Ever wondered how to inject studio-quality guitar tones directly into your recordings without the hassle of micing amps? Strap in as your host, Steve Stine, pulls back the curtain on the transformative world of guitar plugins and amp sims. I'm here to share my personal arsenal of the most reliable and high-quality software that's elevating my music—and can do the same for yours. From what’s already at your fingertips within your DAW to the game-changing offerings of Neural DSP, STL Tones, and others, this episode is your ticket to finding that perfect sound, whether you're a bedroom rocker or a studio professional.
This journey through the digital landscape isn't just about gear; it's about the nuance of capturing the essence of guitar icons and the powerhouses of tone. Discover how artist-inspired plugins from Neural DSP can bring the likes of John Petrucci and Gojira right into your creative space. Practical, insightful, and packed with my firsthand experience, you're getting a front-row seat to a masterclass in guitar recording excellence. Say goodbye to traditional constraints and hello to unlimited sonic possibilities with my guide to the best guitar plugins and amp sims in the business. Tune in now and learn more!
Ever wondered how to inject studio-quality guitar tones directly into your recordings without the hassle of micing amps? Strap in as your host, Steve Stine, pulls back the curtain on the transformative world of guitar plugins and amp sims. I'm here to share my personal arsenal of the most reliable and high-quality software that's elevating my music—and can do the same for yours. From what’s already at your fingertips within your DAW to the game-changing offerings of Neural DSP, STL Tones, and others, this episode is your ticket to finding that perfect sound, whether you're a bedroom rocker or a studio professional.
This journey through the digital landscape isn't just about gear; it's about the nuance of capturing the essence of guitar icons and the powerhouses of tone. Discover how artist-inspired plugins from Neural DSP can bring the likes of John Petrucci and Gojira right into your creative space. Practical, insightful, and packed with my firsthand experience, you're getting a front-row seat to a masterclass in guitar recording excellence. Say goodbye to traditional constraints and hello to unlimited sonic possibilities with my guide to the best guitar plugins and amp sims in the business. Tune in now and learn more!
Hey Steve Stine here. Thank you so much for joining me for the Steve Stine Guitar Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about guitar plugins, amp sims, and I'm not going to go through every single amp sim or every single company out there, because there's just so many and probably by the time you hear this, there's going to be a bunch more. But what I do want to do is talk about the ones that I think are the best, in my opinion, that I use and how they might be able to help you. There's a couple of different categories of them, actually three different categories that I've thought of. So the first category. First of all, what is a guitar amp sim? Well, when you plug in your guitar into your computer, and this would happen through what we call an audio interface Now, once the guitar is plugged into the audio interface and the audio interface is plugged into your computer, you can then record. You could record your voice or whatever, and certainly you could record your guitar. So you're going to do that through a program called a DAW Digital Audio Workstation, or oftentimes we just call it a DAW. Okay, now some of these amp sims or guitar plugins what they are are software that are made to sound like amplifiers. So instead of plugging your guitar into an amplifier and then mic'ing it and then running that into your computer, you're using this software that is emulating the sound. Emulating again, we could use different kinds of words profiling, you know different, whatever you want to call it, but basically that software is trying to sound like an amplifier. And there's just many, many different kinds of software out there that do this, and what I want to focus on are the ones that I think are the best, that I use a lot, but please understand that there's many other ones out there. There's a lot of free ones out there that you can look into. That I'm not going to be talking about here because, again, I don't know the stability of some of these things. The amps or the companies that I'm going to talk about are ones that are tried and true and are as stable as anything, so that's what I'm going to start with.
Steve:
So, anyway, the first ones I'm going to talk about are the ones that are within the environment itself, like the DAW, the digital audio workstation. You might buy something like, or might own something like, studio One by Personas, or you might own Logic Pro if you're a Mac user or whatever it might be. Now, sometimes what happens is these companies will have amp sims, guitar plugins, amp sims built right into the digital audio workstation itself. So instead of going out and just spending a bunch of money buying some amp sims, you could start with the ones that come with your recording software. Okay, now you know the recording software that you have, you might have a free version and that doesn't come with those, so you need to move to a paid version that does come with those. I mean, I don't, I don't know what you use, obviously, but that's a great place to start is just seeing what your DAW might already have inside of it for an amp sim, okay, or a guitar amp plugin.
Steve:
So now let's move on to some companies. The first one I'm going to talk about is a company called Neural DSP, n-e-u-r-a-l DSP. Now, this company makes a lot of different amp sims and they're all really, really good from actual amps, like they have a Mesa Boogie one. Let me see what else I have installed on my computer here while I'm talking to you. Let's see here. There we go. They have a Saldana one. They have some that are based off Fortin amplifiers if you know who Mike Fortin is. They have an Omega, one for Ampworks Omega, which is pretty cool.
