Reply To: Recording with Amp sim plugins

[Steve AParticipant]

I've demoed a bunch of them and will probably pick up the very two you mentioned (S-gear & Bias), and for the same reasons.
I started off many years ago with the original ZOOM, found it harsh, flat and 'fizzy' but it was the only game in town in the early '90s, so I did my best to EQ it into something usable.
Then came the original POD which was way better, but the symptoms described above, while not as bad, still persisted.
I still own a POD X3 Live, but mostly use it without speaker emulation into a SS power amp, then to a Marshall cab loaded with G12Ms and G12Hs (2 of each) and it sounds surprisingly good. Thing is, those Celestions have one sound, and I need many to cover different tones and genres, but then you have to run it with speaker emulations, and your back to the '2d' sound. Uggh..

So yea, the S-Gear and Bias both seem to be mostly absent of those bad characteristics, with a few exceptions, one of them being the '57' amp in S-gear, that tends to sound 'gritty' or 'fizzy' if you will...
I'm going to play around with some of the other settings to see if I can tweak it further.

I have to say I've not liked the free ones that I have tried: The Eleven plugin that came with my PT upgrade to v.12, the free one that came with my copy of Mixcraft, and a couple of others I can't recall their names atm.
What free ones have you tried that you like, if I might ask?