Here’s your soundbite: “GuitarPort is the perfect melding of the analog world of guitars and the digital world of computers.”
Up to this point, I love everything about it. The hardware is simple and effective. You plug one end into an available USB port on your computer — or on your monitor if you happen to have a monitor with a built-in USB hub like some people do, mwuahaha — and you plug your guitar into the other end. There’s a big volume dial on the thing that seems, frankly, like something to give it a bit of design flair more than any necessity. That’s it.
The GuitarPort software is a genuine joy to work with, a knob-twiddler’s dream come true. Without even considering how the combination sounds you can tell a lot of work went into the interface and how a guitarist wants to interact with the program. Each of the amplifier models has its own face, with a custom appearance and some special touches that give some of them extra flair. For instance, one of the heavier “shred heads” has skulls for knobs and the eyes glow brighter red as you turn them up. There’s a tube preamp model with visible tubes that glow with increased gain. Little things like that. Turning knobs is as simple as clicking on them on dragging up or down. Hell, even the tuner, a seemingly simple staple utility, is given a very usable and attractive interface, with a digital note indicator and an analog sweep needle for dialing into precise tune.
I didn’t know what to expect in terms of sound, but overall I’m very happy with the sound. It really does a credible job of modeling a diverse array of amp heads. I won’t say it has a sound to match every tone ever created — for instance my particular “holy grail” tone, John Petrucci’s super-saturated, Mesa tone found at one point in Dream Theater’s “A Change Of Seasons 1: The Crimson Sunrise” track — but there really is something there for everyone. Some of the higher gain models are a bit noisy and require hefty gating, but I think that’s true in real life as well (I don’t have a ton of experience with real heads). For a pure simulated environment it’s capable of some surprisingly warm tones. For practicing with my new “Modern Method for Guitar” book I load up a jazz tone that really captures the warm, rich, tube-like sound that tends to pull out good, clean playing.
Personally I think the GuitarPort Online feature is a lot of fun. There are lessons, professionally-recorded tracks that contain different types of mixes (full-mix, no lead guitar, no guitars at all, etc.) to play along with, and heaps of tones. I’ve been having a blast playing along with the well-recorded backing track rendition of AC/DC’s “Back In Black” and Joe Satriani’s “Always With Me, Always With You.” Talk about bringing back some old memories. One of the cooler things is that the software will act as your personal footswitch assistant and (optionally) automatically select the correct tone for the part of the song you’re on as well as switch pages for the sheet music if it’s available. Having a rotate-able, widescreen display is truly wonderful for these especially long windows
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If there’s one thing the GuitarPort has done for me it’s reintroduced the joy of playing. And that’s precisely what I bought it for. Now if only those chimps from the unnamed retailer would actually get me my software — yes, I’m still waiting for it — I can actually try out the RiffTracker software and see if it is as useful and polished as GuitarPort is.