Incredible. Guitar. Tone.
Now let me guess, the first thing that came to mind was probably a $5,000 guitar, and $3,000 amp, about $7,000 in microphones and another $20,000 in preamps and analog gear, right? Yikes… ready to take out a loan in the name of tone?
Don’t worry, neither are we. Luckily, you don’t need to drop that kind of cash to get the tone you want. Sometimes it’s just about making the best of what you got and dialing it in the perfect tone.
So let’s talk about what we can accomplish for free!
We’ve gone through hundreds of free plugins to find the best tools for sculpting professional guitar tones on a budget. Here are Wired Guitarist’s Top 5 Free Guitar Plugins. LePou Amp Suite I know, you’ve heard it a thousand times, but one more just to drive the point home These are hands down, the BEST free amp sim plugins on the. Dec 29, 2020 How Do I Use/Install Guitar VST Plugins? First, you’ll want to go ahead and download the plugins you’re thinking about using (usually at the provider’s site or a free VST plugin site). Now, to take advantage of them, you will require a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). If you already have one, perfect. How to choose the best guitar VST for you. When it comes to plugins, there are thousands upon thousands of options open to you. These range from basic, free plugs that perhaps lack a little finesse, through to pro-grade tools that elevate sounds to new levels. With so much choice on offer, it can be hard to know where to begin. Allow us to help. See full list on hiphopmakers.com.
We’ve gone through hundreds of free plugins to find the best tools for sculpting professional guitar tones on a budget. Here are Wired Guitarist’s Top 5 Free Guitar Plugins.
1. LePou Amp Suite
I know, you’ve heard it a thousand times, but one more just to drive the point home…
These are hands down, the BEST free amp sim plugins on the market. LePou’s arsenal of amp sims include emulated high-gain giants like Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier, ENGL E645, and even his own original design. It’s one thing to make an incredible sounding amp sim, it’s another to have an entire pack of them.
Be sure to check out the LePou Amp Suite!
2. TSE 808
Along with making a fantastic amp sim, the TSE X50, TSE makes one of the best overdrive plugins on the market. Using an overdrive pedal to tighten up your amp is one of the most standard moves in metal tone, and it works just as well with amp sims. TSE 808 is one of the most realistic tube screamer plugins we at Wired Guitarist have ever used, and the fact that it’s free is just insane. How can you say no to that?
Go grab the TSE 808!
3. OwnHammer Mesa Impulse Responses
Alright, you caught us, it’s not technically a plugin… but you’d be foolish to pass these up.
Quality cabinet emulations are key to getting a deep, rich, professional quality guitar sound. If you want some of the best in the business, look no further than OwnHammer. All of their impulse response packs contain dozens of high-quality IR’s, captured with the most pristine analog gear, and they are giving away a free package of these to anyone with enough smarts to download it.
Oh, I should probably mention that these IR’s are made from the industry standard in metal guitar cabinets… the Mesa Boogie Standard Slant 4×12 cab. Any questions? I didn’t think so.
Stop what you’re doing and download the OwnHammer Impulse Responses now.
4. LeCab 2.0
No matter what impulses you use, you’re going to need a plugin to load them into. LeCab is the most versatile, yet simplistic IR loader you’ll ever find. You can load up to 6 different IR’s at a time, blend them together, pan each one differently, flip a switch to keep things phase coherent, and way more.
What better to go with your free LePou amp sim than a free LePou impulse response loader?
5. Guitar Rig 5 Player
For everything else, you need Guitar Rig 5 Player. This free version of Guitar Rig comes with delay, reverb, chorus, flanger, phaser, and everything else you need to make a shoegazer’s dream pedalboard. Add in some noise gates and a tuner, and you’ve got everything you need to add the final polish to your tone.
Guitar Rig 5 Player is basically a bunch of free stuff all in one package. What’s not to love?
No matter what gear you use, it all comes down to knowing your gear. After spending some time with these plugins, we at Wired Guitarist have found some really impressive tones, and it just goes to show how little you have to spend to create competitive, punchy, articulate guitar tones.
We hope you enjoyed this article! If you did, make sure to check out more, because we upload new reviews, technical articles, lessons, and more daily!
Also, we are a dealer for many beloved brands such as PRS, Ibanez, Mayones, Schecter, ESP, and more! Feel free to stop by our shop and we can help you find the right guitar for you at the best price possible.
This article was written by Connor Gilkinson, our editor located in Canada.
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I guess you would have to agree with me that the best way to polish your vocal recording or a vocal sample is to sprinkle some effects, just like the way you would sprinkle a reasonable amount of ingredients on your food. If done right, it sounds delicious right, yum yum 😉
Vocal effects are no exception to the ingredient perspective, you need to add a reasonable amount of effects to make them sound lively, and enjoyable to the listeners.
Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t saying you should stack effects upon effects on your vocal samples, too much of everything is bad. That said, let us look at the best free awesome VST effects plugin in the music production scene.
