Guitar amp simultation plugins state of the art is really polished, I mean high level quality: major amplifier production companies have developed “virtual versions” of their best models. The use of these plugins instead of real amps is becoming more and more common, especially in home productions, thanks to low costs. Even if I like more a well miced head + cab amplifier, I believe that these plugins are becoming really valuable.
In this context you can find really good free plugins: emulation masterpieces, with processing results comparable to their “expensive brothers”, moreover they’re free to download and use. In this post I’d like to let you listen to some of the best free amp simultation plugins you can find on the web: LePou Lecto, LePou Legion, LePou Le456, TSE X50, Ignite Amps NRR1. I used a song by Feared (thanks to Ola Englud for his kindness to let me use this song), if you don’t know Feared I really advice to visit their website, latest album is coming and I think it’s worth to have it.
This is the song, as of a recording by Ola:
Below you can find 5 different mixdown of the song, with drums and bass mixed by me (with basic kit of EZDrummer and a layered bass). Guitar tracks are all “reamped” with this fx chain: TSE 808 -> Amp Sim -> Poulin LeCab2 with God’s Cab impulses (settings are shown in the images below). We’ll talk about TSE 808 and impulses for cab emulation in the future, now I want to show you what these plugins can do. No post EQ is applied to guitars, you’ll listen just to the result of the plugins chain.
LePou Lecto
LePou Le456
LePou Legion
TSE X50
TSE X50 v1.0.2 (edit february 10th, 2013)
Ignite Amps NRR-1
I like very much LePou Legion, I think that it can render a great low end mantaining a clear sound. If you want to push the sound to the next level some subrative EQ is necessary, anyway I really like it.
What about you? Which do you like most? 🙂
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