I found it depends on which cab/mic you choose in Cali. Some arenāt a problem at all, others are pretty bad. Or maybe its the changing of them that provokes the issue, not sureā¦
Yeah, its difficult to justify if you are happy with modeling and donāt already have a bunch of analog gear. And all the more so if guitar isnāt the primary instrument you play.
My situation is that guitar is my primary instrument, I already have a pile of great tube amps, the material I gravitate to and my primary style requires ādriven cleanā tones, which so far, the modelers still havenāt quite cracked yet imo.
All to say it makes perfect sense for some, and not so much for others. But either way, Cantabile is exceptionally helpful to have in the setup imo.
I also have tons of analog gear, but the sims offer more than I will ever be able to collect and dust off occasionally. Thing is, it really boils down to what is good for you and your expectations. We can all take a stance of one or the other, and all of us could be wrong. This is why I 1st posted this to begin with:
Just because I may be a keyboardist doesnāt lessen the fact that I also play guitar. I take it as seriously as any other instrument I play. I take the guitar duties in different bands, which means I have to play many different styles. The beauty of playing all these styles using sims, is that I donāt have to nervously figure out how to go from Punk, to Waylon Jennings, to Zep, to AC/DC, to George Benson, to Beatles, to Pop using 1 amp/cabinet and a floor full of pedals in 5 seconds.
Whether I am playing to 10 drunks,a 300 seat, or 2500 seat venue, I prepare accordingly. For the majority of gigs I was playing (pre-Covid), 200 people was an average crowd. In my world, $20 tips for a request was typical, and the wide range of songs could be ridiculous at times. Yes, I could have tweaked a few things with an analog rig, but I like to keep the crowd alive by moving to songs quickly. Having different styles pre-dialed in, and knowing many songs made many memorable nights, and keeps me gigging. Using sims made that happen. And, at the end of the night, the patrons didnāt care if my EQ wasnāt properly dialed in. Management didnāt care either. It was all about everyone having fun, and the house and band making money. No heavy Amp/Cabs to load, and I was no less a guitarist than I was pre-gig. So, it makes sense to me in that situation, maybe not in others.
I remember some of the early Rock-a-Billies in my area. They thought the use of a distortion pedal and a Wah was sacreligious, even though they started a new movement in guitar use in their day. To each his own.
Regards
Corky
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Hi All,
Any comments on or cool patches for Crush Station from Eventide? I have been having a ball with it on guitar and clavinet. A few too many controls at first but after playing with it some it really has its own sound apart from my other overdrive type plugs. The sub octave section of it reminded me of an old Mutron divider.
Regards,
Dave
Hi Dave
I have a pile of fx I havenāt spent much time with. I used Crush Station on some synth plugs, and really liked what I was hearing. I intended to eventually try it on guitar, butā¦other projects and dealing with our 100 yr blizzard has been consuming much of my time the past 10 days. 
Clavinet would be killer with this plug. Here is a preset for you to try:
Spirit In The Sky.zip (836 Bytes)
What it sounds like:
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LOL, Iām just the opposite! Thatās why a Novation keyboard to me feels no different than something that costs however much something you key guys would buy! In fact I canāt even call keyboard a second instrument though I could muddle thru a simple part liveā¦its more a sequencing aid to make that process go not quite as slow as drawing everything with a mouseā¦ 
I did a little more research on IRās this weekend. I found STL Tones free Ignite Emissary Bundle which includes a free dual IR Loader VST called NadIR. I wasnāt too fond of the amp VST in the bundle (wasnāt finding that sweet spot for clean but breaks up when you play a little harder) but the IR loader works well. It came with a few free IRās.
When I first got to the page and was trying to download the free Emissary Bundle I accidentally downloaded their latest offering, ToneHub which has a 10 day trial. The Core Pack that comes with that includes a Vox AC30 emulation that sounds very good.
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I downloaded NadIR a couple years ago, great little tool. I found some free acoustic IRs to try and fix up the sound of a (not good) DI acoustic signal and they actually worked fairly well. Blended with a mic, very nice. I need to find those and try them with the Variaxe, in fact.
If you have AmpliTube 5, IK Multimedia is giving away their Soldano SLO-100 head emulation. Like other IK āproceduresā 
this one is at first confusing but actually simple. To take advantage of the promotion you just update (download and install) the IK Product Manager. When it launches again there is a notification that you have added the above equipment.
