There are a number of amp simulation plugins and cabinet emulators available online. Some are pretty pricey and some are free.
One of the more popular free plugins (with the option to donate) can be found on the LePou Plugins blog.
There’s an amp pack to download that comes with 5 separate amp sims and there’s a cabinet emulator called LeCab 2 as well.
The download links are located on the sidebar partway down the page. The plugins are available for both Mac and Windows.
The LePou Plugins blog features some examples if you want to hear how the amp sims sound, including some new high gain amp sims that are under development. The video below demonstrates several of the amp sounds and settings as well.
LePou Amp Sims
There are five amp sims included in the LePou plugins package:
LeCto – Was inspired by a popular high gain head (the Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier) and includes 2 channels with 3 modes each, and a variety of controls.
LeGion – A high gain preamp sim that is an original piece of gear not based on real hardware. It features 2 channels with 2 modes each, 2 assignable tonestack, and drive and tone controls.
LeXTAC – A bit of a throwback based on a popular Californian boutique amplifier. It has 3 channels, each with 3 Pre EQ settings.
Le456 – A preamp sim with a design based on an ENGL Powerball Amp. It has 2 channels with 2 modes and tonestacks per channel.
HyBrit – A sim pack that sounds like Marshall amps.
LeCab 2 Cabinet Emulator
Amp sims aren’t much good without a cabinet emulator to load in your favorite Impulse Responses to get the best tone.
LeCab doesn’t come with any Impulse Responses preloaded, but there are a number of places to download some online, both free and paid.
LeCab 2 lets you run up to 6 simultaneous impulses, there are a variety of filters and effects, including phase and delay, and latency control down to 64 samples.
Update: Unfortunately LeCab is only available in 32-bit for Windows. If that’s a problem you can use this other free IR loader called NadIR, which has a 64-bit option.
Well done. Just one lil remark – there’s one more ampsim by LePou which was the first one released back then – SoloC, supposed to simulate Soldano SLO-100 head.
Cool, thanks for info. Let me know if you find a download link for it. I couldn’t find one over there and it doesn’t come as part of the main download, at least not with Windows 64 bit.
I’ve been using Le456 a lot lately. These sure are some great sims for being free.
I wanted to say thanks for providing this post which pointed me to the LePou amp sims and Nadir cab simulator. I’ve mostly used Line6 Pod Farm up until now but I’ve recently had lots of problems with it causing Reaper to crash on rendering. I recently tried Amplitude but wasn’t that impressed with the tones.
I was therefore blown away when I tried the LePou stuff, with the Nadir cab sim. I’ve mostly been using HyBrit for “rock” tones but I also really like Le456 for clean and slightly crunchy tones.
Thanks again.
For cab sims, get the two note wall of sound, you can have it for $8 and it’s phenomenal! Waààaaaaaaay better than the rest!