Guitar amp modelers have come light years in the last decade, let alone their early days. I’ll hear stories all the time of guitarists returning to the world of amp modelers after a decade hiatus and being shocked at how the landscape has changed. As I covered in my comparison of DI vs amp, it’s incredibly easy to get a more than competitively realistic and excellent sounding result through DI + amp modeling versus the conventional miked amp.
With that in mind, let’s talk the best amp modeler, and I’m going to offer up both the best free as well as premium options I’ve come across and regularly use myself.
The Best Free Amp Modeler
NAM Universal
Admittedly there are a TON of great options for free amp modelers (premium, as well, for that matter), but I’m going to give the nod to and recommend NAM Universal from Wavemind.
At the time of my writing this, you’ll find the download at the bottom of this page.
Neural Amp Modeler (or NAM) on its own is a free amp modeler on its own designed to model amps and pedals with realism using deep learning:
Not to be confused with Neural Amp Modeler, I’m recommending NAM Universal:
NAM Universal is essentially the same thing as Neural Amp Modeler with a better and more built out interface.
It uses the same “NAM” files which Neural Amp Modeler uses (incidentally it comes with a decent sized library of pedal and amp files for both guitar and bass).
As you can see from the interface above, it’s got a “Pedal Profiler” at the start of the chain, “Instigator” which works as an on board EQ, the real sauce in the “Amp Profiler” where you can load in your amp of choice NAM replicating file, an “Aggravator” for further sculpting the tone before it hits the cab, and finally a choice of adding up to 2 IRs of your choice.
I recently did an overview of impulse response guitar; essentially this is a way to take a amp/cab/mic/room setup which you or someone else has already captured and apply it to your guitar.
Any amp modeler you use today worth its salt will have built in IR support for not only recreating sounds of specific existing setups but also getting more realistic sounding results in your mix.
With NAM Universal you can add in up to 2 IRs then create your custom blend to taste with the dial (like the NAM files, it comes with a number of free IR files for both guitar and bass).
Any and all of these components can also be toggled on and off with their power buttons on the right.
You can also save and recall presets at the top of the interface and access the onboard tuner.
One of the great things about using NAM based software is that there’s a huge online community for creating realistic sounding amps and pedals which replicate any analog or existing sound you can think of, and NAM Universal is my favorite interface for making use of them for creating realistic and great tones on my guitar and all for free!
Best Amp Modeler
Moving on, my absolute favorite pick for best amp modeler is the Guitar Rig 7 Pro from Native Instruments.
Guitar Rig 7 Pro
I’ve been using Guitar Rig Pro since GRP5 over a decade ago and can affirm that Guitar Rig 7 Pro is one of the most stacked options in the world of amp modelers when it comes to offering the widest and most versatile library of tones:
Search and Filtering
Despite an intuitive interface, at first it’s easy to feel overwhelmed at the number of options.
Setting aside everything you can do with this and the infinite number of custom tones you can dial in, an amp modeler isn’t any use to me unless I can quickly find a great sounding tone.
If you’re like me, you’re probably too busy to build a whole library of custom tones from the ground up.
That’s why one of the reasons I call this the best amp modeler is its excellent search and filtering capabilities:
As you can see, there are a number of filtering options to quickly drill down what you’re looking for by instrument type (Guitar, Bass, Vocals), FX types (Delay, Dynamics, EQ, Reverb, etc.), Characters (Clean, Colored, Distorted, Etc.), Amplifiers (26 options), Genres (Alternative, Blues, Country, Metal, Pop, Rock, etc.), and Artists.
Tick and pick a few specifics from each category to quickly find your ideal tone from a starting pool of roughly 1500 presets (even including your own).
A lot of the user presets I’ve made are just variations on existing presets which I’ve saved as there’s a ton of great sounding presets which are just one adjustment away from being one of my favorite, ready to go in the mix tones.
I like to right click on different presets to color code them so I can quickly call up a certain vibe I’m going for via the colors.
As you can see from the Input Sources, there are presets for all types of instruments aside from the obvious guitar and bass including piano, vocals, drums, etc. so this is anything but a guitar specific effect processor.
There’s even a “Randomizer” button for calling up a random one of the 1500 presets on demand which I like to do when I’m looking for inspiration sometimes or aren’t totally sure of the tone I’m going for with a recorded piece of audio.
Components
The components section is where you can create a tone from the ground up or swap out or insert components in existing presets:
Between the Amplifiers, Cabinets, Delay and Echo, Distortion, Dynamics, EQ, Filters, Modifier, Modulation, Pitch, Reverb, Special FX, and Tools categories you have over 100 components to drag and drop to any point in your chain to instantly affect the tone.
As you’d expect, any parameters on virtually any of these components can also be controlled via macro controls, automated as necessary, etc.
Signal Flow
Speaking of the chain, aside from the main component editing section, over on the right you can quickly readjust the signal flow as necessary, swapping positions, turning off certain effects, or removing them altogether:
IR Functionality
I talked about impulse response earlier with NAM Universal.
While you can just pick one of the 1500+ presets and be good to go with Guitar Rig Pro, I love the nitty-gritty when it comes to so many features on GRP, including the options for loading in and working with IR files:
You can add in up to 4 different IR setups, quickly swap them out on demand, adjust their levels and panning relative to one another, automatically or manually adjust their times (with relation to phase issues).
It even shows each of the 4 channels’ frequency responses and alignment visually on a graph relative to one another (muting a channel will remove them from the graph).
Each channel even has its own dedicated EQ setup if you like to further sculpt the tone of any and all of the channels.
There’s so much customization possible here for blending in your perfect tone between the 4 setups whether you’re using the built in “gear” of Guitar Rig or importing your own IR files that you created yourself or found online.
Guitar Rig Pro 7 has all of the standard features you expect to find on the best amp modeler as well (tuner, metronome, etc.) and, just like with NAM, there’s a big built in community with GRP where people share their presets for recreating virtually any tone you can think of.
The only thing which people understandably gripe about is Guitar Rig Pro doesn’t have the rights to the names of the famous amps they’re replicating, and while they do a good job at making it pretty obvious from the design, it helps to know what the equivalencies are (“Citrus”=Orange Amps, “AC Box”=Vox AC30, “Lead 800″=Marshall JCM800 Lead, etc.) – here’s a full list of the equivalents.
Whether I’ve looked up to see what one of my favorite artists used on a particular record and recreated that setup from the ground up using its components or just tweaked existing presets after using the search feature, Guitar Rig Pro 7 has been my go to amp modeler for years now.
Don’t take my word for it, though – try Native Instruments’ free “Guitar Rig 7 Player” which is Guitar Rig Pro 7’s stripped down but still absolutely stocked version to experience this Swiss Army Knife of guitar amp modelers for yourself!
