a boatload of presets. Unfortunately, i find Henson as a person insufferable which makes it difficult for me to pull the trigger on that one.

My absolute favorite is the Fortin Nameless. I bought that when it first came out and it has pretty much been my sound since then. Everything i make is about 90% the Nameless and maybe 10% the Abasi. No matter what i demo i just keep coming back to the Nameless, and my music is about 40% clean tones. It just has this weird, wild, raw and slightly unruly character that really stands out amongst Neural's other offerings, and it has a pretty wide range of tones, and, critically, a wide range of gain, if you're willing to approach it like a real amp. Every guitar i plug into it sounds great, which isn't the case with some of their others. But i'm coming at things from the Birthday Party/Shellac/Sumac/Godflesh camp of searing, jagged tones (along with a healthy dose of Tycho and The Cure) where the bass is doing most of the heavy lifting in the low mids, which isn't everyone's cup of tea.

I don't think people really show off what this plugin can do (and this is just one amp), so i threw this together to try and demonstrate a range of tones from the Nameless:

https://soundcloud.com/izalith/okoweza

That's my 0.2 pesos, but obviously demo as much as you can. They're all top-tier stuff.

[Jkist]

If I could only have one, it would be the Plini. Its simultaneously one of the most versatile and also has the most tasteful distortion to my ears. That said, Gojira is surprisingly good, even if you do less high gain stuff with it. Nice diversity of effects too, with the octavor and stuff. The Tim Henson has a lot of uniqueness, I don't think theres any other guitar plugin out there that does everything it can as well as it does.

[MogwaiBoy]

Currently demo'ing Gojira, Cali and Nameless - tough call which one I'll get.

By the way... Don't a lot of these artists already use modelling? I don't recall seeing Plini using a real Friedman BE amp on stage, yet apparently the second amp in his Archetype is a BE. How does that work? Did they model a real Friedman, or his AxeFX presets?

Also, how are you all plugging your guitars in? I wonder if I'm doing it wrong. I'm literally going guitar > 10 foot cable > Focusrite interface with "INST"rument button on... but I seem to get this steely/raspy "CSHHH" type of sound in the attack that seems really hard to EQ out. Lowering the tone control on the guitar helps but it's still there. It's the kind of sound that has always kept me away from amp sims. Maybe I'll catch a soundfile of it. But I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong - would it be better to plug into a buffered pedal first, to lower the signal impedance? Use a longer cable? Or is there a specific DI box that works wonders? Or are you always using post-EQ to tame to fizz/rasp?

[GreyLion]

I seem to get this steely/raspy "CSHHH" type of sound in the attack that seems really hard to EQ out. Lowering the tone control on the guitar helps but it's still there.

I don't know if this will help, but I'm getting similar transient weirdness, too, across several of the plugins. Not sure what's causing it, but turning down highs seems to help a bit. Turning off the plug's compressor helps a LOT, for me, and compressor-on presets seem to be the ones giving me the most weirdness. I also mutate the presets a bit in that I clean them up, then run my MXR Classic Overdrive between the guitar and interface. I'm really liking the tones I get with matching levels, with just a little drive added by the MXR. I mostly like cleaner sound, blues to rock, no metal.

And it's a work in progress, of course, as I always discover that I need to continue to monkey with tones that I thought were perfect. As do all guitarists.

[poonna]

Could it be that the gain on the audio interface preamp is too high? It seems to me that Neural DSP plugins like the input level to be a bit on the lower side.

[zerocrossing]

Could it be that the gain on the audio interface preamp is too high? It seems to me that Neural DSP plugins like the input level to be a bit on the lower side.

This. I was waiting for a Cortex as a replacement for my Kemper and to pass the time I just used demos of all the available Neural DSP amps, and at first I thought, “these are horrible.” I remembered that in some other amp sim that I had similar issues and I put my Blackstar HT-Dual pedal in between my guitar (Steinberger GM-4T) and the UAD Apollo and the sims sprung to life.

(In the end I got sick of waiting for the Cortex and after some reports of issues, I ended up getting an AxeFX 3 mk2, which I really love.)