
Orchestral
Ample Guitar M Lite II
by Ample Sound
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…
Home / Plugins / Orchestral / ProjectSAM The Free Orchestra (v1 and v2)

by Unknown
The Free Orchestra from ProjectSAM is now in its second volume, and both v1 and v2 install together from the same download page. The combined set gives you more than 20 Kontakt Player patches drawn from ProjectSAM’s Symphobia and Orchestral Essentials libraries. V1 skews darker and more cinematic (orchestral staccatos, heroic horns, luminous choirs, dystopian drones). V2 uses a newer engine with sul tasto strings, legato brass, tutti crescendos, and film-noir-style color patches added monthly through 2024 and 2025.
The only issue for me is attack time. Most of The Free Orchestra’s sounds have slow, cinematic attacks, which is great for sustained writing and evolving transitions, but a huge dealbreaker for staccato arpeggios or tight rhythmic parts. If you want fast articulations, you’ll have to layer this with something else. For everything else, it’s one of the most useful free cinematic libraries available.
Links to projectsam.com — the article includes the official download links.

Orchestral
by Ample Sound
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…

Orchestral
Echo Sound Works released Vinyl Guitar 2 as a full overhaul of their original Vinyl Guitar. The first version is now deprecated on the ESW website, so v2 is the one to grab.

Orchestral
I love layering odd-sounding instruments in my music, and Somerville Sounds’ Rubber Bridge Plucks is one of my secret weapons for roughing up a guitar mix. It’s a parlor acoustic modified with a…

Orchestral
Multi-samples of a Yamaha Eterna classical guitar, recorded through a CAD E100 microphone, is what you get with PlastikGuitar by Audiolatry. The tone is deliberately a bit cheap and not perfectly in…

Orchestral
Every other plugin on this list is sample-based. Spicy Guitar is the exception — it’s physically modeled.

Orchestral
Most guitar libraries treat harmonics as an afterthought articulation buried in a key switch. Guitar Harmonics Essential, a free library for Steinberg’s HALion Sonic 7, builds an entire instrument…