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Vir2 is developing a reputation for its quality virtual instruments and the latest of these is the ambitious virtual guitar library Electri6ity, which has been three years in development.

Containing over 24,000 24-bit samples taken from eight of the best known electric guitars, this library uses Kontakt 4 as its playback engine and, beyond the raw sample data, it utilises a wealth of scripting information to attempt to provide a complete solution for studio based non-guitarists or indeed for guitarists who don't happen to have several thousand pounds worth of high quality axes lying around.

"Pretty much any parameter you can think of can be manipulated via control changes or key switching"

So far, so good, but does this impressive theory equate to a similar level of playability?

Install and first impressions

Well, before we get to that, let's get the essentials out of the way. Electri6ity ships on four DVDs containing an installer for the library and, if you need it, a separate one containing the latest version of the Kontakt Player.

Note that if you are a Kontakt 4 user who hasn't updated since your first install, you'll need to run NI's Service Centre to update as this is a system requirement for Electri6ity.

The library will munch 27GB of your hard drive space and installing to an internal or external 7200 or 10000rpm FireWire drive is recommended over a USB equivalent.

Thereafter, launch Kontakt and activate the library as usual through the Service Centre and you're away.

The instruments sampled read as a who's who of the world's most celebrated guitars, namely: Stratocaster, Telecaster, Les Paul, P90, Rickenbacker, Danelectro Lipstick, ES335 and L4 and each has been recorded with Front, Rear and Front/Rear blended pickup positions, from which you're free to choose.

Playing modes vary between polyphonic, monophonic and both sustained and muted legato, with slides and other techniques available in all modes for lots of real-time performance enhancement.

The realism goes on, as you can choose the release mode in performance, with finger noise, hand mutes and pick noise just three of 14 separate release 'types'.

By now you might well be wondering how all of this is selected and intuitively 'playable' and that's where the magic of the Kontakt engine takes over. Vir2 have extensively programmed AMT (Articulation Morphing Technology) and VMT (Velocity Morphing Technology) scripts into Electri6ity's GUI so that, as you play, the engine carefully analyses your performance and uses your playing style and velocity response, for example, to instantaneously switch between samples and playback styles.

However, if you want to get involved, rather than let the engine do all of the work for you, pretty much any parameter you can think of can be manipulated via control changes or key switching, so you can hone the guitar of your choice to your own setup and playing style.