Please help me get my head round Plug Ins.

koneguitarist

I am fairly new to recording with a DAW and using Reaper, been plugging everything in via UA Volt and love all the basic clean tones etc. I have downloaded acer a tweed type simulation, which is quite good and free. However I am looking at something to give me a wider range of tones, though too many seem to be biased towards heavy metal sounds etc. 
I have seen Positive Bias FX2 which seems to have everything, but it seems more like an app than a plug in? Does it do same thing, or should I be looking at other plug ins?
mainly looking for Fender and maybe Vox sounds for country and roots type of recordings. 

Any advice appreciated.

victorludorum

Amplitube. If you don't want to get the whole pack you can download the free Custom Shop app and buy individual amps. I did this for years with just a single '57 Tweed Deluxe type model, which to me still sounds really good even now that I have the whole range to compare against. They did a Custom '57 Deluxe update, but the original one still sounds excellent to me and is cheap.

guitaraj

Guitar Rig would be another option, although I think Amplitube as mentioned above possibly has the edge on sounds there. 

The NeuralDSP plugins are, I think, the best I’ve heard from software but they are pretty pricy per product (each one modelled on different amp or set of amps, many of them are connected to a “named” player). 

PolarityMan

The term plugin just means it is something packaged as a .dll  that can be run inside the DAW host software. The more fully featured ones are indeed kind of like apps in their own right and in some cases can be run standalone if you choose.

Personally I don't rate the bias stuff and am heavily invest in neuraldsp and helix native (which i got cheap as i have a hardware helix). I did also use amplitube for many years and enjoyed it.

Sporky

I gave up on pretty much everything else effect-wise when I got Helix Native. Works for guitars, basses, synths, drums, and everything else I've put through it.

Kurtis

If you're just getting into it, I'd just look for free/trial stuff to begin with. 

If you search "best free/cheap....(whatever)" you'll probably find revues and top-tens usually even with download links.

Try a few then just delete what you don't want. And/or get the full version. 

That's all I done anyway.

It's easy to get lost in the options and forget what you're actually trying to do!

jasonbone75

Sounds like you want Scuffham S-Gear to me: https://www.scuffhamamps.com/product/s-gear

Amplitube, Guitar Rig and Bias won't come even close to the sounds of S-Gear for your use case. Neural do sound great but definitely not what you need.

darius

You can download and trial the NeuralDSP amp plugins free. Fully featured for 30 days.
You might need a bit of help with things like iLok and getting Reaper to recognise and run the plugin, loads of YouTube help out there.
Neural amp sims are really really good and they have a few dedicated to clean tones like you want.

Fez

Computer music magazine have just revamped all the plugins that come free with each issue.

Emp_Fab

@Fez - Thanks for the heads-up.  I just bought a digital copy for £3-odd and was able to download > 3GB of plugins !  Not bad for three quid !!

koneguitarist

Emp_Fab said:

@Fez - Thanks for the heads-up.  I just bought a digital copy for £3-odd and was able to download > 3GB of plugins !  Not bad for three quid !!

Did you buy the Autumn issue, as they are a fiver, do you need mag to download all plugins? 

Fez

@koneguitarist you either need the magazine or the digital version.

koneguitarist

Fez said:

@koneguitarist you either need the magazine or the digital version.

Cheers.

PolarityMan

I dunno if it's changed but a fair few of the computer music freebies used to be functionally equivalent to the free offerings / demos of the same plugins just with computer music branding.

monquixote

PolarityMan said:

I dunno if it's changed but a fair few of the computer music freebies used to be functionally equivalent to the free offerings / demos of the same plugins just with computer music branding.

Indeed. 

If you search youtube you can find loads of videos reviewing the best free plugins of which there are some absolute diamonds such as Valhalla reverb, some UHe synths, 

This massive set of Kilohearts plugins: https://kilohearts.com/products/kilohearts_essentials