Can the session guitars be extended to D#6?

The Session Guitarist guitars are to me the best virtual guitars by far, and the only virtual electric guitars I've ever tried that sound like real electric guitars and not like an icepick in your ear.
Problem is, as I've just found out, they only go as high as G#5, and I downloaded a MIDI that I'm trying to spice up and that MIDI goes up to D#6. Of the electric guitar VSTis I have, only some of the Eastwest Ministry of Rock go up to C#6, but those guitars are awful.
Some of them are not distorted, so I tried adding Guitar Rig 7 to that track, but for the life of me I can't find a single GR7 preset that resembles a real electric guitar that I've listened to in my life across many genres. Or maybe it works great with real electric guitars, but with virtual ones, it's terrible.
So is there a hack or something I can do to the Sunburst or the other two in the Session Guitarist series to get to C#6 at least? I tried faking it with the pitch bend, but it doesn't seem to me that it goes that high. And in Cubase, if I set the transpose, it doesn't transpose the audio output for that track, it transposes the MIDI notes, so it doesn't work.
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Do you have access to the mapping editor for the instrument?
If there's a wrench icon in Kontakt here, click it:
Then open the mapping editor and extend the mapping for the rightmost sample to cover your desired note. Note that this might not sound as great under certain circumstances, but it should make it playable.
(using session strings in my example because i don't have session guitarist)
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Thanks, unfortunately this is one of those Kontakt instruments that don't allow you access to the under the hood stuff. This is all you get when you press that button:
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well, there goes that idea :(
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I;d like to strongly disagree that the Session Guitars are the best out there for a number of reasons. As they say "Different saddles for different butts"
Here's why.
As you say Session Guitars do not play the full range of notes in the high register. That's Ok if you are creating rhythm parts but lousy for most solo work where that high octave is much needed especially in Rock and blues <and other genres>
Articulations? Fixed and limited in Session Guitars, but other vst's offer far more articulations and they are often assignable. As you know articulations very much help you sound like you are playing a guitar rather than guitar sounds on a keyboard
Upgrades? I have 3 session guitars (Les Paul Tele and Strat) and all are stuck on version 1. Rather than just offer a free upgrade to allow the Les Paul to play melody notes, they created a new vst so that people would have to buy a whole new instrument to do that
For these reasons I use Impact soundworks Stratus for any solo work and the Session Guitars only for rhythms. Impact Soundworks is NKS so you have the NI lightguide and Komplete Knotrol features. .the patterns are good in Session Guitars. I didnt have an accoustic guitar so I scored one from UJAM for 5 bucks on sale and that plays fantastic patterns. I didnt like the built in amps/pedals for Session Guitars so am using Amplitube for amps and effects and drop that into other instrument parts..the sounds are quite convincing. I briefly tried Guitar Rig 7 and there really is no comparing the 2).
For me, I regret buying 3 Session Guitars, especially since they arent interested in making these products better. 1 would have been right for the patterns. Impact Soundworks Stratus is now on vs 3.5 and they have plans for further upgrades. They very knowledgeably and promptly respond to any issues you may have, but all I had was a couple questions.
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Sorry, I don't follow. I didn't say they were the best, I said to me they are. To me, meaning, from all the virtual electric guitars I have and tested so far, those are by far the most realistic sounding to me. Now, that may be because I don't own a lot of virtual electric guitars. The only other ones I own that didn't come with Komplete 14 CE are the ones in Eastwest's Ministry of Rock 1 and 2, and those are not that great. They do however, go higher, but the sound quality is so mediocre that I didn't care to use them.
But it puzzles me that you say that one reason you don't like the Session Guitars is that they don't go high enough for solos, and that you prefer Soundworks' Stratus for this reason among others. But the Session Guitars go up to G#5 and the highest note in Stratus is E5. In fact, in all of their guitars, that's the highest note they go to, and only four models offer that.
This is something that a rep from Soundworks told me this morning. So at least when it comes to the highest note, the Session Guitars win by four notes. Perhaps the Stratus is better at many other things, but not in how high it gets.
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yes and i said that Stratus is by far the best <for me> and explained why I feel that way. I have the opposite situation in my rig..I tested before I posted and i get more notes in the higher range with Stratus than my 3 session guitar instruments. I think there is a free trial w. limited features of Stratus you could try and make your own opinions..I would think it plays the same range of samples as the payed version. g luck.
