Ample Sound Ample Guitar SC v4 [WiN-MAC]

• Product: Ample Guitar SC
• Developer: Ample Sound
• Version: 4.0.1
• Format: Standalone, VST2, VST3, AAX, AU
• Requirements: Windows 10 or later, macOS 10.15 or later
• Source: amplesound.net/en/pro-pd.asp?id=2

Ample Guitar SC is a sampled electric guitar modeled on a Fender Stratocaster 50th Anniversary, split into four pickup-position libraries — Neck, Neck+Middle, Funk (Middle+Bridge), and Bridge — across 10 articulations including pinch harmonics. A built-in AMP Simulator pairs 7 modeled amp heads with 8 guitar cabinets, each captured through 8 microphones. The same Riffer 4 MIDI editor, Strummer, and Tab Reader handle programming, chording, and Guitar Pro import. It answers the search for a sampled Strat with its own amp and cabinet chain built in.

Key Takeaway

Activates when a part needs a sampled Strat run through its own amp and cabinet chain, without recording a real guitar or reaching for a separate amp sim. It displaces manual pickup-position guessing and outboard reamping, not acoustic or nylon-string tone. Sampling covers one specific Stratocaster; players wanting a Les Paul or semi-hollow character use a different Ample Guitar model.

Funk Sits Between Neck and Bridge

Sampling splits across four pickup-position libraries rather than one guitar re-recorded through a switchable pickup selector — Neck, Neck+Middle, Bridge, and a fourth labeled Funk that captures the Middle+Bridge combination specifically. A real Stratocaster’s 5-way switch has five positions; this sampling covers four, and solo Middle isn’t one of the four libraries on its own.

Ten articulations are sampled per library, one more than Ample Guitar T’s acoustic set — sustain, palm mute, natural harmonic, hammer-on and pull-off, legato slide, slide in, slide out, pop, pinch harmonic, and slide guitar — with pinch harmonic specific to this electric instrument rather than shared with the acoustic line. Polyphonic Legato and Slide Smoother carry over from the same underlying sampling engine, keeping legato convincing across wide intervals here as well.

Because Funk is captured as its own fixed Middle+Bridge blend rather than two pickups summed live from separate samples, its exact blend ratio is whatever was captured at the session, not adjustable afterward. Players chasing the quack of a Strat’s true position 2 or 4 get it directly from Neck+Middle or Funk; players wanting pure Middle alone don’t have a dedicated library for it.

Every Cabinet Was Miked Eight Times

The AMP Simulator models seven amp heads — Metal Double, Metal Treble, Lead 800, Jazz 120, 65 Twang, 65 Delight, and 57 Delight — spanning clean, twangy, and high-gain character across separate named models rather than one generic “amp” block with a gain knob. Each head pairs with any of eight guitar cabinets in the signal chain.

Every cabinet was captured through eight separate microphones, so a cabinet’s tone isn’t fixed to one mic position — moving between mic choices shifts brightness and proximity character the way physically repositioning a microphone on a real cabinet would, without a second cabinet pass. Combined with seven heads and eight cabinets, mic selection is a third variable in the same chain, not a separate effect stacked afterward.

The amp and cabinet stage processes what the sampling engine and Riffer have already generated — it isn’t a general-purpose reamp box that accepts an externally recorded DI guitar track as input. Producers who tracked a real guitar DI outside Ample Guitar SC can’t route that external signal through this amp chain; the simulator only reamps its own internal sample and MIDI signal.

Tab View and Piano Roll Switch Live

Riffer 4 switches between a Piano Roll view and a Guitar Tab view in real time on the same part, rather than requiring a separate export-and-reopen step to see a tab representation of what’s been programmed. Editing a bend or slide in Tab view updates the same underlying MIDI that Piano Roll reads, not a separate parallel document.

String visualization inside the Piano Roll blocks two notes from stacking on the same string and assigns fingering automatically, the same string-aware system that runs across every current Ample Guitar instrument’s Riffer implementation, including this one. MIDI CC and velocity lanes display simultaneously in different colors and transparency levels, with one-click CC curve presets available for fast automation entry.

Fingering and technique are programmed directly rather than through key switches, removing a layer most sampled electric guitar libraries still require — but that convenience is specific to editing inside Riffer itself, not to MIDI edited afterward in a DAW’s own piano roll. Guitarists translating tab archives benefit most from the dual-view switch; producers building parts purely by ear from scratch may rarely open Tab view at all.

A Custom Chord Skips Detection Entirely

Strummer detects a chord from played or programmed notes through two separate detection modes, or a chord can be defined manually and used directly, bypassing both detectors when the automatic read isn’t the voicing intended. Strum SEQ then strums whatever chord is active at any rhythm or speed, set independently of which detection path produced it.

The included rhythm library supports dragging a pattern directly onto a track, pulling from Strummer’s own pattern set rather than requiring a strum to be built note-by-note through Strum SEQ every time. Tab Reader separately imports Guitar Pro files from GP3 through GP8 directly into Riffer, carrying fingering, articulation, and performance data along with the notes.

Files made in third-party tab software that isn’t officially Guitar Pro still aren’t supported by Tab Reader, even when they claim GP-format compatibility, the same boundary that applies across Ample Sound’s guitar line. Arrangers converting an existing tab archive get real time savings from Tab Reader; players programming a strummed part from scratch skip both Tab Reader and manual chord detection by building directly in Strummer instead.

Middle Pickup Alone Isn’t a Library

The four sampled libraries — Neck, Neck+Middle, Funk (Middle+Bridge), and Bridge — cover four of a real Stratocaster’s five switch positions; solo Middle, position 3 on a real 5-way switch, isn’t captured as its own library. Programming a part that specifically wants an isolated middle-pickup tone has no direct source among the four.

Neck+Middle and Funk both include the middle pickup blended with a neighbor rather than isolated, so a phrase can approximate a middle-leaning tone through either blend without landing on the pickup by itself. This mirrors how the sampling engine handles other combined positions: each library is a fixed capture from the session, not a live sum of two separately sampled pickups that could be remixed afterward.

Ample Guitar SC’s four-library structure follows the same pattern as Ample Guitar T’s three-library Finger/Pick/Strum split — a small, fixed set of full sample libraries standing in for a continuously variable real-world control, whether that control is a pickup selector or a playing hand’s technique. Choosing which of the four to program is a decision made once per phrase, the same way choosing Finger versus Pick is on the acoustic instrument.

FAQs