The story
A few years ago, I started building small instruments together with a good friend. This was done in a rather rudimentary way and most materials we used came from the hardware store.
This small cigar-box guitar here, was our first instrument we put together. It consists of two old cigar boxes we glued together and an 82 cm long wooden board over which three steel strings are stretched. The guitar is tuned to E – A – d and has a natural range from E2 to D5. Due to the cheap materials and construction, it sounds anything but flawless. Thus, the warm characteristics of its sounds are accompanied by many buzz sounds.
This guitar was my first attempt at sampling an instrument for Kontakt. Consequently, my setup was fairly simple. It consisted of a Røde NT1-A microphone, which I placed about 30 cm away from the guitar. I sampled each semitone of the instrument six times. Three times mezzoforte and three times forte fortissimo. This results in three round robins for each recorded dynamic. I chose these two dynamics because they best show the characteristics of the instrument. In the quiet and medium dynamics, the sound remains pretty much the same, which is why I decided to record at mezzoforte. Only when you hit the strings harder does the sound change, which is why I recorded at forte fortissimo. The Kontakt instrument features a simple GUI as well. There you can switch on an artificially created stereo spread as well as a reverb effect.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank David Hilowitz, whose YouTube tutorials helped me a lot in creating this sample instrument. I would also like to thank Patrick Bächli, who built the guitar with me.
SPECS:
Tuning: E – A – d
Microphone: Røde NT1-A
Unpacked audio size: 202 MB
Kontakt 6.5.1
Reviews for The Guitar
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
I feel gifted to have this.
This has become one of my favourite pianobook instruments, for real. Once you open the only patch you will find, you will be welcomed by a cute custom guitar wallpaper and three settings: Volume, Reverb and Stereo Spread, and everything works as intended. The quality of the samples is impeccable, you will find yourself kind of mesmerized while playing.
My ONLY complain is that there is not enough range, so you are restricted to play on the lower range. With that said, restrictions often cause big surges of inspirations. While I was testing this instrument, I was inspired to create a mockup for a new soundtrack-like music track.
Special thanks to Ronny for gifting this to us. Cheers to you!Another great instrument from Ronny
Yet another amazingly great sample pack from Ronny. Two velocity layers and three round robins make this library bubble with realism. It's got plenty of quirks as handmade instruments will, but they only add to the character without ever distracting from the musicality. The top velocity layer adds a nice smack but it is well matched to the mf tone timbrally. The tuning is nothing short of impeccable, which I didn't notice at first it's not something you want people to notice! but although there are no artifacts from tuning, I'm guessing some intonation correction must have been applied, because this is dead on. If I had one suggestion for this library, it would be the inclusion of AR envelope controls. Even so, this is a great instrument, and yet another hidden gem of the PB community.
Guitar's are notoriously difficult to sample... But this does a brilliant job!
As a guitar player I tend to be more judgemental of guitar libraries. This one is really great. The default setting for release time is too long in my opinion and I'd recommend clicking the spanner icon and setting it to around 190ms for a realistic release time. However it's all subjective and really depends on how you're going to use this library. Overall its a great job!
Really Awesome sound overall
Im a guitar player so I'm never really into these guitar instruments personally. Slides and hammer ons are a big part of my playing and that not achievable with libraries like this. Also even if you strum a chord on the piano in the same delayed way you would on a guitar it just doesn't really sound like a real guitar strum to me. With that said i think this library is one of the best guitar libraries on pianobook. There is a decent amount of round robins and dynamic layers which adds to the realism. Also its not too clean with instrument noises and string buzzing which also adds to the character. The GUI is cute and simple. While as a guitarist i wouldn't personally use this, Its one of the best ive heard in a while as a sample instrument.
A Solid (if glued together) Offering
Perfect for adding weight to low riffs and ostinatos. The two velocity levels give a good amount of character and the round robins as ever are a real gift for playing interesting lines. The limitations of the sample pack as they represent the instrument as constructed and thus must be used creatively. An attractive gui with large easily adjustable controls is the icing on the cake. Altogether a solid (although glued together) offering.