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I precisely checked the highest sampled sounds for you on Stratus and also on Session Guitar Les Paul using my s61mk1 keyboard. The highest playable note on the Stratus is D#6 and on the LesPaul G#5 as measured by a tuner vst. You could pitch bend a little higher/lower in the LesPaul but only by 2 semitones (I think). I have Stratus set up to pitch bend up by 4 semitones and down by a full 12 semitones. g luck.
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Look, that's great, but this is what a Soundworks rep emailed me back:
"Here are all of the ranges of our Shreddage guitars:
Abyss: D-1 - C4
Archtop: E1 - C5
Fretless: B-1 - G3
Hollomatic: E1 - D5
Hydra: E0 - E5
Jupiter: A0 - E5
Legacy: B0 - G4
Precision: B-1 - F3
Rogue: A0 - E5
Serpent: A0 - E5
Stratus: E1 - E5
Telos: E1 - D5
So, as you can see, the highest note achievable is E5, and only Hydra, Jupiter, Rogue, Serpent, and Stratus go that high."
But if you say it goes up to D#6, I will reply to him to let him know that and ask him to verify he has the right info.
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Also maybe send the actual frequency just in case you guys are using different notation for the octaves
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Pardon the ignorance, how do I get that?
But here's a good way to find out, if @nobadmojo can help. I'm attaching a MIDI file with just one guitar track, which is one of the tracks from Metallica's "Call of Ktulu". For the most part it stays in the mid range, but at one point it builds to the fifth octave (with C3 as middle C), and it plays 5 notes in sequence that are pretty important, the ones you remember because they're part of the solo. Those 5 notes are in B5. Then there's a couple of C#6 a bit later, and 15 or so bars later it has 4 B5s, a G#5 and another B5. The B5s are all pitched up to simulate the player bending up the strings. I didn't create this MIDI, but I made the pitch up curves a bit neater. Then about ten bars later, it gets up to a D#6, which to me would be a tall order, but it is a playable note in an electric guitar.
If you assign the Sunburst Deluxe to this track, it tops at G#5. I assume perhaps you can get a bit higher with the pitch wheel all the way up, but I tried many different things and it didn't work.
So @nobadmojo, if you have a minute to load this in your DAW and assign the Stratus, then go to bar 88 and those B5 notes play, then mystery solved. I did email the guy from Impact Soundworks telling him what you mentioned, but unless the guy just started his position there, he has to know these things, so I'm curious about this. If you can please try it, it will tell us exactly how high can it go.
I had to zip it because it didn't allow me to upload a .midi file.
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Pardon the ignorance, how do I get that?
you can use an instrument to play it so that it sounds like the correct pitch to you and see in a spectrum analyzer at which frequency the peak is!
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I;m not going to do that, but you can check this out. Clearly shows that Stratus goes up to D#6. We agree that Session Guitars only go up to G#5. Stratus has an on screen fretboard and hitting the highest note reveals that note is being played on the 23rd fret (I'm not going to send a screenshot of that or any other screenshots). Seems to me that NI didnt bother to sample the entire playable range. Note that I got the same result by using Session Electric Mint (Strat) (G#5 max). Les Pauls have 2 less frets than Strats.
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I only have the free version of Amplitube and it doesn't seem that have that tuner, but I used the one in Cubase, and took this screenshot while playing the highest note, which is G#5:
I don't have Stratus to test, but this is what another rep from Impact Soundworks tells me, in response to my email telling him that someone in a forum was saying that the Stratus got as high as D#6:
So could it be perhaps that you have some pedal in Amplitube that is pitching up a few tones? I mean, I can see that your frequency is much higher, and that your tuner shows a D#6, so there's gotta be an explanation for that, which I doubt that it is that two reps from that company don't know what they're talking about.
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No I have no such pedal/switch/button/etc in Amplitube that alters the pitch and the tuner I used is from Ampire which is what I use when I play real guitars. Nor am i using any of the Bitwig pitch shifting containers..I dont think those things would work great anyway soundwise other than for some sort of effect. Seems to me that a quality guitar vst instrument should be able to play the entire range..like a piano vst does for example. There is nothing more I can possibly do in this thread, so pls excuse me. I'm out
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Well, if anyone who has Stratus or any other virtual guitar wants to download that MIDI and see how high it can play when it starts going up, please report.
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