Slayer

Let's keep this simple; if you like heavy electric guitars, crushing riffs, big powerchords and wailing leads you need reFX Slayer 2.

What is it?
Slayer is a guitar, amplifier, cabinet and stomp box effects module in one. Lets go with what it can't do as that is much easier to cover.

Slayer is not the last word on clean electric or acoustic model guitars. It is however, very convincing as a electric guitar, from crunchy riffs to massive chords and lead lines that can utilize a lower octave effect, a fuzz box going into a fully distored amp and still have room for tonal manipulation.

Guitar models have a sliding pickup for either single or humbucking pickups and a plethora of tones thanks to placement of effects pre or post amp, or both. It is possible to get clean tones and even aggressive acoustic sounds. It has to do with where your distortion is and what you do with the various combinations.

Pros: many sounds real guitars make, lots of choices in how to create sounds, from infinately sustaining acoustic to mutes that Rock Godz play a mile a minute.

Cons: no matter how good the sound you have to learn to play and think like a guitarist/bassist

I was set to dislike Slayer. Just the name brought me back to big hair and spandex. Sure, there's lots of closet metal fetishists who play keys and wanted to have the fun their guitarists had and those people will love Slayer. However, if you walk into it with the ability to be fair if you are like me, you will be dumbfounded at how good a guitar synth can sound.

Let's discuss what's under the hood, so to speak.

Let's start with the guitar body first. You'll notice a pick across the strings. Move the pick to the neck and bridge positions and listen to the changes. They range from massive to subtle.

There are controls like slap and dynamics along with delay and release you'd never find on a real guitar, but these are crucial to creating the guitar model's nuisance. There are controls for type of material and size of the guitar's body. These alone give great flexibility but there are even bigger ways of making the right sound. The menu with strumming and arpeggiating styles has a lot to do with the final sound as does the guitar hue slide.

You'll also notice many styles of picking and coils. A rule of thumb; no coils means acoustic or clean sound, one coil means a more single pickup or single coil sound and two pickups means fat guitars ready for getting loud with. Still, if you look back at the picking styles you'll notice some are designed for bass and like guitar, while a bit unweildy you can get some terrific bass sounds out of Slayer.

Then there is the amp; there is a collection of amp types and speaker cabinets. When mixing and matching pay lots of attention to the feedback and distortion controls. They can create some very exotic sounding instruments but they are heavily connected to each model and a feeding back acoustic with a bit of fuzz just sounds odd, probably cool, but not always what you want. The modes are self evident, pay attention to the bass, mid and treble controls as they too can easily change the amp from mild to wild.

Last and far from least, there are sixteen effects, all looking like and for the most part acting like a stomp box pedal. The rotary and chorus pedals are lovely as are the delay and harmonizer.

Many of the presets were same sounding, going for that metal sound that is bigger than life and twice as loud. They guitar sound was still good but generic, and like a good player if you understand which pedals go in the right order and pre versus post amp you wil need time to learn.

I'm a guitarist and play frequently. I play synths out necessity. When I learned keyboard there were no midi guitars. They were 10 years away. I'm very impressed as a guitarist and wouldn't mind the rig that the Slayer 2 guitar has.

Your best bet towards true character from guitar is learning it while paying attention to how a guitar is mixed, the kind of solo equipment and the note selection. If you can come close to this you'll find Slayer 2 invaluable unless you use real guitarists or loops (hiss, boo!)

Well worth the ~$90 price tag. Not only is it accurate within it's musical styles, it is capable of more styles than people may be aware. From a personal level, guitar is an important instrument, one that is usually terribly sampled or so pristine you wonder if the player or sample developer had a clue as to how difficult they were making it for skilled players to actually sound remotely close to real guitar. Every brass player I know feels similarly about their instrument.

I like reFX's virtual guitar because it sounds like real guitars within the style it is modeled after as well as the crazy weird sounds that even guitarists would be thrilled to be able to make. I wish there was a reFX guitar effects processer. It would be on my wish list in fact.

If you like the kind of sound Slayer, still don't like the name, is a gem.Read Review