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GuitarFlex vs Ample Guitar

Ample Guitar and GuitarFlex both play a guitar from MIDI on Windows, from two directions. Ample Guitar is Ample Sound's line of sampled guitars: fifteen guitars, acoustic and electric, each sold as its own title, on Windows and Mac. GuitarFlex is modeled, not sampled: presets for steel-string and nylon-string acoustic and electric clean, crunch and heavy guitars in one program, an 18.2 MB download and a price of $79.

What they have in common

Windows, as a standalone program and as a plugin.
Acoustic and electric guitars, with an amp and cabinets for the electric ones.
A way to try first. Ample's installation guide describes a 7-day trial. GuitarFlex has a demo you can download and try before you buy.

Where Ample Guitar stands out

Mac as well as Windows, with VST2, AU and AAX plugins as well as VST3.
Many more guitars. Fifteen of them, from $119 to $169 each, bought one at a time.
Parts built in. Strummer detects the chords you play and plays a rhythm from a library. Riffer 4 is a piano-roll and guitar-tab editor with a riff library. GuitarFlex does not strum by itself and has no strum patterns or riffs: its strums and articulations come from ComposerFlex; from a keyboard or a MIDI file it plays the notes as written.
Tab Reader 4 imports Guitar Pro files.
Articulations such as pinch harmonic and legato slide, and drop tuning down to D1.
A fuller amp section. Seven amp heads and eight cabinets, each with eight microphones, and a built-in compressor, delay and reverb.

Where GuitarFlex stands out

Small. An 18.2 MB download that installs at 43.9 MB. Ample asks for over 10 GB of free disk space.
One price. $79 covers every GuitarFlex preset, where an Ample guitar is $119 to $169 for each title.
No account, and it never goes online. A license key and your email address, entered once for each Windows user on each computer, with no online activation and one license for one person, to use on all of their own computers. Ample's trial needs an internet connection.
Your own settings. Over 70 sliders in panels for the pluck, string, pickup, body, amp, cabinet, reverb and EQ.
Four slots (A to D) to switch between sounds or layer them.
Your song to a file. It plays a MIDI file and renders it to FLAC, or to WAV with the included command-line renderer.
Built to play ComposerFlex's songs, on the same PC with no setup. With ComposerFlex it plays down and up strums, open, palm-muted or dead, with Strum spread and Strum fall; ComposerFlex sends the articulations, not special keys.

Which to pick

On a Mac: Ample Guitar.
For a riff library, a strumming tool, a tab editor or Guitar Pro import, or a wide choice of guitars: Ample Guitar.
On Windows, for a small download you can try first: GuitarFlex.
If you'd rather have no account, and one price of $79: GuitarFlex.
To play the bands ComposerFlex writes: GuitarFlex.

Owning both

Ample's riff, strumming and tab tools suit one kind of work, and GuitarFlex's small, shapeable instrument suits another, so they can share a PC. Ample's trial is on amplesound.net, and GuitarFlex's demo is here. This page doesn't compare how they sound. That's for your ears.

The facts side by side

Every fact about Ample Guitar is from Ample Sound's own pages, checked on 7 November 2026. Prices are list prices in US dollars; sales come and go.

	GuitarFlex	Ample Guitar
How it makes its sound	Modeled. It computes every note as you play, from the physics of plucked strings: the acoustic presets sound through the guitar's body, and the electric presets through a pickup, an amp and a cabinet. It plays no recordings.	Sampled: each guitar has a sample library with sampled articulations (the maker's pages). The pages do not claim modeling.
Price	$79, one-time	$119, $149 or $169 each, depending on the guitar (fifteen guitars, sold separately); 10% off for existing owners and 20% for education; bundles are priced in the cart and the page text does not show them
Download and disk space	18.2 MB download, 43.9 MB installed	Over 10 GB of free disk space; the sample library must be on an internal drive or a fast external SSD. Libraries read run from 4.6 GB to 9.9 GB; the download size is not published
Memory the maker asks for	4 GB, with 4 cores or more and 100 MB of disk (the minimum we state for every Flex program)	RAM not stated; a processor of Intel Core i5, AMD Ryzen 5 or Apple Silicon M1 or higher
Runs on	Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit	Windows 7 to Windows 11, 64-bit; macOS 10.15 or later (not supported under Rosetta on macOS 27)
Forms	Standalone and VST3	Its own standalone host, VST3, VST2, AU, AAX
Needs another program	Nothing else	Nothing else (its own engine and standalone host)
Copy protection	A license key and your email address, entered once for each Windows user on each computer. No account and no online activation.	A "Serial Number License" (the maker's purchase page); its separate Chinese instrument series uses iLok
Computers per license	One license for one person, to use on all of their own computers	Not stated on the maker's pages
Demo	A demo to download and try before you buy	A trial with full features for 7 days, internet needed, as described in the maker's installation guide (the store and product pages state no trial). A free edition of one guitar is also offered
Guitars included	Presets in groups: steel-string and nylon-string acoustic, electric clean, crunch and heavy, and a two-guitar band preset; four slots to layer sounds	Fifteen guitars sold separately: acoustic and electric, and two metal guitars. Articulations: sustain, palm mute, natural harmonic, hammer-on and pull-off, legato slide, slide in and out, pop, slide guitar and pinch harmonic. Riffer 4, a MIDI editor for plucked strings with a Strum Note that edits a strummed chord as one object, piano-roll and guitar-tab views and a riff library; Strummer, with chord detection, Strum SEQ and a rhythm library; Tab Reader 4, which imports Guitar Pro files. Drop tuning down to D1. On the electrics: 7 amp heads, 8 cabinets each with 8 microphones, an 8-band EQ, compressor, delay and convolution reverb

More: virtual guitars compared: modeled and sampled, a table of 25 products, and all about GuitarFlex.

If something here is out of date, write to [email protected] and we'll correct it.

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