Plugins for acoustic fingerstyle?

[jklotz]

I've got a UA Apollo and use some of their plugins, but I am curious, and being black friday and all, I thought it might be a good time to try some new stuff. I primarily use reverb, compression and eq. I'm not a big efx guy. What plugins do you guys like for solo acoustic? Bonus points if they are on sale for black friday!

[min7b5]

I'm a big Fabfilter fan myself. So Pro Q3 for eq, Pro C2 for compression, Pro R for reverb (most, but not all the time) and Pro L for limiting. I'm gonna keep an eye out for a deal on their de-esser plugin myself for voice over stuff..

[j3ffr0]

Good time to pick up some plugins if you got the itch.

Some of my UAD favorites that are usefulish for fingerstyle include:
Little Labs Phase Alignment Tool
Neve 88RS Channel Strip
Fairchild bundle
LA2A bundle

[YamaYairi]

Spend your money on microphones and a audio interface, if you don't have them. So many people record direct from the pickup and you will never get the true acoustic sound of your guitar. You can add effects in software.

[Doug Young]

Be sure to check out the thread we just had here on plugins, lots of interesting suggestions.

Since you have the Apollo, it's a great time to take advantage of their custom bundle sale - I don't think that ends on black friday ??, but I'm not sure how long it runs. I'd focus on the expensive plugins, since you can basically buy any plugin for $100 (4 for $399), and pick up some that cost almost that much alone, normally. For example, the Capitol Chambers reverb is excellent and unique. The Oceans Way plugin can be useful. The Lexicon reverbs are also nice. I typically use the LA-2 compressor (tho it's not one of the expensive ones) and the Ampex or Studer Tape Recorder. The Little Labs phase alignment is useful if you record with multiple sources, like mic+pickup, and sometimes the Voice of God is handy for beefing up low end. The Pultec and Neve EQs are nice, tho I tend to use FabFilter's EQ, since it just offers a whole different level of interaction - more modern. The UA stuff is good for classic vintage sounds. UA's Precision line of plugins are nice, tho for the most part I find non-UA equivalents to be more effective these days. Oh, the SPL Vitalizer is interesting.

Best thing with the UAD stuff, of course, is to just try stuff. Activate the demos, see what's usefulto you and go from there. If you buy anything, they'll reset all your demos anyway so you can re-explore later.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by jklotz

I've got a UA Apollo and use some of their plugins, but I am curious, and being black friday and all, I thought it might be a good time to try some new stuff. I primarily use reverb, compression and eq. I'm not a big efx guy. What plugins do you guys like for solo acoustic? Bonus points if they are on sale for black friday!

UAD let's you demo plugins for two weeks. It's a pretty easy thing to start the demos and requires no additional downloading. Try out plugins to see what appeals to you. There aren't any wrong choices so long as what you get brings something you like to the table.

[min7b5]

Just noticed Fabfilter stuff is 25% off this morning

[jklotz]

Originally Posted by min7b5

Just noticed Fabfilter stuff is 25% off this morning

Yea, thanks. I just bought the FF eq.

[min7b5]

Liquid Sonic's "Seventh Heaven" reverb for $49 is a very sweat deal https://www.liquidsonics.com/software/seventh-heaven/

[anton]

I saw that Seventh Heaven Standard deal as well, thinking about picking it up. I'm demoing their Cinematic Rooms right now, and while it sounds great it might be overkill for me as someone who does not know a ton about reverbs and just wants another one to experiment with. $50 vs $120, hmmm.

[SprintBob]

Originally Posted by min7b5

Just noticed Fabfilter stuff is 25% off this morning

I bought FabFilter Q3 earlier this year and it’s fantastic. I’ve been trying to improve my dynamics and even if not actually recording, monitoring with the plug-in gives me an excellent visual graphic on how well I am doing balancing the dynamics from low end to high end.

[TBman]

I like Ozone 9 and the CSR Classik Studio reverb package.

[Trent in WA]

Doug's suggestions, as always, are great, and I'll second all the FabFilter Pro Q-3 love. Since getting the hang of it (it has a remarkably deep feature set), it's always the first EQ I reach for. Even if I wind up replacign it with more characterful EQs in the final mix, it makes it so easy to spot problem areas that it would be worth the money even if it never wound up on a finished track.

The other plugin I'd really plug (haha, get it? ) is Gullfoss. It's a dynamic EQ that increases the clarity of whatever you run through it by identifying frequencies that are masked and either boosting them, cutting the guilty frequencies, or some combination of both, and it does so on the basis of real-time analyses that change 300 times a second, IIRC. You can also limit the range of frequencies it's responding to. It will improve recordings made in acoustically compromised spaces and works well as a de-esser to boot.

Trent