AAS Strum Electric GS1

Despite the similarities to Strum Acoustic, Strum Electric nevertheless features a number of differences appropriate to the electric guitar genre, the most obvious of which concern the Effects section, situated above the mahogany-coloured guitar body graphic. Here we find an integrated amp simulator with two channels; one optimised for clean sounds, the other for higher gain, overdriven tones. This provides drive amount; level; a three-band, fixed-frequency equaliser; a spring reverb; and a choice of open or closed speaker cabinet types. Following this are two effects slots, each on their own tab. The first tab is for preamp effects and the second applies the effects post-amp. There are nine (mono) pre-amp effects: chorus, flanger, digital delay, tape delay, phaser, auto-wah, wah-wah, notch filter and tremolo. Post-amp effects include the nine previously mentioned, plus ping-pong delay, and stereo versions of the chorus, flanger and tremolo. An additional, post-everything, fixed-length, ‘natural’ reverb effect is found at the top of the window next to the master Volume control.

The deeper-level editing parameters for each string are almost identical to those of Strum Acoustic, with two exceptions. Firstly, SE’s individual String Modules feature a volume knob to adjust the gain of each string. Secondly, Strum Acoustic’s Body parameters have been replaced in Strum Electric by a pickup selector which, on the global editing page, offers a choice of neck, bridge and neck, or bridge pickups, plus a pickup gain control. On the individual string editing pages, additional pickup parameters include single coil or humbucking pickups, and there are additional controls for tone colour and position of each pickup, as well as vertical distance from the strings for the bridge pickup. All pickup settings (sensibly) affect the instrument globally, rather than on a per-string basis.

A wide range of presets is provided, in categories such as Styles, Lead, DI’d and Signature. The guitar models themselves comprise Les Pauls, Stratocasters and Telecasters, with neck/middle/bridge pickup variations. The DI’d category is a useful starting point if you intend to use third-party amp and effect plug-ins, while the Bare Guitars folder offers ‘vanilla’ starting points using SE’s own processing.

The lack of residual guitaristic ‘noises’, the modest range of articulations and the inability to play free-form polyphonic parts (see box above) might suggest limited potential. However, Strum Electric reveals itself to be useful and versatile in many areas, whether it’s used to lay down a reference part for a real guitarist or, with a certain degree of additional graft, as a seriously intended substitute for the real thing. As mentioned elsewhere, its rhythmical applications (especially overdriven rock guitar stylings) are the most successful and convincing. I’ve found myself routinely using SE to supply chunky, raw chordal aggression whilst Real Strat handles the soloing gymnastics and ‘Frippery’. Strum Electric also uses a negligible amount of RAM, and the CPU hit is quite manageable by a modern two or four-core computer, so you needn’t be shy about using multiple instances at once.