Steve:
They have lots of different ones that are based off an actual amplifier. Then they have these archetype ones that are based off players and the tones of players. You know stuff like John Petrucci, there's one for Nali, there's one for Gojira the band Gojira, if you know them there's one for Corey Wong. There's just all kinds of different ones again. So they have specialized ones for amplifiers and then they have ones for tones of certain players. And I really like the NURL DSP stuff. So it's just again, it's not the cheapest stuff on the planet but it sounds really good and most of the time with those you're going to get, you know, maybe a couple of different kinds of amplifiers built into it. You know, even if you got the Mesa Boogie one, there's a couple of different Mesa Boogies that you can dial in sounds with. The next one up I'm going to talk about is Bagram Bagram Digital and they make these really simple one knob ones that work great. There's one for a Mesa Boogie and there's a bundle that just came out not too long ago for Eddie Van Halen style amplifiers, so 6505, the newest EVH, the EVH3 before Eddie passed away and out of 5150. And those are really great because they're super easy. If you're looking for something really easy to dial in and get a great tone, they don't come any easier than that.
Steve:
The next up, the ones I'm going to talk about next, are the STL Tones. Now, stl Tones makes a ton of really great stuff too. They have different subscriptions where you can get this thing called an amp hub and all it is is a bunch of different amp heads. And then there's cabinets and stuff too, but you dial in your own tones. And then they have one called Tone Hub, which is all these different players that they have different sounds available for those, and then they also have what are these ones called Tonality? So, like they again, depending on when you listen to this podcast, they just came out with one not very long called, called the Josh Middleton, which is absolutely amazing, just absolutely amazing tones, but they have a bunch of different stuff, so that's another one to check out. There's another company called ML Sound Lab, and ML Sound Lab makes a bunch of really great stuff too. Miko over there just makes a bunch of really great sounding stuff.
Steve:
And then, of course, there's Positive Grid and the next batch I'm going to get into here are more for multi-options for amps. So these companies have lots of different amps to choose from, lots of different heads, lots of different cabinets, different pedals, different things like that that you can choose from. We're the ones that I mentioned before are a little more specified, so you're not dealing with 50 different amp heads that are available in this one piece of software. Now we're getting to that. So Positive Grid has the BIOS Amp 2 at the time of this recording and the BIOS FX 2. Now the BIOS Amp 2 is a little more raw guitar tone, you know, profiled captured kind of tone. The BIOS FX 2 has all kinds of different stuff, including the amps, but as well as a bunch of different pedals and different things like that to dial in and sculpt your tone. Both of them are really, really great. The BIOS FX 2 is by far the more popular of the two. You can get it on your computer, you can get it on your phone or your iPad or whatever it might be. There are different things like that and then they have hardware that connects to it and you can use that software along with the hardware that they sell as well.
Steve:
And then we move on to IK Multimedia. Now IK Multimedia makes a very popular program called Amplitube Amplitube. Amplitube 5 is where we are right now, but they've just recently come out with something. Last year they came out with something called Tonex, which is just amazing too, and both of these again. I don't want to get into massive detail with these things, but Tonex does tone capturing, so you can actually take and capture the sound of a guitar amp that you own or something like that, or you can get tones from other people, different stuff like that, but both amazing products.
Steve:
Then we move on to Native Instruments, which has Guitar Rig. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. There was a time when Guitar Rig was kind of the bomb. For me. It was really, really cool, but I don't think it's stood the test of time as well as some of these other things. That's it. Yeah, I'm just being honest with you. Hopefully they'll come up with something in the near future that will be back in the game, but I think there's other things out there that are definitely worth looking at more than Guitar Rig.
Steve:
And then we move on to a company called Tune Track. Now Tune Track is actually famous for easy drummer, superior drummer, that sort of thing. But they do have stuff for guitar as well. That's really easy to dial in. For some people it's too easy because you can't sculpt your tone, you just have what's available, but it's called Easy Mix. And Easy EZ Mix is kind of like the Bagram stuff, where it's kind of just dial it in and go. But I'm going to be honest with you, I very, very much prefer the Bagram stuff. Again, tune Track they haven't really come out with anything. That's just been mind blowing compared to Neural DSP or Bagram or STL Tone, some of that kind of stuff in a while.
Steve:
And then we keep going down the list. Line 6 has their Helix, which is really amazing, which you might have heard of that. Well, now they have a native piece of software that you can use for your computer and run the sounds of the Helix as well, which is pretty cool. I have to be honest, I do not own it. I've seen people use it, but I don't own it just because I have so many other things that are that suffice what I'm looking for. And then there's Overloud THU, which again I just it doesn't hold up to the Neural DSP stuff and all that sort of thing in my opinion. Now there's other people that would definitely disagree with me, and it's worth checking it out and see what you like.
Steve:
And then the last one I have on the list here is JST, which is Joey Sturgis Joey Sturgis Tones and he's been updating some of these software that he's got as well. He's got, like Jeff Loomis if you know who Jeff is Jason Richardson, some of that kind of stuff and again, pretty good stuff. Does it hold up to the Neural DSP stuff and things like that? I think that's a decision that you'd have to make. A lot of these companies have trial versions so you can try them out, see what you think and kind of go from there. So, anyway, hopefully that makes sense. That gives you something to kind of work with, and so that's it. Take care, stay positive. Thank you for joining me and make sure you check out guitarsoomcom If you're looking for any guitar lessons, anything like that. We now have an all access membership, which is really awesome, and just keep supporting me in whatever way you can. I sure do appreciate it. So take care and I'll talk to you soon.