sharke
I think a lot depends on your guitar and playing style. For me and my Telecaster neither Guitar Rig or TH2 has wowed me as much as Amplitube Fender (or the Orange and Dr-Z amps I've added to it), but I've been wowed by them after hearing different guitars through them. Having said that, I still use Guitar Rig and TH2 for the effects and stomp boxes - you can get some insane chains going in GR and TH2 has an awesome tremolo pedal I use all the time.

I'm all on the same page as Sharke.

I'm wowed by Amplitube. There's a summer special going on now for just another week or so where you can get all the offerings for Amplitube for half off. It's a great deal. As Sharke says, with Amplitube, the Fender add-on, Orange, and Slash the sound is really terrific.

That said, like Sharke, I use Guitar Rig 5, PodFarm, and Th2 as well for various things. But for me, Amplitube is my go to for sure. There's also a very helpful amount of free tutorials on it, and an excellent one on Groove3 - all of which improve getting the most out of it.

Sanderxpander
Possibly, although Even if I limit myself to just amp heads and cabs in other sims I often end up with S-Gear. I agree about tweaking though - you can get an acceptable sound with most sims I think.

What I meant was more along the lines of doing a few things really well instead of trying to do everything. That said, for EDM guitar nothing beats Guitar Rig thanks to all the modulation/sync options - something you'd never find in a Vox AC30 anyway 

I wouldn't count out Waves Guitar 3, they can be made to sound really nice!

bz2838
I wouldn't count out Waves Guitar 3, they can be made to sound really nice!

In particular I think the Waves bass cabinets are outstanding. Also, what a lot of people don't know is they're using very similar algorithms for the fX as for their studio-oriented plug-ins.

While most, if not all, of the above discussion is focused on guitar - it's nice to know that
bass players also have some decent emulation software to play with too. 
 
I just had the opportunity to play with Overloud's Mark Studio 2 and was very pleasantly surprised by how good it sounds and how easy it was to use.  I would encourage anyone with even a passing interest in getting a better recorded bass sound to try it ( and any other brands) out. 

I'm still using guitar rig 4, nothing comes even close in regards to the extra effects, which come with the amp sims.  One thing though...I would get a tube pre amp to patch your guitar into.  The amount of extra wow and sizzle not to mention sustain that a tube pre amp gives will knock your socks off.  Now I will be laughed at but I use to use the behringer ultra gain, 90 bucks.  Hell it was noisy but it sounded like a guitar amp and the extra hum and fizzle that it created gets buried in the mix (or a George Harrison once said "will bury it in the mix...see the in the joke there) once it's hidden in the mix that extra bit of noise can create a bit of extra harmonic resonance.  And even the pros will have to agree with me it's all about the harmonic resonance.
 
Ben

Guys, many thanks. Some great information, comments and definitely food for thought! As I observed earlier there's a real spread of opinion here - nothing really rises to the top and nothing really sinks to the bottom. All seem reasonable products - it's all down to personal taste in the end!

Thanks again
YC

Well, I'll restate. Having lots of available free tutorials, samples on the Web, and professional tutorials can greatly improve the value and experience you get from any of these amp sims. In that regard, there is an ample variety of all that available for Amplitube. Others, even Guitar Rig, do not nearly have as many tips and resources easily findable.

I would suggest you look further into Amplitube (even though as a Sonar user I appreciate the included TH2).

Here's an example of a non vendor demo of someone using Amplitube Orange.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg6SaKk0mms

It helps to see / hear the tool in use on a song.

lawajava

sharke
I think a lot depends on your guitar and playing style. For me and my Telecaster neither Guitar Rig or TH2 has wowed me as much as Amplitube Fender (or the Orange and Dr-Z amps I've added to it), but I've been wowed by them after hearing different guitars through them. Having said that, I still use Guitar Rig and TH2 for the effects and stomp boxes - you can get some insane chains going in GR and TH2 has an awesome tremolo pedal I use all the time.

I'm all on the same page as Sharke.

I'm wowed by Amplitube. There's a summer special going on now for just another week or so where you can get all the offerings for Amplitube for half off. It's a great deal. As Sharke says, with Amplitube, the Fender add-on, Orange, and Slash the sound is really terrific.

That said, like Sharke, I use Guitar Rig 5, PodFarm, and Th2 as well for various things. But for me, Amplitube is my go to for sure. There's also a very helpful amount of free tutorials on it, and an excellent one on Groove3 - all of which improve getting the most out of it.

I did not realize there was an Amplitube Groove3 course, will have to check that out. Having said that, I did read the manual from front to back on the subway a few days ago (nothing like reading a manual when you're nowhere near the thing it's explaining ) and I think I pretty much understand it all. I've never read the manual for Guitar Rig or TH2 - mind you I've really enjoyed figuring them out on my own. I can't tell you how buzzed I was when I first worked out how to set up the modifiers in Guitar Rig - there's so much you can do with them and you can set up some excellent rhythmic effects chains for synths etc. The stomps in TH2 are great and I think I prefer its wah pedals to the Guitar Rig ones. I really like the Brunetti amps in TH2 as well, but I always felt they needed a warmer tone than my Tele to really shine. I'd love to use some of the high gain amps in GR and TH2 but I think I'll leave that for the day when I have a guitar with less noisy pickups (Tele's don't do thrash )

Keni
Even with all the sophisticated modeling, it's sometimes hard for the ear to remember that the virtualization is being played back in full range monitors, not guitar speakers, so getting it to sound as though it's coming through guitar speakers is a key. They do not have the high end that studio monitors do. So I find the virtuals are consistently too bright and rolling off the top quite a bit near 4k or so with a low pass or shelving EQ makes a world of difference...
Keni

 
I've thought about this too, but I guess at the end of the day these amp sims are more suited toward recording guitar, not sitting around jamming. In that respect, even if you're miking up a sweet valve amp and hearing a great sound out of it, you're eventually going to end up listening to it through monitors (or consumer speakers/cans when it's finished).