Maarkr
dang... i guess I have the kontakt player and not the sampler... and really don't want to spend $400.

The good thing about Kontakt is it'll open up a lot of doors to a lot of excellent/quality libraries (3rd party) that are very cheap. The bad is the initial purchase can be a bit expensive, but there's a lot of stuff that can crossgrade for Kontakt (should be much less than that $400 price.....Larry??? :)) IMO, it's worth the investment. 
 
Once you go Kontakt, you won't go back.   

Love Renegade, but it's a Tele, not a Strat. To date I've heard no Strat library that nails every classic Strat tone (e.g. that beautiful Mark Knopfler semi-clean hollow tone), but Orange Tree Samples' Stratosphere is very good. I'd sure like to see Greg add polarity switches, but AFAIK nobody else has done that, either.

Maarkr
dang... i guess I have the kontakt player and not the sampler... and really don't want to spend $400.
 
tried the strum session and it works pretty good...for free.  I had the old strum 1.0 installed and it kept crashing and i had not enabled the newer strum 2.0.

To further add to you woes, if you want a Strat, then Orange Tree's Stratosphere is the only one that does not work in the free player, YET.
 
But there should be a NKS version released soon that will work in the player. I may be worth keeping your eyes open to see if there is a discount when the update is released.
 
I have got the full version of Strum (GS2) through a series of fire sales and its not half bad. I feel it sounds a little "brittle" compaired to the sampled versions but the chord detection is good and the strums sound reasonably authentic. If you like the Session version but feel you need a little more check and see if you are entitled to an upgrade.

Maarkr
dang... i guess I have the kontakt player and not the sampler... and really don't want to spend $400.

Yup, full Kontakt's a big investment. But totally worth it, IMO. And this spoken by a permanently-broke tightwad who has to justify every little expense.
 
Fact is, if you're planning on making sampled instruments a major part of your toolkit, owning the full product will actually save you money in the long run. This is because every player-compatible library has a license fee to Native Instruments baked in, and it's not just a couple bucks. Consequently, products that run under the free player are almost always going to be significantly more expensive (with rare exceptions such as close-outs).
 
That's why companies such as Indiginus, Wavesfactory, Bolder Sounds, Cinematique Instruments, Analogue Drums, Hollow Sun and Sampleism can offer useful instruments for under $60. As noted above, OTS is in the process of migrating to the free player, but then OTS has always been at the high end of the price scale for full-Kontakt libraries anyway. If those products end up being too pricey for you, there's still Pettinhouse and Ilya Efimov.
 

http://forum.cakewalk.com...ossgrade-m3074685.aspx