ManyGuitar

Manyguitar is an excellent new guitar 'rompler' from the developers of Manystation. MG borrows alot of the really great guitar/bass samples in Manystation, plus adds nearly 400mb more to the mix. These samples are then run through an excellent-sounding new VSTi engine, complete with amp/cabinet sim + fx.

User Interface:
MG's interface is thoughtfully laid out - its very easy to visualize the signal flow. From an art design standpoint its quite nice to look at as well. My only complaint is that overall its a bit small and 'cramped'. ie. The knobs controlling modwheel and aftertouch modulations are truly tiny at 1024x768. Those at higher resolutions hopefully have huge monitors...

MG is also skinnable, and comes with a second, simplified, skin. This skin looks even better than the default! But unfortunately - as its meant mainly as a 'preset playback' skin - its missing alot of essential control parameters. So most users will stick with the default skin.

Sound:
MG's guitar samples are across the board excellent. No loops - full decays. Not only that but the bass samples are surprisingly some of the best available anywhere.

Add to these great samples the new amp/cab fx and you have something really special. I am not an guitar amp expert but these sound excellent to my ears. They react appropriately to dynamic playing, and can span the entire spectrum between 'vintage crunch' and 'overdriven howling'. A bit of amp/cab added to the basses delivers an incredible sound too.

The Filters/FX in MG are very well done too. They are mostly taken from EVE ONE, which is a good thing. The phaser/chorus sounds very rich; the delay has a pleasing, vintage echo tone; and the filters are some of the best I've heard.

Features:
Everything you need for guitar sounds is present in MG. Well, almost everything. A spring reverb would have been a useful addition, as would have more amp/cab modes. And the delay unit, while excellent quality, isn't capable of ping-pong effects.

Perhaps in a future update? Anyway these are pretty minor omissions - and all can be solved with your own external fx if you really need them.

Documentation:
MG is very easy to use. But there is a very well-written PDF documentation if you require it.

Presets:
MG comes with a bank of 128 presets. MG is so easy to program that these aren't really required, but its still appreciated. Some designers have gone pretty wild and designed some spacey tones that you might find useful - if only as a starting point.

I would have liked to have seen the presets organized a bit better though - if nothing else, just something to seperate the 'normal' presets from the spacey new-age stuff.

Customer Support:
Paul @ Manytone is a friendly, helpful presence. And his forum here on kvr makes it easy to get in touch if you need to.

Value for Money:
Comparing these sounds to other guitar sounds available in more expensive products is no contest - MG wins hands down. Stuff like Sampletank, Hypersonic etc. don't even come close. At $90 VFM is off-the-charts, really. And the lower-priced upgrade from Manystation is a no-brainer.


Stability:
I have had no issues thus far. I've used the EVE ONE platform MG is based on for a long time and it is one of the most stable VSTi I have ever used - so this bodes well for MG in the long-term.

In terms of CPU-usage MG is a massive winner. Even with amp/cab + all fx enabled you will barely feel any cpu hit with a reasonably powerful system. On my Athlon64 3000+ 10 simultaneously played notes (with amp/cab + all fx) takes only 5.5% cpu! So I'd estimate I could hit about 200 notes polyphony on my system, and probably much more than that without all features turned on. Thats alot of guitar... But if you still have a slower system, you can always use the flexbile polyphony controls to tone down MG's resource usage.

Overall:
An excellent plugin by my fellow Canadian! Highly recommended to anyone looking to add some awesome-sounding guitars to their tracks. The price is just icing on the cake.Read Review