7 Amp Sims Every Producer & Guitarist Should Know About

2. IK Multimedia Amplitube 4

IK’s Amplitube 4 also boasts updated modeling technology on many of their amps, which they’ve dubbed “Hyper-Realistic” tone. Amplitube has always had good sound quality - the newest models are a little more open-sounding than in older versions, and IK pays particular attention to the dynamic response as well, which players should appreciate. Users can mix and match not only amps and cabs, but also preamp, tone stack, and power amp sections, and once again there are flexible routing options including dual amps, cab and effects.

Like POD Farm, Amplitube 4 comes in free, regular, and Deluxe versions. The full collection tops out at over a hundred-something amps and is continually growing thanks to IK’s Custom Shop where users can select, audition, purchase and download individual new amp models to augment the included sims. Recent collections have focused on specific companies’ products like Fender, Marshall and Orange.

Another new distinguishing feature is Cab Room, a comprehensive environment for selecting and customizing the cabinet and mic components. You can not only select different cabinets but whip up your own custom designs, specifying cabinet dimensions, choosing and combining specific speakers, positioning mics in 3D and even tweaking the ambience of the virtual room. The sound of particular speaker cabinets and mics is a big part of any guitar sound and these options should not only please guitarists, but make their engineers and mixers very happy as well.

3. Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5

Guitar Rig 5 Pro is Native Instruments’ offering and it’s another one that’s been around for quite some time. Guitar Rig, like many Amp Sims, is a little less specific about which amps they’ve modeled (this has to do with trademarks, licensing, & legal agreements) but it’s pretty obvious what they are, based on the descriptions and graphics. It’s not as large a collection (17 amps) as the previous two Sims, but it covers all the bases in terms of the major different types of amps. Since the Guitar Rig interface is basically a rack, NI includes a large suite of FX and it’s easy to sculpt a very finished sound within the plugin, saving your best efforts as custom presets.

Like IK, Guitar Rig opts for the “same control panel for all models” approach which is convenient for experimenting, but not as accessible for a guitarist looking to precisely duplicate a specific sound he dialed up on a real amp. But the sound is good: to my ears, the models all share a tight, well-controlled character that sits well in a mix. 

4. Waves GTR3

GTR3’s amp collection (26 amps) is similar in scope to NI’s, incorporating both vintage models (Clean, Crunch) and High-Gain offerings (plus a few bass amps, like most of the other Sims), mix and match cabs (up to 2 per amp) and various virtual mics to round out the basic set. As with all of Waves’ analog emulations, the modeling is second-to-none.

There’s also the separate GTR3 Stomp collection; 26 FX in a chain of up to 6, and the GTR3 ToolRack can incorporate amp/cab/mic plus effects either as a plugin, or as a standalone application for live use.

5. Softube Amp Room bundle

Softube’s Amp Room bundle incorporates their three Amp Sims - Virtual Amp Room, Metal Amp Room, and Bass Amp Room - into one collection. Unlike most of the other companies listed here, Softube opted for simplicity over features and add-ons. The entire bundle has only five amp models: Vintage Amp Room offers three models—the “Brown” amp (Fender Twin Reverb), the “White” amp (Marshall JCM 800),  and the “Green”amp (Vox AC30). Metal Amp Room offers only one (Engl Powerball), as does Bass Amp Room (Hiwatt DR103).

There are basic cabinet and mic options but the whole point is to provide the closest thing to what you’d get right off the mic is a live recording situation, without any distracting bells and whistles. To that end, many people feel that the Amp Room sound and dynamic response is more open, natural and finely-detailed than many other Amp Sims and has even more of a real “analog” vibe to it. The Amp Room bundle is available in the usual native plugin formats, but also for the UAD hardware platform. UAD has their own collection of very excellent Amp Sims, but I decided to restrict this roundup to native software.

For those who want to bring the Softube quality to guitar effects as well, they do have suitable standalone FX plugins including Spring Reverb and Tube Delay, plus a guitar Feedback Simulator that, with a little practice, could be just the ticket for those late-night virtual guitar sessions.

6. Positive Grid Bias Amp & Peavey Revalver

I’m including these two products together because they have a key feature in common. Both Amp Sims offer customization options down to the circuit level, providing the ultimate degree of control for electronics-savvy would-be DIY amp designers. In addition to the usual amp collections and feature sets, both plugins let the user dial all the way down down to the circuit component level - tubes, transistors, capacitors, inductors - and design their own virtual amp (CAD-style). 

Each of these plugins also offers an additional special feature. Bias Amp has “Amp Match”, which lets the user capture the sonic signature of any real amp, and Revalver includes “ACT” (Audio Cloning technology), which will “profile” the sound of your guitar and then transform it into another guitar via a set of presets, providing a greater variation of virtual sound sources for its amps.

Admittedly, these DIY circuit modeling features are not for the faint of heart or the more performance-oriented user, but with both Bias Amp and Revalver you still get a ton of excellent finished, ready to play amp models, and for any adventurous tinkerers out there either of these plugins may be the one to beat. 

7. Apple (Logic) Amp Designer & Avid (Pro Tools) Eleven

Both of these are exclusive to the parent company’s DAW. Amp Designer is built in to Logic Pro, and Eleven is a Pro Tools-only add on. But unlike some other DAWs’ included amp sims, both of these stand up to any of the third-party stuff out there.

Logic’s Amp Designer offers twenty-something amps, with the usual mix and match cabs and positionable virtual mics. They’re mostly classic/vintage models with a few boutique and high-gain sims as well, and despite the generic names and same-panel-for-all approach, it’s easy to identify and dial up the distinctly different characters of all the amps you’d need, plus the quality of the modeling is excellent. 

Eleven (of course named for a famous scene in the movie Spinal Tap) has a slightly smaller collection, more closely hewing to the original amps’ layouts, but once again the sound is top-notch with nice details like speaker breakup added to the standard amp/cab/mic options. 

If you’re not on the prowl for particular boutique amps or an unusual level of tweakability, but just need a good-sounding, good-feeling collection of amps - and if you work in one of these DAWs - you might find what you’re looking for has been right there all along. 

Honorable mention

Of course I’ve skipped over plenty of equally good Amp Sims, including many freebies. Amp Sims like Overloud TH3, Scuffham S-Gear and Brainwork BX all provide excellent amp modeling and many users swear by them, even over the more familiar products I surveyed here. If you’re looking for good Sim, the only real test is to grab a demo and play though it. Selecting an Amp Sim, like a real amp, is a personal decision and with the current crop there are no wrong choices.