Everybody loves the sound of a great guitar amp. Which are the best amp simulator plugins on the market? Find out below, we’ve compiled for you a list with the best amp simulator VST plugins in free and paid format.
Acoustic Feedback Amp Simulator by Softube (Paid)
One thing that is really hard to achieve with a guitar amplifier simulation plug-in or hardware is the interaction in a room between the guitar and an amplifier turned up loud. Enter Acoustic Feedback – because this plug-in does precisely that. Whether you just want single notes to keep hanging a little longer and gently fade to sustained feedback or you want instant and rampant howls for your noise rock, Acoustic Feedback is your friend.
Acoustic Feedback comes bundled with a limited version of the White amp from Vintage Amp Room.
Features
- Realistic simulation (physical modeling) of guitar feedback
- Fully responsive to vibratos, bends, slides, tremolos etc
- Simple user interface: Control amount of feedback with the Feedback knob, and the sensitivity with the Tolerance switch
- Compatible with MIDI foot controls
- Includes a stripped down*, but extremely useful, version of the White amp from Vintage Amp Room
- Please note: Due to careless handling of the White amp, only the Master Volume and Mic position controls remain intact. All other pots have been broken off. Or something like that…
[ Click here to buy + more info ]
Electrum Amp Simulator by United Plugins (Paid)
Electrum is the all-in-one single-screen guitar solution. The last amplifier and pedalboard your guitar will ever need. It matches any guitar style or technique. Rhythm guitar or solo. From jazz to modern metal. Achieve perfect sound for any electric guitar quickly and easily with all options available within a single window.
Features
Everything at Your Finger-tips
Ergonomy means efficiency. Most (even great sounding) guitar software products on the market suffer from the lack of the mentioned above. Don’t dive deep into menus, don’t look for hidden options. Electrum has every option in one screen to provide you with the fastest way from your idea to the perfect sound.
Smart Input Setting
Hit the ‘Analyse Input Level’ button and hit the strings of your guitar as hard as you intend to play. Electrum will set up the input level automatically to find the perfect sweet spot to match your signal’s strength, providing the ideal working point for each of the particular processors. Perfect gain-staging and volume balance helps to get the most out of Electrum.
Sound Like Your Heroes
EQ Matching is Electrum’s secret weapon. Make your guitar sound similar to the tracks that are already out there and you admire. Just load your favourite guitar performances into your track and loop-play them to analyze. Then analyze your guitar sound and let Electrum do the automatic match with incredible accuracy.
All Amps in One
Any guitar, any style. Electrum provides five guitar amps of different levels of gain and distortion. They share common controls for quick and easy setup with no confusion. United Plugins analyzed the most profound amps on the market and created Electrum with these in mind. But they also added several perks, which let you create an amp that is truly yours.
300+ Cabinets
Electrum’s unique guitar cab simulation brings 16 types of cabinet simulations combined with 21 alterations, over 300 models. Then it lets you add resonances and ambience. And it’s no simple IR set, our cabinet produces a great natural sound no IRs can provide.
The Best of all Distortions
Are you into rock and metal? Distortion pedals give clarity to the low end and get you some further drive you need. Electrum provides 3 of them and these again share the common controls for perfect user experience and fast workflow.
Double-Tracking Made Simple
Until now you probably used the classic double-tracking techniques for most guitar parts. So you know how difficult and time consuming it is to record the same thing twice with exactly the same feel and timing. Not anymore. Enable our doubler, record once and you are good to go.
Reverb
A great reverb is essential, especially for great guitar solos. Electrum provides the best of the best. Hall, Room, Plate, Cathedral, Shimmer, Ethereal… You name it. 18 high-end reverb algorithms. They all feature all necessary controls including high and low damping, ducking for the clarity of the guitar performance and much more.
Advanced PolyTuner
Your performance will never be out of tune unless you really want it. Electrum’s super-fast responding and super-accurate poly-tuner is based on advanced spectral analysis. Strike all your strings at once to see which one is out of tune. Or do it one by one with incredible accuracy.
Multi-Modulation
The Modulation section usually includes several stomp-boxes. United Plugins decided to merge them into one to let you blend unique effects. Chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, sweeper and any combination. How about a sweerus or trenger?
