Best Guitar VST, Electric and Acoustic

The best I know both require Kontakt. In addition to Orange Tree's product, which you mention the cheaper offering from Indiginus are pretty good, less full featured but very useable.

I prefer using OT's Evolution Strawberry over Real Strat for electric, but I still use both as they have different sounds. For electric you also have to factor in the need for a decent amp sim. I use Amplitube mostly but I also have Guitar Rig 4 Essentials which widens the pallet.

An alternative product is Strum Acoustic  and Strum Electric from ASS - These are physical modelling rather than sampled. I have never tried them myself, but there are demo versions for download.

Keep your eyes on the annual/semi-annual NI sales... they just had one recently I think... 50% off IIRC. Grab a cheap player product if you don't have one already, like esoundz's's's Infinite Player (currently on sale for $11), and use that to crossgrade to Kontakt full during one of those 50% off sales... If you're serious about serious Kontakt libs, like OT and many others, then you really should bite the bullet on Kontakt.

I've finally figured it might be an easier route to buy a guitar and learn to play it as I've yet to be impressed by any emulation.

I'll let you know how I get on with that.  Meantime I'll continue calling in favours from those that can play a guitar...

The best simulations are based on Kontakt, because Kontakt provides the scripting that allows for variation and expressive articulation. Without that, you just have boring, unconvincing samples. The best simulations are the ones that best exploit the potential of Kontakt's scripting language. This is true of sample libraries in general, but especially so for the guitar because it is such an extraordinarily expressive instrument.

I am actually not a fan of Native Instruments the company, yet I encourage everyone to make the investment in the full Kontakt product. It will actually save you money in the long run if you're at all serious about  using sampled instruments.

There are many low-priced and free libraries out there once you have Kontakt - check out SampleTekk (which has frequent half-price sales), Indiginus (grab all the $5 specials), Hollow Sun (vintage synths and weird stuff) and Lyrical Distortion (varying quality but cheap guitars). Here's a free zither, a Finnish instrument called a kantele, that I have used in place of acoustic guitar. There are also lots of great free and cheap drums and percussion.

Greg Schlaepfer's Orange Tree Samples is a highly regarded library developer, who sells electric, acoustic and bass guitar libraries. He's also got a really cool flute lib out now. I use his Evolution Electric Guitar, and the acoustic steel has been on my wishlist for a while now. Listen to the demos; you will be impressed.

I see where Prominy LPC LE Electric Clean Guitar is now a no-brainer at audioMIDI.com for $15.  (MSRP $169)
Requires a full version of Kontakt.
JV

Jonbouy


I've finally figured it might be an easier route to buy a guitar and learn to play it as I've yet to be impressed by any emulation.
 
I'll let you know how I get on with that.  Meantime I'll continue calling in favours from those that can play a guitar...

It seems certain that NOTHING is as real as a real guitar in all of its splendor and spontaneity, and yet, in limited and applied articulations, I think a person could create some convincing and suitable guitar emulations. I guess it all depends on what a persons expectations and needs are, versus the capabilities of these limited emulations. Unless I learn to play guitar like Jimmy Page or Jeff Beck, I'll likely never emulate them with software. I won't really come off like Steve Hackett either, but I might be able to do simpler things, perhaps, that add depth and color to my music, with realism enough to get the job done.

Seriously - go for soundfonts. There's many GREAT acoustic guitar soundfonts out there and they're usually free. People make them from their own guitars, you see, so they're much more realistic - being real - than modelled guitars. 

I'm happy to list some legit. free guitar fonts I love but there's honestly a ton out there. Use SFz Player to play them in - it's not the prettiest to look at by miles but it DOES seem to always do a far better job of playing the soundfonts than anything else. I dunno why - I'm not that much of a programmer - but soundfonts that sound TERRIBLE in many other players usually sound pretty darned reasonable in SFz!

If you want backing sounds/drones, get Gort's Doubledecker (yes, it's a real thing!) and Ambience Reverb. Gort's Doubledecker is the CRAZIEST soundfont ever - it's about sixty or so sounds bundled into one soundfont. SFz can handle it fine, though you'll need a separate instance of SFz for each sound you want from Gort. They're all lovely sounds, a bit of EQ/Ambience Reverb and they brush up a treat. 

And the Johann Roussel soundfonts are great, too. There's one in the collection - PADstring it's called - which you can EQ to make sound like about 4 different pads. So you can layer it onto itself with different amounts of EQ on each instance of PADstring and get a whole collection of pad sounds just from that one sound! I've yet to come across another sound that blends with itself that well, odd though that may - er - sound!

It's pretty easy to make your own soundfont, too. You can get Vienna for legit. free, then all you have to do is to shanghai a friend into playing a couple of scales into it on an instrument you like and you can loop it into your own personal soundfont.

Yours harmoniously

ulrichburke.