Let’s ride on…
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If you haven’t heard of PitchProof, then, you are definitely missing out, this is like the secret tool I use on Vocals but it wasn’t even developed for Vocal, it was actually designed to work on monophonic signals such as guitar solos, but I’ll give you a tip on how I have been using it:
You don’t want to apply it in realtime, what you should do instead is to first select the key of the harmony, then you turn the Blend knob all the way to the right; wet e.g:
Export the vocal result, add whatever effects plugins you gat on your toolbox (vocal, flangers, etc) to spice up the pitched vocal, and then stack it on top of the original vocal. Boom, you have something unique!
Note: You don’t have to always push it all through the wet side as this might cause artifacts, just experiment and stick with what works for you.
You can even export more vocal, and maybe this time, you can try by reducing the detune knob, anyways, experiment until you get your preferred test.
That said, let’s look at some of the features of PitchProof:
The Blend control knob would let you adjust the level of pitch shift, while the Pitch drop-down menu lets you select pitches like +7 or -7, or harmonies which are intelligent pitch-shift effects.
Moreover, there are also some options at the bottom of the PitchProof plugin which give you the option to switch between stereo and mono; mono could save your CPU, while the stereo option could cause a resource hog if used on multiple inserts.
Transient Fix can be switch on or off to spice things up a little!
Harmony | Info |
2nd | Dissonant harmonies |
3rd | The Typical Major/minor Chord Harmony |
4th | The same as the +5 semitones setting except a few notes are flat. |
5th | The Same as The +7 Semitones Setting Except the Last Note of The Major Scale Is Flat Making It “diminished”. |
6th | A nice-sounding alternative to typical harmony intervals. |
7th | Dissonant 7th Chord Sounds. |
This is an autotune VST plugins designed and developed by Auburnsounds. This plugin is superb in the way it handles pitch correction.
It not only supports pitch correction but supports the generation of throat sounds, making octave sounds, enriching, and enhancing vocal expressiveness.
Also, there is a pitch shift parameter that transposes vocals up and down in octaves and semitones.
Features:
System Requirements
Download Graillion Auto-Tune Plugin
Vocal King helps glue the vocal in a mix, and it comes preloaded cool parameters, that could help in customizing the audio signal of a vocal track.
The Pres Compressor knob helps in bringing out the clarity of a vocal, so, by turning up the gain of the Pres Comp brings out the presence in the vocal along with giving it a smooth compression. On the other hand, the Low cut, Tighten, and the Bass knob compliment the Pres Comp in taking out muddy frequencies without the vocal sounding too thin.
I also love playing with the Crispy knob as it sprinkles some sparkles to the audio signal.
Features:
System Requirements
Vola is a Voice Optimized Leveling Amplifier made for broadcast voice dynamics processing, it also works with different kinds of audio material, like drums, percussive instrument, and synth pads.
This fantastic tool is solely for cleaning up sound files but can be used for extreme compression effects as well.
FeaturesFl studio library download.
Xylophone fl studio 12 download. Download Vola Vst (Windows)
Download Vola Jsfx (Windows and Mac)
This is a pitch correction VST plugin tool and has strengthened to support natural pitch correction.
This tool is handy and can perform different and various types of voice effects, for example, a conversion of the male voice to a female voice and vice versa.
KeroVee comes bundled with useful parameters for the effectiveness of the auto-tuning process, Parameter includes:
Have you heard those natural double effects in some tracks! Do you wonder how those are created? I guess yes 😉
Let me introduce to you – Duet, a double-tracking effect designed to enhance your audio sample be it vocal or even instruments, Duet is well capable of sparkling them up. The way Duet work is by pitch-shifting both the left and right inputs individually using a novel synchronous overlap and add technique, allowing pitch to be manipulated in real-time while still maintaining the time duration of the audio.
One thing I love about Duet is the way it can accurately create the illusion of multi-voices and adds varied texture to the mix. Experiment with Duet to see how it works.
Note: This is only available for Window
DSP-2 is designed with an intelligent Dynamic Processor, a 4-band equalizer fixed on vocal key frequencies, a saturator, and a room emulator based on the Schroeder reverberator. DSP is super simple to use and can serve basically all your vocal processing needs, again, experiment and keep experimenting to get the best settings that would soothe your need.
Features:
Azurite is a vocal effect by Distorque which is built for multi-voice chorus with a focus on rich sounds and versatile controls.
According To Distorque:
My goal in designing it was to make as flexible a chorus as possible without losing great tones and ease of use. The result is an effect that will be handy for producers, guitarists, and glitch lovers alike.
One of the great features of this plugin is the way you can create multiple simultaneous voices. Each of these voices can be further customized with their own delay line that is modulated by a separate LFO. Adding multiple voices leads to a thicker, smoother, and less wobbly tone. It also makes vivid stereo spreading possible with a mono signal.
The voice control helps you to choose how many voices you want for the chorus, e.g one, two, four, or eight.
Features:
Note: This is only available for Window
Download Azurite Win 32 VST / Win 64 VST
EasyVox contains a bunch of tool for vocal processing, such as:
Donate To The Developer, It helps him to build more exciting plugins
Note: This is only available for Window
Last on our list is Timewarp by MGF, which is a vibrato effect with 2 LFOs which can pan the pitch modulation amount for a stereo effect.
Features:
That is it, Good luck and have fun with music!