Delay? Just a Delay?
Flexible double-tap delay with sync, modulation, saturation… What more would you expect from a guitar delay pedal?
Magic EQ
A simple 7 bands EQ pedal with HP and LP filters would do the job for most guitar tones. But Electrum’s equalizer goes further. Long-time experience and the passion for the perfect tone helped us discover the magic guitar frequency (X) which will give your guitar tone something extra. You need to hear that!
Unnatural Order = Freedom
Electrum’s lets you easily reorder the modules it provides if you want to be extra creative. Perhaps you’d like the reverb heavily amped and then sent to a flanger? Maybe you’d like to try the distortion pedal after the amp? Maybe it is impossible with hardware, but certainly not for Electrum!
Tons of Presets
A lot of producers and professional guitarists were involved in creating the presets for Electrum. Not only you have the global presets that give you the perfect start but each section (each effect) can load and save its presets, too. Everything for a great workflow, so that you can play your guitar instead of clicking your mouse.
Choose your GUI style
Some people like 3D graphics better, some prefer flat design. Electrum provides both. You may choose which GUI suits your more and switch between 3D and 2D at any time. The graphic style has NO effect on the sound nor the CPU load.
Hassle-free software protection
No iLok, no dongle nor internet access is required for activation. United Plugins software uses licence files to activate your software. You can freely use the purchased software on all your computers as long as you are the user.
Realistic 3D Yet Flexible GUI
The photorealistic graphic user interface of the plugin gives you the feeling you are touching the real hardware. But it easily adapts to your needs. You can always drag the arrow in the bottom right corner to change its size – make it smaller to save valuable screen space, or enlarge it to make it easier to use.
64-bit Audio Quality at ANY Sampling Rate
The plugin provides the maximum audio quality you can get. It uses internal 64-bit audio processing and can handle any sampling rate. 192 kHz or even higher.
Smart Bypass
The intelligent way our plugins manage bypassing ensures that you don’t get any clicks or harmful noises when automating the parameter. It also compensates for latency ensuring that the bypass states are perfectly in sync with each other.
Intelligent Sleep on Silence
This plugin intelligently detects whether it makes sense to perform processing at all. And if not, it temporarily turns on sleep mode. In such a state, it requires virtually no CPU at all saves the computing sources for other processes.
[ Click here to buy + more info ]
inValve Effects Amp Simulator by Audified (Paid)
2nd generation of plug-ins simulating proven valve devices with exact modelling of analog circuits and valve characteristics.
These affordable plugins were originally prepared for TC PowerCore, but they now run on native platforms (VST2/VST3/AU/AAX). The latest version is 64 bit and supports the current versions of operating systems. Plug-ins can handle 1-8 channels without a need to use the special multichannel version (standard and multi-channels versions merged into one universal version).
Features
- inValve Preamp: a precise software emulation of a tube amplifier. The sound is not affected too much, it adds just warmth and smoothness you need for analog-like mixes
- inValve Compressor: emulation of a standard analog compressor utilising the characteristics of tubes
- inValve Equaliser: a four-band parametric EQ with additional HP and LP filters.
[ Click here to buy + more info ]
Amplifikation Matchlock Amp Simulator by Kuassa (Paid)
Amplifikation Matchlock is inspired by Fender* combo amps and thanks to the 3rd gen Tube Simulation engine guarantees a more dynamic natural sounding, realistic amp recording experience for guitarists.
Features
- 3 amp types, taken influence from Fender’s* popular amps ; Twin Reverb*, Super Reverb*, Custom Vibrolux Reverb*.
- 2 channels for each amp; Clean and Boosted.
- Power amp Sag and Bias feature / Five types of cabinets / High pass and low pass filters.
- Seven types of workhorse mics: Shure* SM57, Sennheiser* MD421, Sennheiser* MD441, Shure* KSM313, Royer* R121, AKG* C414, Neumann* TLM103.
- Freely adjustable dual-miking with mono or stereo configuration, just like a real-life guitar recording session with mix option.
- Noise Gate and Limiter / Photorealistic graphics for lifelike guitar playing experience.
- Straightforward and easy to use interface / Supports up to 8x oversampling.
