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GuitarFlex vs Shreddage 3

Shreddage 3 and GuitarFlex both play an electric guitar from MIDI, but one is a library and one is a program. Shreddage 3 is Impact Soundworks' line of sampled guitars for Kontakt Player, with Hydra, an 8-string, at $149 and a bundle of 11 guitars and 5 basses that the maker showed at a sale price of $549 on 7 November 2026. GuitarFlex is modeled, not sampled, with presets for steel-string and nylon-string acoustic and electric clean, crunch and heavy guitars, an 18.2 MB download, and $79.

What they have in common

Electric guitars from clean to high gain, with an amp and effects. Shreddage 3 has a console FX rack and mixer. GuitarFlex has an amp, cabinets, reverb and an eight-band EQ.
Played from MIDI, from a keyboard or a file.
Articulations, such as palm mutes, slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs (in GuitarFlex, sent by ComposerFlex).

Where Shreddage 3 stands out

Mac as well as Windows, with AU and AAX as well as VST, through Kontakt Player.
A deep set of articulations. Sustains, power chords, palm mutes, staccatos, harmonics, pinch harmonics, tapping, tremolo, vibrato, rakes and chokes.
Recorded performances. Every string is sampled up to the highest fret, with up to four down and four up strokes per note and five palm-mute layers in Hydra.
More guitars. The bundle holds 11 guitars and 5 basses.

Where GuitarFlex stands out

No other program needed. Shreddage 3 needs the free Kontakt Player, version 6.7 or later, or the full Kontakt, set up through Native Instruments' Native Access with an NI account. GuitarFlex runs by itself.
Small. An 18.2 MB download that installs at 43.9 MB. Hydra lists 14 GB.
$79, against $149 for each Shreddage 3 guitar.
No account and no online activation. A license key and your email address, entered once for each Windows user on each computer, and one license for one person, to use on all of their own computers.
It never connects to the internet.
Four slots (A to D) to switch between sounds or layer them, with Compare, Vary and Randomize, and over 70 sliders from pluck to cabinet.
Your song to a file. It renders a MIDI file to FLAC, or to WAV with the included command-line renderer.
Built to play ComposerFlex's band, our songwriting program, on the same PC with no setup. GuitarFlex does not strum by itself and has no keyswitches or strum patterns: articulations arrive from ComposerFlex; from a keyboard or a MIDI file it plays the notes as written. With ComposerFlex it plays down and up strums, open, palm-muted or dead, with Strum spread and Strum fall.

Which to pick

On a Mac, or in a Kontakt setup you already have: Shreddage 3.
For the deepest set of articulations, or one guitar after another: Shreddage 3.
On Windows, with nothing else to install, at $79: GuitarFlex.
If you'd rather have no account and a small download: GuitarFlex.

Owning both

Shreddage 3 lives inside Kontakt, and GuitarFlex plays the parts ComposerFlex writes or any MIDI you give it, so they can share one PC. GuitarFlex's demo is here; for Shreddage 3, go by Impact Soundworks' own pages. This page doesn't compare how they sound. That's for your ears.

The facts side by side

Every fact about Shreddage 3 is from Impact Soundworks' own pages, checked on 7 November 2026. Prices are list prices in US dollars; sales come and go.

	GuitarFlex	Shreddage 3
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: over 25,000 samples for one title and over 40,000 for the eight-string title, recorded direct through the pickups (the maker's words).
Price	$79, one-time	$149 for Hydra, the title read in full; the bundle of eleven guitars and five basses at $549, a sale price (the page shows it against a much higher total). Free editions of two titles are also offered, one of them a bass
Download and disk space	18.2 MB download, 43.9 MB installed	14 GB of disk space for Hydra; 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)	6 GB of RAM; Apple M1, Intel i5 or an equivalent processor
Runs on	Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit	Windows 10; Intel Macs on macOS 10.14 to 12 (an old list: Kontakt Player's own page lists newer systems)
Forms	Standalone and VST3	Through the free Kontakt Player (the bundle page lists VST, AU and AAX; the product pages also say standalone)
Needs another program	Nothing else	The free Kontakt Player 6.7 or later, or the full Kontakt
Copy protection	A license key and your email address, entered once for each Windows user on each computer. No account and no online activation.	Native Access, with a Native Instruments account (set up through Kontakt Player)
Computers per license	One license for one person, to use on all of their own computers	The licensee may install it on as many computers as he or she has access to; only the licensee may use it (the maker's license agreement)
Demo	A demo to download and try before you buy	Not published on the product pages
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	Guitars sold separately, including an eight-string. Lead and rhythm articulations: sustains, power chords, palm mutes, staccatos, harmonics, pinch harmonics, tapping, tremolo, slides, vibrato, hammer-on, pull-off, rakes and chokes. Every string sampled to the highest fret, with up to 4 down and 4 up strokes per note; direct recordings from each pickup; chords played through a poly input; a console FX rack and mixer; 55 or 40 tone snapshots, by title

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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