The Best FREE Guitar VST Plugins of All Time

Guitar lovers rejoice! Here are the best free guitar vst plugins on the internet available today – perfect for adding realism and tone to your acoustic or electric guitar sound. From amp simulators to distortion pedals, these plugins will improve your guitar sound and add the elements you need to your songs.

It doesn’t matter what DAW you use, as long as it accepts VSTs you’ll be able to use all of the instruments in this list.

Free Guitar VSTs

The guitar is a big part of music production these days regardless of what genre it is you produce, and great guitar sound effects play a big role in creating an immersive sound for your fans to experience.

That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the best free guitar VST plugins of all time. Whether you’re a beginner guitar player or just want to add a little guitar sound to your tracks, these free guitar VSTs are sure to help.

Ample Guitar M Lite II

The Ample Guitar M Lite II is a free acoustic guitar vst that offers great sound and playability. It has a realistic feel and tone, and continually outperforms most performs most paid options, having been around for a number of years, it has truly stood the test of time against industry heavyweights.

As well as providing an unmatched acoustic tone, you can even double the guitar tone to add additional width to the sound.

It’s as simple as playing in some MIDI data, tweaking a few settings and you’re good to go.

Let’s take a look at its feature set:

• Capo Logic – Intelligent play according to guitar rules.
• CPC (Customized Parameters Control) – any controller can be controlled by MIDI CC or Automation.
• Double Guitar – different samples at L & R channel.
• Poly Legato and Slide Smoother.
• Alternate Tuner.
• Capo – Transpose without the need to modify midi.
• Real strum samples.
• 14 Strum notes + 28 ways to play for every chord.
• Strum Legato – legato articulations can be played while strumming.
• 4 humanization settings.
• Select and Detect 2 chord modes, any chords could be customized.
• Strum SEQ with customized rhythm.

Shreddage 3 Stratus

Looking for a guitar that allows you to shred? Shreddage 3 Stratus Free is a perfect choice!

This FREE Electric Guitar Kontakt Library is a simulation of a Fender Stratocaster that includes deep-sampled sustain, palm mute and choke articulations with 3 playable octave ranges.

With many editable parameters, it may take some tweaking to dial in your perfect tone, but once you do you’ll have a very realistic-sounding Stratocaster that will sound great on all of your tracks, it provides features such as instant multi-tracking, as well as a global offset function that cuts off some of the attacks, acting like a compressor on a pedal board.

Features:

• SHRED window & offset for accurate shredding
• Beautiful, expanded UI for easier editing
• New POLY INPUT window for realistic chords
• Multiple frets & string voicing algorithms
• New STRUMMING tab for custom rhythm parts
• CONSOLE: Modular rack & mixer with 30+ FX
• Includes TACT 2.0 for articulation mapping

Spitfire LABS Electric Guitars

Spitfire LABs electric guitars are some of the best on the market, sometimes it’s quite unbelievable that they give them away for free.

This collection features an array of classic guitars to suit a whole magnitude of styles, from rock, and blues to pop and indie, this instrument is created by guitarists for guitarists, it also features dynamic plucks, sustained notes and unique strumming patterns that can be applied to most genres.

Echo Soundworks Vinyl Guitar

Echo Soundworks Vinyl Guitar is a great product for guitar lovers. It provides superior sound quality and comes with all the necessary features to make music production easy and fun.

Intended for Lo-fi and Trap production, their sampling efforts paid off with this virtual instrument, by recording the guitar and then sampling those recordings through a vinyl player, they managed to achieve the gritty sound that lo-fi is known for right out of the box.

Let’s take a look at its features:

• Fret Noise
• String Buzz
• Pick Noise
• Reverb
• Attack/Release/Dynamics

Haunted Guitar Lite

Haunted Guitar Lite is a guitar plugin that creates spooky sound effects that can liven up any music-making session. It comes with 8 presets, each of which features different types of sound effects to create an eerie ambience. You can also adjust the playback speed and tone to get the perfect sound for your project.

This plugin is perfect for anyone who wants to add some Halloween-themed sound effects to their music, The presets are well-designed and provide you with enough variety to create the kind of atmosphere you’re looking for, The interface is easy to use and makes creating sounds quick and straightforward – no need for elaborate tutorials or lengthy instructions.

Features:

• 8 Presets
• 224 Samples
• ADSR
• HP / LP Filter
• LFO Modulation
• Filter type selector
• Voice mode
• Built-in vintage reverb
• Built-in distortion
• Built-in delay

Guitar Harmonics Essential

Guitar harmonics essential by Cinematique Instruments is one of my favourite instruments on this list, it focuses on producing flagolet notes or “harmonics” and turns them into a fully playable instrument.

Before we look at the features of the instrument, you may be asking what are harmonics on a guitar? let’s first answer that.