[ Click here to buy + more info ]
BIAS Amp 2 Elite Amp Simulator by Positive Grid (Paid)
BIAS AMP 2 is the ultimate virtual amp designer, authentically recreating the tone and feel of real tube amplifiers, while allowing you to mix and match components to create your ideal amp. You can use Amp Match to clone the tone of real hardware or a guitar track, or connect to the ToneCloud® to gain access to thousands of custom amps from artists and recording studios, or upload your own custom tones to the cloud.
Features
- New Dynamic Tone Engine
- New Preamp Power Amp
- New Tone Stacks and Transformers
- New Cabinets Module with Dual Miking
- New Tubes Cabs and Mic Options
- New RTA EQ
- New User Interface
- New Amp Match Technology
- 100 New Amp Match presets
- Blues Expansion Pack
- Bass Expansion Pack
- New IR Loader File Manager
[ Click here to buy + more info ]
Archetype: Nolly by Neural DSP (Paid)
Four state-of-the-art tube amplifier models of Nolly’s own modified amplifiers are at the core of this plugin. Perfectly captured for an uncannily natural feel, covering the vast tonal range the modern guitarist or producer requires in its entirety.
The result is a crystal-clear Clean, a beautifully rich Crunch, a massive sounding Rhythm and a powerful and defined Lead. The crown jewels of Nolly’s collection of guitar amplifiers are now at your disposal.
[ Click here to buy + more info ]
L12X Solid State Amplifier Amp Simulator by Audiority (Free)
L12X is an analogue simulation inspired by the Marshall® Lead 12™ solid state amplifier of the late ‘80s. The original head was an op-amp based amplifier: instead of using tubes or transistors, the op-amp is able to provide a huge amount of gain with very little or no distortion. However, when the amplified signal reaches the voltage applied to power the op-amp, it gets clipped. Marshall engineers exploited that to provide a great sounding amplifier with very few components.
Features
- Analog Modelled Solid State Amplifier
- 2 Channels (Clean/Boost)
- 3 bands tone stack
- Contour
- Integrated Cabinet Simulator
- Resizable interface
- No License File required
[ Click here to download + more info ]
Blue Cat’s Free Amp by Blue Cat Audio (Free)
Blue Cat’s Free Amp is a free guitar amp simulation plug-in offering three amp models created with the acclaimed Blue Cat’s Destructor amp simulation modeller.
Inspired by legendary guitar amplifiers from the real world, the included “classic clean”, “classic drive” and “modern drive” amp models cover a wide range of guitar amp tones, from clean vintage sounds from the early days of electric guitar to modern high gain metal tones.
Features
- Free guitar amp simulation plug-in
- 3 amp models inspired by legendary amplifiers: “classic clean”, “classic drive” and “modern drive”
- Simulations based on the Destructor dynamic distortion and amp modelling engine
- No latency
- Full MIDI control and automation support with silent, zipper-free parameters update, advanced response control and MIDI Learn
- No CPU load on idle: when the plug-in is fed with silence, the processing smoothly shuts down, to optimize the CPU usage of your Digital Audio Workstation
- Customizable user interface with transparency management and zoom
- Smooth Bypass: activate/deactivate the plug-in with absolutely no noise
- Undo/Redo
- Full-featured integrated presets manager
- Copy/paste the state of the plug-in between instances using the system clipboard
- Any sample rate supported
[ Click here to download + more info ]
AmpliTube 5 CS by IK Multimedia (Free)
AmpliTube Custom Shop offers a revolutionary new way to expand your virtual gear library: however you want! Over 400 gear models, available to demo and purchase a la carte, so you can unlock just the gear you want or need.
To start, you’ll get 42 iconic, “must-have” pedals, amps, speakers, cabinets, mics and rack FX. They’re yours free, forever, to use stand-alone or as a plug-in in your favorite recording software.
[ Click here to download + more info ]
Guitar Rig 6 Player by Native Instruments (Free)
GUITAR RIG 6 PLAYER is a free effects processor – great for building effects chains to warm up a signal, and of course for recording guitar. The included FACTORY SELECTION provides a British-style tube amp and matched cabinet, plus 13 effects and tools.
[ Click here to download + more info ]
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