Free VST guitar ampsims review #1

Hello, music lover! Today we gonna discover free Poulin's VST Ampsim plugins. All sounds are not EQ'ed, uncompressed and don't have any post-processing.

Plugins Author's Page

After ALL ampsims I used LePou2 impulse response plugin with "Catharsis-awesometime-fredman" impulse 1on-preshigh.

#1:  LePou HyBrit.

Settings I used

I like this amp. Something between red and green sound. A bit crunchy but not too much. Design is also good. Textures are fine and it's pleasant to see good picture and imagine real amp.

 Download HyBrit

#2:  Le456.

My tweaks

 Two-channel good metal amp. Deep and bright sound with clean channel and characteristic "metal" sound with distorted channel which has two types of overdrive: HI and LOW gain. Supports stereo (if you have double-tracked guitar on input then plugin will process them individually and stereo doesn't convert to mono). But I noticed that there's a hiss on high frequences (and not only on this amp). But it's just not critical artefact of digital distortion emulation.

 Download Le456

 #3:  LeCto.

My settings

 Our third amp. I think that it is "tribute" to Rectifier. It sounds deep in the mix but it's important to tweak accurate and think about result, not about only "ultrahypersuperdistorted" sound :) Has three channels: Vintage, RAW and Modern. If you use Guitar Rig: this amp is similar to Gratifier. FlatHill in Revalver Peavey MKIII. One of plugins that have "Resonance" knob.

 Download LeCto

 #4:  LeXTAC.

Tweaks for clean channel

 One of my favourite amps. Design is cool, as usual. Has three channels. I used "Yellow" in this sound. Also it has pre-EQ. So you can make input signal brighter without adding EQ before amp (good for your machine resources). Two new switches: Gain Structure and Plexi. Try to switch them and you will hear little difference. So here's demo:

Download LeXTAC

 #5:  SoloC Head.

Overdrive channel settings

 Last "patient" in our review :) SoloC Head designed firstly for solo. It has a lot of good mid frequences in 1k-3k region. It is two-channeled amp. Each of them has two different types of sound (illustrated on screenshot). "Bright" button gives your sound more high frequences. But be careful! A lot of HF can injure your sound. Better use exciter instead of extreme EQ. Good for epic solos (don't forget to put delay stompbox after).

Download SoloC Head

Conclusion.
As you can see it is not nessesary to buy "hardware" amp and cabinet - you can use free software. Somebody thinks that software can't emulate "tube" sound. Nevermind, each person has different point of view. Just choose one you like :)

In next post I'm gonna teach you how to reduce software "hiss" on high frequences.

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Artur