A tad too late? I had said this was the Musiclab product I would upgrade to take advantage of the song construction features, but OTS launched their Evolution Rick which sounds a whole lot better to my ears. (And greg is going to drop another Evolution guitar any day now.)
 
http://www.musiclab.com/products/realrick/info.html

RealRick 4 - legendary Rickenbacker(R) electric guitar virtual instrument is shipping now with a pack of powerful new features!
RealRick 4 upgrade price for previous version owners is only $49.00 USD. Order version 4 upgrade now.

• Song Global mode, turning RealRick 4 into a powerful songwriting tool:
• Easy-to-use built-in Song Track for constructing guitar parts
• Chord Selector, allowing to quickly select and insert chords
• Import the whole chord sets directly from WEB page or Text document
• Powerful Style Filter letting you find suitable patterns by musical criteria
• Export Song Track as a Standard MIDI file to use with any third party instruments
• Double Tracking configuration and patches letting you easily simulate ‘double-tracked’ guitar part with the single MIDI input
• 12-string A and B (Stereo/Double-track) patches, allowing now to fully simulate ‘Rick-O-Sound’ stereo output
• Advanced Humanize engine, allowing you to easily add more realism to the performance with a mouse click. Randomization options:
• Sound
• Timing
• Velocity
• Pitch
• Other improvements: FretNoise (trigger) FX, Transpose, Transpose(toggle) FXs, Unison/Octave selection for Harmonics FX, Harmonics on black Add-on keys in Bass&Pick mode, Slow Strum time slider in Timing panel

 
So I have to decide if the songwriting tool is worth $49 and if it is, is it better to upgrade the Rick, the Strat or the LPC.

Why not both?

bapu
Why not both?

Because we
 
1 got no disposable income
2 are broke
3 are cheap
4 got one already
5 don't need one
???????????????????

Ham or Egz. Can't have 'em both.

Well you lot aren't much use
 
Gonna try the demo of the acoustic (as its the only one I have not got) to see if the new features are worthwhile.

Well, I think the song tool is pretty good based on the demo, Functionally I like it better than EZ Keys which it resembles in many ways. ('sept its a geetar, not a joanna)
 
I may just upgrade one of me Musiclab guitars, probably the Rick.

I went ahead and upgraded Real Rick as it has both 6 and 12 string modes it’s the most versatile of the three Musiclab products I own. It was a good decision as the song tool is far more useful than I imagined it would be. I have been working with it without switching on my controller keyboards and playing around with chord progressions. I had become very predictable when picking chords on the keyboard due to a combination of a lack of chops and habit. (How many times can you go Am Dm Am Em7? )
  
Because the song tool makes you think in a different way I have come up with a few interesting progressions worthy of further development.
  
I need to dive deeper into producing my own strum patterns, unfortunately this is far less versatile or intuitive than OTS's evolution guitars but decent results can be obtained. While I have had Musiclab guitars for a while I have only really used them as lead instruments so I have a bit to learn. (can it do 5/4??)
  
On the instrument itself there are a few worthwhile improvements, particularly options for routing, to get the most out of the "Rick-o-Sound"
 
While the OTS Evolution Rick has the edge on sound and strum pattern editing “Realrick” still sound pretty good and the song mode has given it new life.
 
 

I downloaded the demo of MusicLab's Rick, so far I like it
 
too bad theres no demo for OTS, but if its like Gregs other products, its a winner winner chicken dinner.
the price is about the same for me with my Musiclabs Loyalty discount and OTS orange slices
 
decisions decisions

Ham N Egz
I downloaded the demo of MusicLab's Rick, so far I like it
 
too bad theres no demo for OTS, but if its like Gregs other products, its a winner winner chicken dinner.
the price is about the same for me with my Musiclabs Loyalty discount and OTS orange slices
 
decisions decisions

Musiclab's advantage is the song construction feature, which, as I said above, I am finding more useful than I imagined. I think OTS has the edge all-round with the exception of this (and being more resource hungry)
OTS has a lot more articulations and options for strokes in strum patterns. If you have any of the other OTS guitars you will know what I mean.
 
In some respects having both is like having two different guitarists, you can throw the same chords and basic patterns at them but they will sound different.

I have been trying to do a few more things.
 
Build a song is a less common time signature. It looks like the time signature for the song is taken from the filter one selects for the patterns. This means you are pretty much stuck with 3/4 or 4/4, there are 6/4 and 6/8 pattern but they are just "endings"
 
So I need to build my own patterns. It appears this has to be done in the DAW, saving the pattern as a standard MIDI file. There are 22 options so I think I need to make a drum map pronto. This sounds more than OTS but consider it includes individual strings, top strums and the like, all of which are extra to OTS's articulation, all in all iits less intuative and a lot more messing about than the OTS method. I am hoping that 5/4 patterns, when added to the library will alow the construction of a 5/4 song, watch this space for an answer. The song builder does seem to be allergic to meter changes, I could not mix 4/4 and 3/4, maybe I am missing something.
 
Songs can be exported as MIDI, I suspose the intention is the generated guitar part can be used with another VSTi. Of course it can but with limitations. The articulation information is not (cannot be) included so all your mute strums will sound as sustains. I tried a track with Real Strat (old version without the song builder) and it sounded pretty rough!
 
You can export the song in a propriatory format that could be used by the other Realguitars as long as you have upgraded to the latest version.
 
This leads on to another consideration, It dosen't seem you can drag the song into a MIDI track in Sonar and play back it back exactly as one would using the internal sequencer. So one has to keep everything in RealRick song sequencer or record it as Audio. Freezing does not work, one has to record the output of the VSTi, This is fine in platinum but I am not sure about earlier versions of Sonar.