Two years after Guitar Rig 3 was released in autumn 2007, the fourth iteration of the software modelling application for guitarists was released by Native Instruments. This time around a combination of an ever increasing workload, little free time and the fact that Guitar Rig 3 was ‘good enough’ for my needs meant it took me a while before deciding to buy Guitar Rig 4.

A special offer by Native Instruments landing in my email inbox a few weeks ago, some free time to play the guitar — after weeks of not touching it — and the ease of buying software online meant that Guitar Rig 4 was running on my MacBook Pro in no time.

This release is the first one that dropped support for Power PC Macintosh computers, around three and a half years after Apple stopped selling them. There is no good reason for this change, Guitar Rig 4 would run comfortably on PowerMac G5s and maybe even the last generation of PowerPC-based iMacs.
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A bit more than a year ago I wrote about Guitar Rig 2, Native Instruments’ flagship product for Guitarists.

Guitar Rig 2 was an excellent product in most ways, with exceptional sound quality, a solid foot controller and several improvements over the original. About two years since Guitar Rig 2 hit the shelves (and the online shops), Native Instruments came out with its successor, Guitar Rig 3. This is the cosmix.org review of the latest in the series of NI’s pro guitar line.

What’s new?

Let’s get over the trivial stuff first: for those using a Mac, Guitar Rig 3 is now a universal binary out of the box and is also Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) compatible — you can also use it with Tiger of course. For those still stuck on Windows, you can run GR3 on Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista boxes. It’s price is about the same as its predecessor’s: around €499 for the full version, €299 for the sofware only version and €99 for those upgrading from previous versions (software only). Other options for those interested in upgrading the hardware or upgrading from Guitar Combos also exist. Check the site for more details about pricing in different currencies etc.

Guitar Rig 3 comes with Rig Kontrol 3, the new foot controller that replaces Rig Kontrol 2. It is mostly an evolutionary step forward — as opposed to a completely new design, as was the case with Rig Kontrol 2 versus the original. The new controller provides 8+1 switches (instead of 6+1), a pedal, VU meters for input and output and is black. Most importantly the black aluminum box conceals a brand new new sound interface borrowed from the Audio Kontrol and offering much higher fidelity DAC and a 24bit/192KHz audio interface (it was 24bit/96KHz on Rig Control 2). Rig Kontrol 3 retains the USB2.0 interface — what else would it have? Other than that it doesn’t seem to have changed much with the, now customary, MIDI, input and output connectors on the back.

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