Also, if you check the Amplitube 5 āPresetsā tab in the Product Manager you can download new zip files for Joe Satriani, Gus G, Marty Friedman and Slash. Just unzip them and put those preset folders in the C:\Users*your_user_name*\Documents\IK Multimedia\AmpliTube 5\Presets. I made a separate āSignature Artistsā folder for them. I havenāt checked them out because I usually just make my own presets but people on the thread liked them. Might be helpful if youāre doing an GnR cover 
You can read about the promotion on the IK forum here https://cgi.ikmultimedia.com/ikforum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=27060
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Just in case anyone else has this problem, and after 4 months of unusable Amplitube 5, SS-11X, and the new Guitar Rig, I finally figured it out. I disabled the default āhigh contrastā in my Personalize screen settings. All is working as it should, but I am learning to accept the lessor graphics. My eyes are in shock. 
Hi guys,
thereās a new option for us laptop guitarists: AmpLion 2 Rock Essentials: instead of swamping us in 100s of amp sims, pedals and effects, this just offers the three key ingredients of rock guitar sound: a Fender Deluxe, a Plexi-ish Marshall and a Vox AC30 TB, plus the default complement of pedals. Layout is nice and simple, all three amps sound decent, and you can get to a sound that just āworksā live in a reasonable time, instead of scrolling through 100s of presets.
Iām pretty happy with all three amp flavors - donāt like the Fender 1x12 speaker so much for my cleans, but the Fender top works nicely with the Marshall speakers, so no probs. The modulation effects are a bit too noisy for my taste, and the digital delay is missing the dotted 8ths option when syncād to the host, but that can be fixed in a later release or worked around.
Overall, a really nice toolbox for ābread & butterā sounds, especially for live use. And itās discounted to $79 in the intro phase, so worth checking out.
If you like german-accented English and garish shirts, have a look at this YT video:
Cheers,
Torsten
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Thanks Torsten. Will check it out, even with German accent. 
Torsten,
How is the CPU usage on these? I have the amplion pro, but never really used it, I think because of cpu. Really donāt remember now. By the way, are you wearing any of his fashion? 
Works OK on my studio machine and my live cube - but these are healthy machines
Did a little test against the Nembrini Voice DC 30 - both with a simple AC 30 and one speaker sim.
On my live cube, the AmpLion runs at an average of 9%, with 12% peaks, compared to the Nembrini Voice at 5% average and 9% max (Cantabile profiler values for plugin load).
Adding a Tubescreamer, a delay and a reverb to the AmpLion pushes the load up to 15% average and 20% peak.
As an alternative scenario, I added a Nembrini Tubescreamer, a Valhalla Delay, and a Valhalla VintageVerb to the Voice DC-30, and that came in - all together - at around 9% average and peaks of 19%.
Now for the low mark: created a similar setup in TH-U - and came in at an average of 3.5% with a max of around 7%. But I never really liked the AC-30 sound in the TH-U, so that doesnāt really count
So yes, definitely not the most CPU-efficient plugin, but it does sound pretty good when you have the CPU power to run it.
Currently, Iām on the fence - these days, my live guitar sounds are mostly based around Nembrini or Mercuriall one-amp-plugins, with a couple of basic pedals when needed. They sound absolutely gorgeous, but are sometimes a bit finicky getting to the sound that āworksā. The simplicity of the AmpLion is definitely attractiveā¦
Cheers,
Torsten
I really appreciate you going thru all the testing. It somewhat confirms my experience on using outside fx instead of resident fx. I do like their simple approach. Also like their double tracking feature.
We are in the same boat on that. Nembrini and Mercuriall are a part of my main arsenal. I find that no one plugin can do everything, thatās why I use several plugs for what I need. Nembrini, Mercurial, Softube, and Neural DSP(and others I may not know about) are all using the Neural Network Modeling technology, which is amazing. What is even better, they are using it on modded amps and cabs, which gives us a chance to try out those rigs as well. I am hoping they will use the technology on other things, such as a modded B3 and Leslie from many of the G.O.A.T.s.
No comment on the fashion?
No, Iām not a good enough guitarist to get away with such a fashion statementā¦
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Iāve heard a lot of people love AmpLion. I know Iāve tried them; no idea why I didnāt stick with it though. My gotos right now are Nembrini for the basic Marshall sound and STL Tones for most everything else. With a little Neural thrown in.
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Just picked this up! On sale for introductory price $39 (reduced from $137) until April 5th. Gotta say, Nembrini is killing it lately. I still have my Vox AC30, but hasnāt seen the light of day in awhile. After this purchase, it may become an ebay item, lol.
Iāve been looking at that. The Vox amp is actually the only thing in Guitar Rig that Iāve used down through the years. I donāt know if itās accurate but I like it. But I imagine Nembrini has nailed it! I guess I have a day to decide, yikes.