Who needs a Gibson Les Paul when you’ve got NI’s Electric Sunburst Session Guitarist?

Gibson might be making headlines for all the wrong reasons right now, but its Les Paul remains one of the most iconic electric guitars in history. Now Native Instruments has created a playable software version in the form of Electric Sunburst, the latest addition to the Session Guitarist series.

Created in collaboration with the sample instrument team at Drumasonic, this is designed to capture the sound of a “mahogany-bodied electric guitar”. NI doesn’t explicitly say that it’s a Les Paul, but it seems pretty obvious.

Signals from the bridge and neck humbuckers were recorded separately, and an additional condenser mic was mounted above the strings to capture fine sonic details. You can tweak tone and volume controls, and you also have access to five tweakable amps, 10 cabs and 14 effects.

When it comes to playing the instrument, you can call on a library of strumming patterns, picked arpeggios and riffs and make use of real-time performance controls. You can choose from pretty much any chord variation you like, and the sample library features thousands of loops, single notes and noises that were recorded in a wide range of fret positions and played with plectrum and fingers  in open, muted and flageolet articulations.

Electric Sunburst runs in Kontakt 5 and the free Kontakt 5 Player and is available now from the NI online shop priced at £89/$99/€99.