Ample Guitar M Lite II

I reach for Ample Guitar M Lite II whenever I need to sketch an acoustic guitar part with MIDI. It’s the free version of Ample Sound’s Martin D-41 sampled acoustic, and nothing else in the freeware space sounds as convincing while staying this easy to play. The free version is limited to fingerpicked articulations (the paid Ample Guitar M III adds picked and strummed tones). Even so, you get sustain, palm-mute, hammer-on, pull-off, and popping articulations, plus adjustable fingering noise and string resonance.

I always nudge the fingering noise up a touch. It’s a small change, but I find it makes the guitar sound more like someone is actually playing it. The strumming engine is pretty cool, too. It includes 14 strum notes with 28 ways to play each chord, a Strum SEQ for rhythm programming, and four humanization settings. Capo logic and alternate tunings let you change key without rewriting the MIDI. 1 kHz samples) and uses DFD (Direct from Disk) streaming for low-latency playback.

It runs as VST, VST3, AU, and AAX on Windows and macOS, with an installer from Ample Sound’s site. If you only grab one free acoustic guitar plugin, make it this one.