Let’s take a look at the features of the instrument:

• Note length control (decay)
• Tone control
• Cabinet and rotary controls
• Reverb and delay controls

Spicy Guitars by Keolab

Spicy Guitars by Keolab is an innovative acoustic guitar simulation synthesizer that utilizes some ground-breaking technology which lets you generate realistic guitar parts, it also features a chord detection system so that you can use to easily transpose what you’re playing to other instruments.

You can choose between 9 real guitar simulations and two different string types, switch between legato and sustain, adjust harmonics and palm mutes and even factor in vibrato.

Classic GTR Lite

Classic.GTR Lite is a free version of Classic GTR and is a multi-sampled instrument that emulates a Spanish guitar.

The instrument was developed by recording a basic guitar and then adding heavy processing through various effects and then converted to Flac 24bit 44khz, each preset contains 43 samples, totalling 301 samples across its 7 presets.

Here is a list of its features:

• Easy to use & friendly interface
• 7 presets
• 301 samples
• ADSR
• LP/HP filter
• LFO Modulation

Guitar Rig 6 Player

If you’re looking for a guitar rig that can handle your heavy shredding needs, then the newly released Guitar Rig 6 Player from Native Instruments is definitely something to check out.

It comes with 13 effects, 6 amp and speaker cabinets, each of which can be used to create standalone guitar sounds or layered together for even more sound possibilities. Additionally, there are also 2 cabinet mics and 4 stereo outputs so that you can easily connect it to other instruments in the mix. With its easy-to-use interface and plethora of features, this rig is perfect for anyone who wants great sound without any hassle.

Since it’s upgrade from Guitar Rig 5 Player it features a brand new UI making it slicker and far easier for beginners to use.

Pettinhouse Free Guitars

Pettinhouse offer a variety of free guitar Kontakt libraries, including libraries for acoustic, electric, funky guitar, mute and slap

Pettinhouse free guitars are a great way for beginner guitar players to start learning the instrument. They come with free online lessons that guide beginners through each step of guitar playing.

These libraries haven’t been updated in a number of years but they still provide excellent features and sound quality.

Cute Emily Guitar

The Cute Emily VST models an Epiphone SG electric guitar, with this instrument you can accurately reproduce the clean tone of this classic guitar type.

It features basic controls that can drastically shape the tone of the instrument with just a few tweaks.

Features:

• Attack
• Decay
• Sustain
• Release
• Volume
• Pan

Revitar 2

Revitar 2 is a guitar synthesizer that can produce a wide variety of guitar sounds and playing styles.

To achieve added realism and playing flexibility, Revitar 2 employs unique guitar picking, string and body simulations. No samples are used in the entire process, so no two notes ever sound the same.

I would use this plugin as more of a sound design tool, as the presets do not sound entirely realistic, with an exception of the harmonic functions.

Although with some heavy tweaking you can get some nice sounds that can add some textural value to your productions.

Features:

• Unique string and body simulation.
• Adjustable pick shape.
• 48 programmable chords, using absolute and relative positions.
• Different playing styles – slides, hammer on / pull-offs, chords, single string.
• 6 guitar body types to choose from.
• Fully programmable MIDI control of all knobs and sliders.

SuperRiff Guitar

SuperRiff guitar is a basic instrument that simulates a marshall amp, It comes with 1 soundbank of sounds making it a handy and simple tool depending on the genre of music you produce.

Each note on a keyboard from E1 to D5 can trigger three different guitar sample types depending on which one of three velocity values is triggered. (47 samples per type, 141 samples in total ).

Features:

• Volume
• Pan
• Envelope Controls
• Reverb Controls
• Mode selection

AmpliTube 5 CS

AmpliTube 5 CS is the free version of the Amplitube suite, similar to Native Instruments Guitar Rig series, this free version of the software offers a generous array of features to get you started in the world of AmpliTube, in this free edition you’ll get:

• 42 effects total
• Pedals
• Amps
• Speakers
• Cabinets
• Mics
• Rack FX

Modest Guitar

Modest Guitar from YummyBeats is another beautiful-sounding acoustic guitar library that more than deserves its place on this list, it has a handful of features and presets that will sound perfect in almost any genre

You can flick between two modes, AC Guitar and Flagolet (my favourite setting), and also turn up or turn down a number of FX controls.

All samples have been recorded 4 times and sampled round robin.

Here is what YummyBeats have to say about the instrument:

“The Modest Guitar is designed to be warm and organic sounding. There are also some decent guitar player noises on the flageolets which can create an additional pleasant atmosphere.”

ReValver 4

ReValver 4 is a revolutionary amp-modelling VST plugin that produces unmatched realism, dynamics and tone.

As well as modelling amplifiers Revalver also models Stompboxes and Effects, often used in a live environment and in the studio, this plugin is so versatile its a crime that they offer it for free.

