A recording studio means 2 things for guitar players – Amps and LOUD amps!
It’s rare to get to crank up an amp as much as you would when layering guitar parts on a studio. Bar owners would kick us out and large concerts are rare for many of us (even in non-corona) times .
The alternative of a loud amp with 2-3 mics is very tempting – but not all studio have them (especially modern ones) and home studios rarely have them or the space needed to use them at their best. Also there is a certain need to reamp some guitar tracks and add fx – a scenario where that analog pedal board doesn’t come much in handy.
As a guest on the page and many times session player on AK records studio I would want to share with my top guitar plugins for the studio – a fast easy alternative for post production and recording. All the recommendation below come from my personal remote session work for which this plugins helped out a lot!
My Top Studio Guitar Plugins
The list is not in a specific order and contains some pros and cons about them and for whom the plugin might be!
STL Will Putney – Best Drive Guitar & Diesel Amp Sim
Imagine having that chunky, warm and heavy rhythm tones that fills your heart and drops your jaw – well a diesel VH-4 does that and a good example would be the Epic Adam Jones Tones. With the STL Will Putney You can have that!
The plugin is designed by the American Producer, mixer and engineer Will Putney – responsible for releases from bands like Every Time I Die, The Amity Affliction, The Acacia Strain, Body Count. What’s more surprising about the plugin is that you can achieve a wide range of tone from crunch to hard rock to heavy/death metal – a one in all solution.
The mixer mode is also a small blessing that allows to blend 2 amps at the same time. On the downside the delay and reverb effect on it are no quite on the level of the amp sims.
Line 6 Helix – Best Effect Pedals & for Many Genres
Line 6 has a history of innovation behind plugins and digital fx. The plugin version of the best selling Helix is none the less on of the best (and more multipurpose) guitar plugins out there.
Hundreds of amp sims + a realistic simulation of a guitar rig with Many, MANY effect pedals make it a great solution for 90% of all genres.
What I like mostly about the Line 6 is the quality of the pedals and fx on the guitar rig and also the guitarist friendly display is a added bonus,
On the down side from quite a while of experimenting I would only use a few of the amps on it and would probably use IR’s in place of the existing cabs.
Universal Audio UAD Powered Plug-ins- Comes with LOT’S of other tools
This is a great one for most of uses – but it only comes if you have If you have Universal Audio UAD-2 DSP Accelerator hardware, like an Apollo audio interface or Satellite DSP accelerator.
One the plus side I would highlight the accurate modelling of some amps + Low CPU-overhead versions are provided for the most ‘greedy’ plug‑ins.
The down side is highly debatable on this one. Personally I find the the interface could be more similar to an actual guitar rig and that it would also come without the UAD hardware
Needs more tips on guitar recording or some remote guitar tracks?
