My 2 cents…
Reverb and overdrive were the hardest digital effects to get right for years. We did reverb good finally. What’s left is distortion and overdrive. Someone will get it right long after any of us here are gone.
Til then depends on how deep the cash reserve is because the primo stuff still costs. Scuffham is still a hundred dollars for two call response activations. Don’t know why the kids haven’t come up with a crack this far into the game to protect my investment.
Got economic established comfortable somewhere after my 6
th decade, but never lost the roots and lessons of dirt poverty. My yardsale approach is still to work the system, if it’s moral and if on a limited budget.. Free demos and splicing freeware units to get a credible overdrive. The choices are vast.
Free is good.
Hi quality commercial softwares give out teasers that are dynamite on their own. If you can live without the 50 cabinets in the $300 version, create with the 25 in the lite teaser version.
Other demos avoid the 30 second noise blast or dropout but allow 30 minutes use before stopping, and usually block saving and reloading. Lots of miles can be got from them, like Kontakt.
Not wanting to duplicate what might have been advised, but too drunk to read the thread or find the direct link to my favorites.
Amplitube offers a generous gift with Amplitube 3 free version. Amp 3 free better than Amp 2 that I paid serious cash for. Sorry if I’m forking up the links but will get anyone close.
http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/amplitubecs/ Guitar Rig. They have an LE version. Don’t remember how you get it outside of a soundcard installation with LE as a freebie tease, but way beyond what the ancient masters had to do their music.
POD Farm teaser. Less than the full suite but download the lite version. Now dongle any more. The lite reverbs are nice as well. Check out "Cavernous" reverb.
http://line6.com/podfarm/ Shred from AcmeBarGig. Free teaser for Headcase. Howl and sustain not found anywhere else to my knowledge.
http://www.acmebargig.com/ Plug and Mix masterpieces. Stomp box style suite. The California tone and American Tweed need no apologetics. They still have a like on Facebook to get a free plug, and there's a demo of the VIP suite. Example of 30 min use with no saves if not Facebooked or purchased. These distortion boxes are unique.
http://www.plugandmix.com/ Then the freeware field. Le Pou and the like. Would advise all to connect with the discussions on a cool universal site so we ain’t got to be igorant no more…
http://www.guitarampmodeling.com/ Missing in this are some ancient and dead relics that should be in the toolkit. The elegant Tinbrooktales saturators/compressors. These thing are as great now as when they were written and long time abandoned. Serial sequencing one into another gets about as far as we are developing warm saturation and overdrive.
http://hem.bredband.net/tbtaudio/archive/archive.htm My workflow is always to have a compressor first. The major suites already include effective noise gates, but sequencing individual freebie units brings in the third party noise gate necessity.
Saw that Sonar is doing third party plugs from Nomad. These are cool in my book minus the stereo option in some.
My critical Nomad plug is the Liquid Gate. Allows a virtual comp before the amp sim or distortion and tries to control the noise as best as we can do in 2013. Some do a gate last, some do it first. Gating for noise reduction is about as bad an engineering struggle if not worse than getting overdrive down correct. Know there is Green Gate free but all ears if you know of a better gate (free or commercial).
http://nomadfactory.com/products/liquid_II/ My go to compressor is Vitamin C. by Distorque (free), Check out as well as their fine distortion plugs.. Use this up front with a decent gate after. Crank this into fuzz box of choice and we’re almost there. While on the website, check out the Hendyxesque Face Bender box.
http://distorqueaudio.com/ Love,
John