Native Instruments Guitar Combos

Native Instruments Guitar Combos reviewed in The Technofile by MC Rebbe The Rapping Rabbi

If you’re part of my huge posse of regular readers, then over the last few months you’ll have seen reviews of various NI plug-ins like Absynth and Electronic Instruments…which are wicked for keyboardists…but what if keys aren’t the only thing you like to finger? What if you also like a good hard pluck?

Well, if you like me like to play a bit of axe…or even a bit of saxe (that’s a guitar of Lithuanian origin…), then you’ll love NI’s latest plug in which offers three classic guitar amp simulations, plus added effects.

Using the same technology found in their award winning Guitar Rig (and the recently announced Guitar Rig 2), Native Instruments’ Guitar Combos features three painstakingly modelled classic amp simulations…a Marshall, a Fender and a Vox…not that they’re actually called that of course…instead they are know simply as ‘Plexi Combo’, ‘Twang Combo’ and ‘AC Box Combo’…but if, having seen the accompanying graphics, you can’t figure out which is meant to be which…you’re probably better off playing the drums…

Once installed you effectively have three separate plug-ins, one for each combo. Open one and you are presented with a graphic of…a guitar combo…duh! In it’s head section are exactly the controls you would expect to find in the head section of the real thing … plus a few extra knobs for the additional ‘built in’ effects that NI have thrown in for good measure…and an integrated tuner! Below these is a speaker grill onto which is superimposed a list of presets. Simply plug in, select a preset or twiddle the combo’s controls and rock…or funk out. It really couldn’t be simpler.

AC Box is an AC30 style combo with built in tremolo and spring reverb that is perfect for recreating that 60s white English boys play the blues…badly…sound. For guitarists with (slightly) better musical taste, Plexi Combo offers the best in Marshall style sounds and is perfect for hard rock, metal, grunge and psychedelia. It even contains a pretty good rockabilly preset…though it’s no Fender Bassman head through a 2×12 cab…but then neither is my guitar a Gretsch White Falcon, so I’ll stop showing off…uh huh yeah… Plexi’s effects(‘) are a noise gate, fuzz, delay…and the ‘Cat’ distortion…which sounds uncannily like my ‘Rat’ distortion pedal…nice one!

Finally, for the really funkee, is the ‘Twang Combo’…and let’s be grateful that NI didn’t follow the cockney rhyming conventions of the ‘Cat’ distortion and call it a ‘Bender’ (English joke). With built in vibrato, reverb, chorus, noise gate and ‘Skreamer’ overdrive it’s pretty versatile, covering a multitude of jazz, blues, country, rock and funk sounds.

It’s shame there’s no Roland JC120 style emulation, but at this price I guess you can’t have everything. What there is sounds both truly excellent and extremely faithful to the originals and apart from the inability to use full screen mode, I can’t find a single complaint. The verdict? The sound is right and so is the price!

Native Instruments awarded 5 bagels by MC rebbe The Rapping Rabbi in The Technofile

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