The Guitars Vol. 1 (Distortion & Electric) expansion for VPS Avenger is a 50-kit guitar library that works better than most synth-hosted guitar packs and worse than anyone's actual guitarist friend. That's the honest position. Worth knowing before you spend $75.
We Were Three Hours Into a Beat When This Saved the Session
We were building a hip-hop track with a melodic hook problem. The synth lead wasn't cutting through. It needed grit. Something with pick attack and string presence, not another sawtooth pad pretending to be emotional.
We pulled up the Guitars Vol. 1 expansion inside Avenger, loaded one of the distortion presets, and dropped the Multiloop module to the key of A minor. Twelve seconds later, the hook had teeth. Not perfect. But enough to finish the session.
That's the specific value here. Speed, inside a tool you're already running. This expansion is built for Avenger users who produce across genres and occasionally need guitar texture without bouncing out, licensing a sample, or calling in a favour.
At $56.25 to $75 depending on the retailer, it's a specialised buy. It rewards Avenger owners. It offers nothing to anyone else.
First Impressions: Clean Install, One Prerequisite
Authorization runs through V-Manager via keyfile download. No dongles, no iLok, no drama. We had it installed and loaded in under ten minutes.
The one friction point: you need Avenger v1.8.0 or later. We were on 1.7.x and had to update first. Annoying if you're mid-session, but a one-time fix.
Inside Avenger, the presets show up categorised cleanly. You see the 20 distortion kits and 30 electric kits separated. Browsing them takes about five minutes to get a feel for the range. The interface is all Avenger's own, which is either a comfort or a constraint depending on how you feel about that synth's workflow.
First sound we hit was a mid-gain crunch rhythm. It sounded like a guitar. That's already better than about half the guitar packs we've tested.
Getting It Into a Real Workflow
The Multiloop module inside Avenger is where this expansion earns its keep. You set your BPM, pick your key, choose major, minor, or 5ths, and the loops snap to your session. No time-stretching artifacts. No manual pitching.
We tested it at 140 BPM in a trap context and at 95 BPM for a R&B ballad rough draft. Both worked without any manual resampling. That's the standout feature and it's genuinely clever engineering, not a gimmick.
The friction shows up when you want something off-script. We wanted a picked, staccato electric figure for a bridge section, something dry and tight. The electric presets skew toward sustained, ambient, or broadly strummed patterns. Getting a rhythmically precise single-note figure meant layering and editing in the DAW rather than just picking a preset. That's fine, but it's not frictionless.
MIDI customisation inside Avenger helps. You can modulate dynamics and articulation to a point. But this library's strength is texture and movement, not precision melodic lead work.
What It's Genuinely Good At
The recording quality is the strongest argument for this pack. We've used guitar sample packs that sit stiff in a mix. These don't. The source material has real pick noise, real fret movement, and real amp breath. It sounds recorded, not programmed.
We ran the mid-gain distortion preset through our bus chain with 3dB of saturation added at 1.5kHz and it still sounded coherent. Didn't fluff out. Didn't go harsh. That's a sign the source material was tracked with headroom in mind.
The 30 electric presets split into roughly clean, slightly driven, and funk-adjacent categories. We love the clean arpeggiated ones for lo-fi adjacent work. Drop them below 80% velocity in your DAW and they sit back beautifully without needing EQ surgery.
The 20 distortion presets cover crunch to high-gain. High-gain is the weakest tier. It sits well enough, but it lacks the tightness you'd get from a proper djent-focused library. For rock, pop-punk, and hip-hop with edge, it works. For metal production, it's not the pack.
We tested it on Mac with an M1 chip. CPU draw was light. No measurable spike above our baseline Avenger load.
The Rough Edges
The polish is a double-edged thing. The electric presets sound professional, which means they can sound sanitised. We tried using them in a punk-influenced lo-fi track and they fought the aesthetic. Too clean. Too even. We had to push heavy saturation and tape emulation before they fit.