Let’s take a look at some of its features:

• Component Modelling
• Advanced Cabinet Modelling
• Instrument Modelling
• 3rd Party Plugin Hosting
• MIDI Mapping
• AMP Cloning

DSK Dynamic Guitars

DSK Dynamic Guitars is a simple but powerful VST, featuring 3 guitar types including Acoustic, Nylon & Steel emulations, these guitars will sound great in your songs depending on your playing ability.

The nylon guitar in particular sounds great, in comparison to the other two.

Features:

• ADSR envelove control
• Panorama control
• Voice mode selector
• Amplitude Range control
• Velocity curve selector
• Reverb fx included
• Dynamic velocity response

Ignite Amps TS-999 SubScreamer

TS-999 “SubScreamer” is a digital emulation of an overdrive pedal for guitar. It has been developed to accurately model its real hardware counterpart, built for Subhuman guitarists Matteo Buti and Elia Murgia by Ignite Amps in 2010.

The TS-999 core circuit is inspired by the most famous green “808” overdrive pedal, with additional features to increase its versatility. It can easily add dirt and bite to clean guitar tones, as well as make the amplifier distortion sound tighter, more focused and more responsive to picking, avoiding low-end muddiness and high-end fizz.

Features:

• Dynamic 2N3904 BJT input and output buffers analog modelling.
• Dynamic 1N4148 diode clipping circuit analog modelling.
• Op-amp saturation analog modelling.
• Symmetric / Asymmetric clipping mode.
• Normal / Fat bass response mode.
• Mono / Stereo processing support.
• Switchable Input and Output Buffer modelling to decrease CPU usage.
• Selectable oversampling rate (up to 8x).
• Variable Input Level control for better response to different pickups.
• Double precision (64-bit) floating point mathematical model.
• Fully automatable controls.
• Zero latency.

Free Guitar Pedal VSTs!

Adding guitar effects to your sound is a great way to amp up your sound and make your guitar playing sound even better. Thankfully, there are a lot of great free guitar pedal VST plugins available for free download.

Each plugin has its own unique features that can be used to add distortion, wah-wah, and more to your guitar playing in your tracks.

TSE 808 Tube Screamer

If you’re looking for a distortion pedal that replicates the sound of an amp from the 1960s or 1970s, then check out TSE 808 Tube Screamer. This plugin sounds just like the real thing and is perfect for rock and blues music. It comes with multiple presets to get started, easy controls, and is even suitable for beginners.

Overall, this distortion plugin is highly recommended if you’re serious about re-creating that iconic Hendrix or Zeppelin tone in your music!

Mercuriall Metal Area mt-a

Mercuriall Metal Area mt-a is a guitar plugin that offers great sound and performance. It’s perfect for beginners as well as experienced guitar players.

The plugin includes exclusive tutorials to help you improve your skills fast, and sometimes it also comes with bonus presets tailored specifically for the tutorial sections. So go ahead and check out Mercuriall Metal Area mt-a – you won’t regret it!

Mercuriall Chorus WS-I

If you’re looking for a plugin that can add a touch of nostalgia to your music, Mercuriall Chorus WS-I is definitely the plugin for you. Its lush chorus effect can be used on electric and acoustic guitars, making it versatile and perfect for any sound you want to bring out. Plus, its easy-to-use interface makes it simple to create amazing-sounding choruses in no time at all!

Ignite Amps ProF.E.T.

If you’re an electric guitar player looking to sound more like a pro, then Amps ProF.E.T is the plugin for you! This free plugin offers real-time effects that can be tweaked to perfection.

ProF.E.T. is a digital emulation of a high gain distortion preamp/stomp-box for guitar. It has been developed to accurately model its real hardware counterpart, designed and built by Ignite Amps in 2018.

So what are you waiting for?

Mercuriall Greed Smasher

The Greed Smasher is a guitar pedal overdrive emulation plugin, that works with both MAC and PC.

Featuring a highly detailed, circuit-based model of the Grid Slammer overdrive pedal by Mesa/Boogie. Being a virtual overdrive pedal, the plugin is aimed mainly at guitar players and music producers who use distorted guitars in their music, although effects like this one can work equally well for processing virtual instruments and even hardware synthesizers.

Features:

• The modelled circuit is based on the MESA/Boogie GRID SLAMMER Overdrive
• Low CPU usage
• Stereo and Mono modes
• Low (2x oversampling) and High (4x oversampling) Quality switch.

In this roundup, we have compiled the best guitar VST plugins that are free to download and use in your productions. These plugins will help you sound better when playing the guitar and can be used in a variety of music production scenarios and DAW systems.

If you’re not a guitar player, but a producer or an artist looking to add some flavour to your beats or next single, these plugins will help you achieve that with no money down.