Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3 - Kontrol Version

by Native Instruments

Product Features

• Twelve supreme-sounding guitar and bass amps
• New matched cabinet module provides tried and true classic sounds in seconds
• 44 perfectly emulated guitar effects
• 17 guitar and six bass cabinets, four rotary speakers and nine microphones
• Includes Rig Kontrol 3 foot controller with Audio/MIDI interface

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 14 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B000WHFGCS
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #55,374 in Musical Instruments (See Top 100 in Musical Instruments)

Product Description

GUITAR RIG 3 is the ultimate all-in-one guitar and bass solution. Simply connect your guitar with your computer via the enhanced Rig Kontrol 3 foot pedal and you are ready to go. The on-board studio-quality soundcard routes the signal to your speakers, while the software grants you access to an incredible number of perfectly modeled classic amps, cabinets, mics and effects - all arranged in a super-simple drag-and-drop rack format. Any style, any time - the perfect solution for professional studio and live setups.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Try the demo, then you'll know what's so great about it., June 22, 2010

By 

J. Conrad (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3 - Kontrol Version

There's not much I can say that isn't already covered by professional testimonials, video reviews, and product demos.

In short, Guitar Rig 3 is an extremely versatile, powerful effects system. The hardware is extremely solid-- I've carried this thing around to live gigs, stuffed it in a backpack as carry-on for a plane ride, even spilled a little bit of beer on it (not recommended). The worst I've done is dinged it with a falling mic stand. It put a small scratch on it (similar to scratching the paint on a car door), but that's about it.

There's definitely a slight learning curve for the software itself, but you can download the demo from their website to see if it's too much for you to handle. All the help and tooltips are plenty to keep you moving along-- and spending more time playing music and less time twiddling knobs. However, the cool part is that if you like twiddling knobs and settings, you can spend countless hours dialing in all kinds of vintage, modern, or never-heard-before sounds. My friend, (a lead guitarist who owns an analog guitar pedal company), despite being a bit of a sound purist, was really impressed with the sheer number of tones I can emulate. Sometimes, the sounds have a tendency to be a little bit 'digital' sounding if you don't adjust them properly, but the software upgrade to Guitar Rig 4 supposedly improves some of this. (I haven't tried it yet myself). My solution was to add an analog pedal (Philosopher's Tone) to the front of my effects chain.

I use an Intel-based Macbook Pro and a Peavy KB3 amplifier.

PRO TIP: a keyboard amp is the way to go since they have a higher frequency range that allows you to get the full range of tones out of the software. If you go with a specific guitar amp, you may severely limit the variety of tones the software can produce. The software itself effectively mimics all kinds of vintage amps--more than most people could ever afford to own. This may seem unintuitive, but if you spend a little time on the Guitar Rig forums, you'll find this out from others' experience too.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guitar Rig/Komplete 5, September 3, 2009

By 

James P. Jones - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3 - Kontrol Version

I love Guitar Rig 3! I use Line 6 Gearbox, IK Multimedia Amplitube 2. I got Guitar Rig 3 as part of Komplete 5.

The amp modeling is fantastic & the extras like the LFO filters, Tape Decks, etc. make it a great choice for those who have the Line 6 & IK products as there is enough sonic differences to augment those products and not feel guilty
about having more than 1 virtual amplifier solution.

The registration that was complained about in earlier posts did not affect me. The NI Service Center was easy, I did not have issue at all. The other people most likely had a firewall setting preventing the NI Service Center from allowing traffic to the server.

Looking for to Guitar Rig 4 now.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where's the Love?, October 29, 2009

By 

LWAddict "Rich" (CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3 - Kontrol Version

I'd have given the product 4 stars...
5 if Guitar Rig 4 would eventually show up.
(We were promised the free upgrade because we were late buyers in Oct 2009)

But...
the customer service is not just less than good,
it's pathetic.

US Sales number will literally tell me that they can't do anything for me,
"it's all run by Germany" who's got great long distance numbers and doesn't help either.

Email... you get a response sometimes, mostly telling you things will be fine.
Then dead air.
You call them... dead air.

I actually was on the phone with one of the US people while typing this and he literally hung up on me.

So, in short, the product is good...
if you don't ever plan on upgrading, patching the software, or asking questions.
Just hope it works the first time for you.

Native Instruments, you and I are through professionally. :P
--------------------------------------------------------------
Edit...
Ok, they finally took care of my upgrade so I'm going to have to crank up the rating to 5 star now.
The product is amazing.
More to come...
but live, with ProTools, solo from a laptop, on the road, this thing is awesome.
It's like having all the amps and effects you could ever want at your finger tips and programming the pedal is a drag and drop dream.
Love it!