Customer Reviews

Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3 - Kontrol Version

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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
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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!

The product itself is great, too bad that their registration sucks and the Customer Service is even worse. Since I purchased the upgrade to GR3 the stupid register screen comes up almost every time I open the software. When I use it in Sonar, not only does the stupid registration screen come up, it will lock me out of Sonar because there is no way to close the the reg screen.

I keep getting the same canned emails telling me to turn off anti virus (that I don't have) and reinstall, and clean out my registry.

A COMPANY SHOULD NEVER PUT THE CUSTOMER THROUGH THIS MUCH HELL TO USE SOFTWARE THAT THEY HAVE PAID FOR>>>>> Securing their software from thieves should never come at the expense of their customers.

God help you if you have to be put on hold - their hold music is enough to want to pull your eye ball out, and their CS staff is less than helpful. Why don't they walk their customers through the issue rather than telling the customer, I will send you another email to fix the problem. You already did that you dumb as*. It didn't work.

DONT BUY NATIVE INSTRUMENT PRODUCTS UNLESS THEY LOOSE THIS CRAPY REGISTRATION. It is really too bad because the product (when not being bothered with the registration) is really great. The product itself I would recommend to anyone.

FRUSTRATED AND PISSED OFF!