Guitar amp sims have gotten astonishingly good
Table Of Content
Source: Ars Technica
Category: Tech
Originally Published: 2025-12-03
Curated: 2025-12-03 16:26
It’s an incredible time to be a guitarist who doesn’t want to own a bunch of $2,000 amps and an expensive pedalboard of gear. Amp and pedal simulators, which have been around for decades, have in the last few years finally come into their own as nearly indistinguishable sonic replacements. Even John Mayer is now willing to ditch his beloved tube amps for digital models.
I certainly don’t have Mayer’s chops or gear budget, but I do love messing with this sort of tech and have purchased everything from NeuralDSP‘s Archetypes series to Amplitube and Guitar Rig. Last week, as part of an early Black Friday sale, I picked up two amp/effects suites from British developer Polychrome DSP—Nunchuck (Marshall amps) and Lumos (clean through mid-gain tones). They are both excellent.
Any reasonable person should be satisfied with this tech stack, which models gear that collectively costs as much as my house. After my Polychrome DSP purchases, I reminded myself that I am a reasonable person, and that I could therefore ignore any further amp sims that might tempt my wandering eye.
And then on Monday, Universal Audio, one of the premier names in audio technology, released Paradise Guitar Studio. Unfortunately for my wallet, it is amazing.
Paradise’s Dumble amp sim is terrific.
Two tickets to Paradise
Universal Audio—henceforth “UA”—has been developing top-tier emulation of classic studio gear for many years. More recently, they have also released a set of modelled amps in both plugin and physical pedal form, with each pedal going for over $300.
With Paradise Guitar Studio, the company has brought most (though not all; Anti and Knuckles are not included) of these amps into a single plugin, then paired them with a generous suite of tone-shaping gear, including six classic distortion pedals, seven modulation effects units, a couple of compressors, four delays, four reverbs, and a couple of EQs.
As for the amps, you get six: a few Fenders, a Marshall, a Vox AC 30, and a Dumble. Most of these have several variants and small mods; the Dumble alone features four different iterations of the legendary boutique hardware, and it gives you the ability to tweak the main Dumble circuit by altering capacitor values and internal trim levels.
This article was curated from Ars Technica. All rights belong to the original publisher.