Amazing detail!

Im a Keyboardist and have been waiting for something like this for a LONG time. A lot of great detail, went on to these samples and it shows!

Excellent Virtual Guitar!

This program really is incredible. Pretty easy to use and sounds great! I play a little guitar, but really rely on this program to lay down guitar tracks.
A real guitarist is always better, but not always around.You will not be disappointed. Try it!

Unbelievable

OK, I waited forever for this. I'm a guitarist but also a programmer and use Superior Drummer 2.0 and Trilian for all drums and bass. For me, a viable sampled guitar VST instrument is like the holy grail for music programmers. Sure, there a Terrabytes worth of samples out there for guitar. Try using them in a VST Sampler like Halion 3 and you quickly learn that guitar is probably one of the most complex and nuanced instruments. Period. Guitarists don't even think about the articulations that are involved in great playing, and samplers have never been able to come close....

But then this Electri6ity came out and changed everything for me. Slides, harmonics, hammer-on, hammer-off, legato with intelligent string and articulation automation (artificial intelligence, actually), mutes, half-mutes, 14 different programmable release samples, 8 different guitars, the ability to actually program the down/up strokes of each individual string, granular control over string selection, fret postion, all controllable from the keyboard with MIDI notes or with CC, every function learnable... it's pretty mind-boggling.

So I set out for the first project to create a song with 2 guitar parts and a lead solo, and ended up using 4 different guitar instruments on 4 different tracks and channels. I found even with all of those guitars loaded in a 64-bit DAW (Cubase 5.5) with 8Gigs of RAM, the system hardly noticed. It took quite a while to get my head around the concepts of articulation switching, Velocity or Controller control of intelligent articulation (like playing muted at low velocities and wide open at high velocities with what seems like endless gradations in between), Trills, muted "Chuka-chucka" strums, Palm Mutes - it's just endless.

Of course, there are some minor issues with the instrument that they need to correct, like the slide-down release note articulation is great but if you hold a note for a long sustain and then slide-down release you can hear the new sample kick in - not so if the slide is closer to the note attack (1 or 2 beats or so is not noticable). Little things like that that can be worked around (who said the note has to be held for 4 measures? - change it!).

The best part about this instrument is that you can program a guitar part with a Les Paul in DI mode so there are no FX or amplification. You can do a send to a VST processor like POD Farm 2 or IK Multimedia and be able to change the amp, cabinet, and FX on the fly. And if you are nagged by that one note that would have been better if it had been a different note, you don't have to re-record the whole guitar part or do any punch-in/punch-out tricks to replace the note - just go move it in the MIDI editor. BAM!

All in all, at first I was intimidated and frustrated by the complexity of this amazing instrument. Now, I can't wait to fire up the studio and get to work. I can now write immensely complex guitar parts and hear the results in real time, tweak and change the notes and/or chords being played, add a harmonic bite to a single note AFTER the fact, and just about do whatever I want. Of course there are guitarists out there thinking "I don't want to use a sampler in the final product" and that's OK. You can use it as a tool to write and experiment with all kinds of notes, patterns, riffs etc. and then when you like it you can learn it on your guitar and make it even better.

In the end, there are things a guitarist can do that this just won't do and you may find yourself needing to throw down a couple of real tracks for those special occaisions, but I would consider this to be, IMHO, a breakthrough keyboard based sampled guitar instrument that has totally changed the way that I can conceive and write guitar parts. Heck, it can do what I CAN'T do!!!

Look for my new release titled "Skiing In Vienna" - it should be available by the middle of February on all major music services and my web site - it will be 100% programmed Electri6ity guitars.

Jerry Boutot
Scary Tales
Psychodelectric Media

Fantastic

It's an amazing instrument. The learning curve is a bit steep, but after a week or two I was able to get a handle on the various keyswitches and controls to bring out the instrument's full potential. I would recommend checking out the onine video tutorials before diving into the manual. Also, the built-in effects are OK... your own VST effects or outboard gear will likely make the instrument sound a bit more realistic.