Sound Machine Wood Works®
Customer Reviews
Sound Machine Wood Works
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M. Niemczyk
Gives life to a flat piezo guitar
I tried this one with a Godin LGX SA which is a three-voice guitar featuring electric and acoustic guitar sounds. Actually it was the first time the guitar with a solid body sounded really like a acoustic guitar should sound. So this makes up another cool use case, you can use a solid electric guitar and have a sound of a real acoustic guitar and also not only one, but multiple, regarding the different settings of the plug. The only downside is the price. Actually you can gat a good acoustic guitar for 300 bugs so, well guess i have to wait for a real good discount.
T. Morgan
Really nice
This sounds really nice on an acoustic guitar plugged directly into the DAW when mixing, and that's what it's meant to do. Quite a bit of tonal variation offered. Would be nice to be able to move it forward in the mix if needed though (like moving the mics closer or further away). But very impressed.
W. Easley
Great tool for reworking older recordings
I've used this to enhance older recordings that were less than professionally recorded.... I've never failed to get improved quality over the source material. the level of improved... of course depends greatly on the actual quality of the source.
this adds back some of the natural sounds that you lose when you have tracks that were recorded direct to tape/disk.
s. kgr
most unique plug-in UAD-2
Plug-in, which has been concerned about from the front.It is under purchase consideration. The sound of the acoustic guitar me exquisitely varied, I can UP the presence in the track. Presets rich and intuitive operable. It is be easy to use to be a little more light. I think that it is the most unique plug-in UAD-2.
T. Koeroglu
For live Recordings Good Option.!...Why Not!
For the piezo guitar pickups works well, but piezo and mic combi 2way pickups I hear little bit Phase and Hollow in Sound..:( Maybe I hate piezo pickups!...Still good option for a live recordings!...Thanks UA....Happy New Year!....Peace:)
J. Grefsrud
For what it is, brilliant!
I see this product, not as a substitute for miking a guitar, but as a saviour of piezo-recordings. It is absolutely not as good as a proper microphone-recording.
But if you take this out of the equation, and your left with this or a piezo-recording, it's soooo much better. Add an IR-reverb of a lively room, and this thing saves your a**.
F. Schoffelen
Woodworks revisited.
Doing most recordings via a different venue (AURA) that process was sometimes too tedious for old tracks. When Woodworks came on sale I retried it and my first evaluation still holds BUT : i now mix the Woodworks sound together with the original and found a MAAG EQ setting that eliminates the harshness of most presets. I would LOVE an update with at least a bit of EQ . For many of the old tracks there are just too many RESONANCES inside the captured guitars. A way to do Effect-Mix would put this plugin back on many people's list imho. With a coupon and on sale I decided to give it another try. Oh and Ocean Way helps too ;-) I'll give it 4 stars when EFFECT mix ever gets integrated and one parametric for resonances.
M. Kraus
It is just awesome
A Friend of Mine came over with his drummer and we wanted to Record a Little piece of him as a Trio .. I gave it a Shot miked his Voice and a crappy sm57 for the cajon and i Played Guitar through my di Input. Well the cajon and the Voice sounded good.. Well like i thought Guitar sounded like crap..therefore i wanted to find something whitch solves the Problem. I tried out the Demo of the Plugin .. The drummer asked me how did you achive that sound do you habe some Nsa invisible microphones whitch recorded as well... Long Story it Sounds just awesome and right afterwards i spent my Rent Money on that Plugin
.. By the way it Sounds awesome when you Record with 2 small condensors Stereo and mix it with the di woodworks plugin
:)
R. Butt
Sound Machine Wood Works
I like this plug in from a creative point of view. If you play through the presets listening in conjunction with your mix it will find a place to sit well in your mix. Listen to it all on its own.. not so impressive for me it is definitely a mix tool and I even put other string instruments through it like violins, cellos etc ... very unique and cool and there is no other plug in like it.
R. Richard
Better that some of these reviews
After reading the negative comments here, I was prepared to not like this. And at first I wasn't impressed either. Being lazy, I threw it at the first few acoustic guitar tracks I found lying round. Not good. I wonder if that's what some of the previous users did as well. Finally I tried it out the way it was meant to be used -- on a piezo pickup (an L.R. Baggs iBeam in a Larivee L-05) direct into my DAW. Very good! The same guitar also has an L.R. Baggs Element, which doesn't need this kind of help. Even so, I appreciate having 16 sounds to choose from. I do find that I usually want less of the effect and am mixing the plugin output with some of the the dry signal, which gives even more flexibility. In V2, olease add a wet/dry mix control.
