Interestingly enough ... after playing with my old Guitar Rig setup, the free trial of Helix Native (which still appears bug-ridden), and the free trial of Amplitube, I decided to see what life might be like just spending more time dialing in tones with the "Amp Designer" and "Pedalboard" plugins that come with Mainstage and Logic. I have to say, right now these are the patches that are winning so I might end up just saving some money and going with what I have.

One thing missing though is a good "slow gear" or "swell" type of effect. You can fake one in Guitar Rig but it really sucks. Both Helix Native and Amplitube seem to have a good one but if that's the only thing I'm still missing ... probably not worth the cash. So I don't suppose anyone knows of a good AU plugin that simulates a slow gear?

Oh and Per ... nice tones for sure. Your not the first person that has suggested going the UA route. Their interfaces are killer and their plugins are equally good. Neither the box or the plugins are even remotely inexpensive though so it's something I need to really think about.

Hi Glenn, I’ve had good results with this free auto swell plugin in MainStage:

http://pechenegfx.blogspot.com/2015/06/autoswell-light-new-audio-effect-in-vst.html?m=1

I notice there is also a Pro version which I haven’t tried yet.

Hey Rob,

THAT'S IT!!!

Seriously! I haven't been able to make anything work as well as the "slow gear" in my old VF-1 (not that that wasn't without it's issues) but this one actually works better! And from the little time I had to play with it, I think it works better than the equivalent effect in Helix Native.

This made my day. Thanks!

This pretty much seals the deal and I think I'll try life with purely the Mainstage stuff. Except for the reverbs that is. Love my Valhalla reverbs.

Well ... the Line6 support folks took care of me, I'm back up and running, and "Native" is back in the running. I love the idea that I already have Amp Designer and it costs me nothing ... however ... there are some tones coming out of "Native" that are just superb.

Honestly ... I think the quality of the modeling with Amplitube, Native, and even the Axe stuff is probably so high that what it comes down to is which UI you prefer to use. Out of the two software options above, the UI for Native wins for me hands down. I just need some extra time to decide whether or not I want to plunk down the cash. Will probably do it though.

I'm also experimenting a bit with Helix Native, I got it thanks to the discount available as an HX Stomp user and the ability to move settings between the two if I wanted to take some simpler patches onto a super portable rig. Normally I use an Apogee Element audio interface and the StepABout preamp in front, but with my minimal "quarantine" setup it's also helpful to just use the HX Stomp as the audio interface, recording the wet signal on it's own stereo track(s) along with the two dry signals for re-amping with Native or any other plug-ins later.

For pure amp simulation I also like the S-Gear plug-in by Scuffham Amps. The technology for this kind of thing continues to get better and better.

Glad to help out with the auto swell solution - and how silly of me not mentioning the possibility of doing swells with the Envelope Follower in a plug-in I worked on, Step FX (assigning it to filter cutoff or volume).

Yeah ... I was doing exactly that in Guitar Rig and it just never worked very well. It was really touchy and things had to be played just so. I was always hoping that maybe they would add a dedicated autoswell type effect but NI really appears to have given up on Guitar Rig entirely. To their credit, they did make sure it still works in Catalina but that's really it.

As a side note ... I've had other products that weren't cheap that I bought from Native Instruments only to have them discontinue them and leave me in the lurch. It's not a great way to do business.

Just in case anyone was following this or cared ...

After running some demos for a few weeks, I finally settled on Helix Native. When the chips were down, several of the better simulations do a really nice job and sound really good. In the end it was the UI and ease of use that really made the biggest impact. I just liked working with it a lot more than Amplitube, Guitar Rig, or the Logic amp modeler.