We wish there were more articulation variety in the distortion kits. Most favour rhythm patterns. Lead-style single-note runs are underrepresented.
The price is where we hesitate. At $75, this is a meaningful spend on co
There's also no trial. You're committing blind on sound, which is frustrating for a content-forward purchase where tone preference is everything.
Who This Is Really For
✅ Buy if you already own Avenger and regularly produce hip-hop, trap, or melodic pop where guitar texture is a recurring need.
✅ Buy if you want authentic-sounding loops that auto-adapt to key and BPM without manual resampling.
✅ Buy if you're building out a Vengeance Sound ecosystem and this fills a gap in your Avenger expansion library.
❌ Skip if you don't own Avenger. Full stop.
❌ Skip if you need aggressive high-gain metal tones or tight djent-style chugs.
❌ Skip if you want lead melody tools. This library does rhythm and texture. It does not do shred.
Score Breakdown
| Category | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sound Quality | 4.0/5 | Real guitars, real amps, audible pick noise, source material is solid |
| Value for Money | 3.0/5 | Good at $56.25, harder to justify at full $75 with no trial |
| Ease of Use | 3.5/5 | Multiloop makes key/BPM adapting fast; limited articulation control beyond that |
| Features | 3.5/5 | 50 presets and Multiloop integration cover rhythm needs well, lead work less so |
| CPU Efficiency | 4.5/5 | Light load on M1 in our tests; no measurable overhead beyond base Avenger usage |
| Overall | 3.8/5 | Solid for Avenger users, irrelevant without the synth, limited for metal and lead work |
Alternatives to Consider
If you want guitar samples that work without owning a specific synth, Splice guitar sample packs give you royalty-free loops with similar key-lock tools inside their own browser. More flexible, lower commitment.
For heavier, tighter distortion tones built specifically for metal production, Ugritone guitar VST plugins produce rhythm guitars with significantly more low-end tightness and aggression than this expansion delivers. Different workflow, better result for that genre.
If you want to stay inside the Vengeance ecosystem and already liked what you heard here, the subsequent volumes in this series (Vol. 2 through 4 exist) follow the same format. Worth checking if this one fits your needs and you want more coverage.
Our Final Call
We'd buy this at $56.25 if we were an active Avenger user producing across pop, hip-hop, or anything where guitar texture shows up once or twice a track. The Multiloop integration is genuinely clever, the source recording quality holds up, and it drops into a session fast.
At $75 with no trial? We'd wait for a sale.
And if you don't own Avenger: don't even read this review. That $75 buys you a lot of standalone guitar options that don't require a specific synth as their chassis.
The expansion does what it says. It just doesn't say enough for everyone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Guitars Vol. 1 work with any DAW or only specific ones?
It works with any DAW that can host VPS Avenger as a plugin. Avenger itself runs as VST3, AU, or AAX, so you're covered across Ableton, Logic, FL Studio, Pro Tools, and most others. The expansion itself lives inside Avenger, so the DAW you use doesn't directly matter, only Avenger does.
Can you use these presets without understanding music theory?
Yes. The Multiloop module handles key and BPM matching automatically. You set your project tempo, pick a key from the dropdown, choose major, minor, or 5ths, and the loops lock in. You don't need to manually pitch or time-stretch anything, which makes it accessible even if you're not thinking in scales.
Is Guitars Vol. 1 the right choice for metal or heavy production?
Not really. The distortion presets cover mid-gain to crunch territory well enough for rock, hip-hop, and pop. High-gain tones exist but lack the tightness and low-end definition you'd want for djent, death metal, or anything with tight palm-muted chugs. For that work, a dedicated heavy guitar plugin will serve you better.
Do Guitars Vol. 1 through 4 share the same format and compatibility requirements?
They share the same platform requirements: Avenger v1.8.0 or later, V-Manager authorization, and Mac or PC with Intel 2.8GHz or M1 and 8GB RAM minimum. Each volume covers different sonic territory, so they're designed as complementary packs rather than duplicates of the same sounds.