December 21, 2022 : Plugin Alliance has started its end of year sales and there are excellent plugins awaiting there, with very low price tags.

High-gain and metal players : check the offering from Plugin Alliance, as three of the best guitar amp-sims plugins I have ever used are on sales and available for the very affordable price of $19.99 ! (VAT added on top of this).

I would recommend you to check the official Diezel VH4 and Herbert plugins, as well as the official Engl plugin Savage 120, all created by Brainworx. These are among my preferred sims in terms of tone and feel, and they come each with an embedded set of 100+ quality IRs.

The VH4 plugin delivers a faithful numeric version of Diezel tones, and features the Diezel signature tone with the famous Channel 3 :

VH4 plugin

The VH4 plugin comes with the following features :

  • The four original channels of the VH4, with bright switches for channel 1 and 2. Channel 1 is clean, Channel 2 is mid-gain / crunch (can go in distortion territory with a boost), Channel 3 is the famous Diezel distortion tone, and Channel 4 goes beyond with more gain and compression, as well a a darker feel.
  • The plugin includes the KT77 power-amp section
  • 120 IR’s are embedded, including Diezel cabs using G12K100 and V30’s
  • The plugin includes a configurable noise gate, a delay and power-amp settings
  • The embedded IR section can be bypassed to route the signal to another IR loader, using your own impulse responses
VH4 plugin in RackMode view

This plugin is amazing to play…. : you can access a trial version, so you can figure out by yourself if it will work for you or not …. 🙂

The second plugin I would recommend to check and try is the Diezel Herbert, if you are looking for killer metal tones. The general tone is somewhat similar to the VH4, but the Herbert goes beyond in terms of gain, compression and settings, with the embedded mid-cut feature that will bring you immediately in metal territory…. Meaner and heavier than the VH4, the Herbert can provide Recto-ish tones when you turn up the bass section…

The Diezel Herbert plugin
  • The plugin features the 3 and 1/2 channels of the real amp :Channel 1 is clean, Channel 2 is a distortion with 2 modes : “-” for lower gain, “+” for higher gain, and Channel 3 is a monster in terms of gain (that is too much 🙂 )
  • The plugin models the KT77 version of the Herbert
  • The mid-cut feature is also modeled
  • It also comes with 120 high-quality Brainworx IR’s
  • Similar to the VH4, the plugin includes a configurable noise gate, a delay and power-amp settings

The channel 2 “-” is my favorite with this plugin, using a real overdrive before entering my sound card.

Diezel Herbert in rack mode view

And finally, the third plugin I would recommend to check is the official Engl Savage 120 simulation, still made by Brainworx. This is based on the version “I” of the Savage. This plugin provides many different tone options with its clean, crunch 1/crunch 2 and lead channels, with the original tweaks available on the real amp (depth boost, rough/smooth, contour, preshape… ). A lot of gain is available and you can get the very percussive Engl tone from the sim : from rock to djent, the Savage offers many many tones.

Like the two previous plugins, it comes with features such as :

  • 105 high-quality Brainworx IR’s
  • A configurable noise gate, a delay and power-amp settings

Savage 120 simulation by Brainworx

These plugins require a host to run (DAW) and do not run standalone. If you want to use your favorite IR loader and your own IRs, simply set the internal sim to “NO RECORDING CHAIN”, raise the master and output from the sim a little bit and route the signal to your loader :

VH4 to Nadir

You can check the plugin descriptions on Plugin Alliance page as well as tone demos of the plugins : https://www.plugin-alliance.com

Check also this video, where Jens Bogren shows how he re-amps a Sepultura title with the VH4 plugin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKhmGtfPUyw . There is also a link to presets that Jens created for the VH4 plugin in the video description.

So take advantage of the X-MAS sales 2022 at Plugin Alliance if you want to get these plugins for a very reasonable price !