Are there good jazz guitar VSTs?

[Jimmy Smith]

Full band is going well so I wondered if I could do organ and guitar using a guitar VST. I can't play real guitar anymore due to a finger injury.

[bloos66]

Hey JS,
what exactly do you have in mind when you say VST? Is it something like Toontrack EzKeys (EZkeys 2 | Toontrack) that will play midi notes using a piano voice? Toontrack also has something for bass but not for guitar.
There is also Band in a Box (BIAB) - which will generate a full backing track based on a chord progression and a selected style (1000s of different ones to choose from). BIAB is very powerful but does not cater for every single style out of the box.
Also, wouldn't you be able to use any synth VST that has a guitar/organ voice.
Yamaha for instance has this one ...YC-3B is a VST Instrument which reproduces tone wheel organ sounds. The YC-3B contains 64 different preset sound programs and lets you create your original organ sounds from these preset sound programs. Also you can save your original organ sounds as VST presets.
Give us a bit more info on what you want to achieve with the VSTs...
Cheers, Paul

[Jimmy Smith]

Hey Paul! All I'm looking for is to play keyboard into the daw and have the VST change the sound into jazz guitar.

As I already have good sounding bass, organ, piano, and vibes sounds. And I can create the backing tracks myself. I guess my op was a little vague haha.

[bloos66]

Have a look at Ample Sound - amplesound.net
Guitar sounds via Midi - so you could play a regular piano which has a midi output and use that to create guitar sounds. If you go to the review section - amplesound.net - they have lots of videos ....

Or you can get something 'big' like - The Roland XV-5080 128-Voice Synthesizer Module is the ultimate sound module based on the best-sounding, most expressive and expandable new synthesizer/sample player architecture in Roland history - Roland - XV-5080 | Software Synthesizer

[Jimmy Smith]

Thx. That's what I'm looking for. Scheming what to do because I might want to work on rock/metul too with guitar sounds controlled by my keyboard. Dunno if I want to devote time to it tho.

[bloos66]

Another option - perhaps not feasible in your situation - is to use an electric piano and load the appropriate sound fonts into it. I have a Roland RD-88 Stage Piano with the usual selection of 100s of instrument voices, and also access to the Roland Zen Core sound library which costs money though.... There are probably quite a few more VSTs out there that will take a midi piano input and provide any instrument you want (if available)...

[Ukena]

The guitar isn't an easy instrument to get right digitally, played from a keyboard. Any good software guitar instrument requires deft handling of the expression wheel.

I have found pretty good electric and flat-top acoustic emulations, although for a guitarist, none are as easy to play as an actual guitar. There's a fairly steep learning curve.

But RealGuitar from MusicLab is pretty good.

I would suggest, however, if you're getting deeply into the digital instrument world, looking into Soundpaint. The engine itself is free, and the instruments are not expensive (it comes with a free piano, which is quite good). There are constantly (almost every week) new instruments and effects being added, so it's really easy to get sucked in and spend more money than you had planned. But at this point, it's also pretty easy to do almost everything you need to do just using Soundpaint. It has a pretty good Hammond, as well. These are all extensively sampled instruments, so there is a lot of sensitivity.

One can also get into non-sampled virtual instruments, or simulations. I have found the Blue3 by GG to be an amazingly accurate Hammond, with drawbars, Leslie, and different mics, all available for manipulation.

[Stevebol]

I haven't messed with guitar VSTs in a while but I think amplesound was good.

[Jimmy Smith]

Thx guys. I should be ok with my existing sounds in my brick and mortar instruments for right now - my organ, and then bass, vibes, rhodes and piano sounds on my digital piano. But I'll probably get around to working with a guitar VST. I want to at least work out some rock soloing using a keyboard to control distorted guitar.