D. Thompson
Was a little dubious at 1st... but
This plugin is worth the purchase, but as many others have said, it takes a little time to play around with the settings. It also does in fact sound pretty nice when you find the settings (which you save).
My only gripe is it takes a while to find the right setting, and the price, it is not worth that. I think UAD could come up with a much better solution.
But I'm giving this 4 stars as it actually works and does produce a nice sound for your acoustic guitar when DI'd
T. Schuster
This is a mix tool, not recording.
This is an amazing tool like most things UA produces. Take a recording of a acoustic guitar or really any wooden acoustic instrument. Buss it too an aux track with this plugin on the insert and mix it in. I usually have it about 6-8db lower than the dry track. It adds realism and attack. You might need to eq to fit your mix. It's not meant to record threw...and yea it does sound really bad when you throw it on the insert of the track. But the lack of wet/dry mix in the plugin should be a red flag that it needs to be auxed and mixed in.
T. Schuster
This is a mix tool, not recording.
This is an amazing tool like most things UA produces. Take a recording of a acoustic guitar or really any wooden acoustic instrument. Buss it too an aux track with this plugin on the insert and mix it in. I usually have it about 6-8db lower than the dry track. It adds realism and attack. You might need to eq to fit your mix. It's not meant to record threw...and yea it does sound really bad when you throw it on the insert of the track. But the lack of wet/dry mix in the plugin should be a red flag that it needs to be auxed and mixed in.
J. Wall
What a bargain
Wow! Only $300 to make your DI'd acoustic guitar sound even worse. The demo, as mentioned above sounds terrible and I'm pretty sure any of us out here could use stock plugins to do the job better than this "specialty" plug. Boo :( Putting out substandard software like this (at astronomical prices) tarnishes UA's reputation for quality.
D. Thompson
I don't like this at all....
So ...demo'd Ocean Way's, ended up buying that straight away. What a stupid mistake buying this plugin!
It was very hard to get a decent sound from it, it felt ok at the start,until I found myself constantly tweaking at the knobs. Maybe it's my acoustic guitar, who know's. But I don't like the sound this brings to my acoustic as much as re-mic with Ocean Ways which just instantly gives me what I want.
Maybe someone else finds good use of this but for me it's a no go and I wish there'd be a plugin give back policy for a time frame.
S. Foley
good to fix engineering mistakes, not great "go to" choice for tracking
I typically record the DI of an acoustic guitar "just in case" I need to get a little clarity or do something funky with the sound, but you can't beat the sound of microphones on an acoustic. This plugin may get you out of a jam if you are mixing something live, have a tracking scenario with a lot of bleed in acoustic mics, or someone (maybe you???) just screwed up in tracking.
It is not, however, an acceptable replacement for an acoustic guitar with a microphone on it's own. If you want to be able to make an acoustic album with only your DI out, you will be disappointed.
A. Han
Expectation failed
I felt relief to know that this plugin was not designed by Universal Audio.
I do trust everything that Universal Audio designs.
When i first saw the advertisement of this plugin, I thought "UA did something cool again!"
As I was demoing, It just didn't feel right. It just doesn't sound good.
Then I found out that this plugin was not designed by UA. It's a good thing. I still can trust UA.
UAD User
Wow....$250 on sale?!
Don't get me wrong, I love my UAD stuff! But holy crap, how could anyone actually pull the trigger on purchasing this when even the demo clips sound awful! I haven't even downloaded the demo version solely based on what I'm hearing in the demo clips. They sound exactly like what it is....plug in an acoustic direct, then "try" and add some mic mojo to the signal. It's so far off it's kind of comical.
You just can't emulate an acoustic guitar, recorded with good acoustic mics....just can't.
So based only on the sound clip demos.....1 star :(
I. Papagiannidis
great tool!
great tool for adding extra character to the acoustic gt. especially when its not so well recorded.
a must have plugin
www.johnjefftouch.net
S. Higgins
Does what it should
I have now used this plug on a number of piezo tracks. It needs a little work to get the correct sound, and some of options can sound down right horrid, but I always get a sound that I am happy with.