Craig Fowler

Fleer is right about Modern U being ideal for what you want. Given your 'vintage' tastes, though, I don't think Piano in Blue would be out of place in 60s rock sort of stuff or anything that's on the rawer side. It's one of my absolute favourite virtual instruments and I'd hate to be without it - I have objectively 'better' virtual pianos, but nothing that sounds or feels like PiB.

There's very little you can screw up with kits of this kind. Beyond a screwdriver, drill, and soldering iron, you shouldn't need much. I've put together probably a dozen kit guitars with parts from Warmoth, USACG (before they were bought out), and Musikraft. Apart from one, they've all turned out great - and the one that didn't was because I made poor choices in parts.

This is the first time I remember where you can use it on items priced on sale at $99. I toyed with getting Ravel for $49, but...I just don't like it! I'm curious about the C-Suite noise reducer though...could be a single-coil lover's dream!

His story's pretty tragic 'other Craig' IIRC...he'd been very mentally ill for decades. Based on his wiki entry I suspect had he been tried ten years later, it would have been for involuntary manslaughter rather than murder.

Sounds really good! Am jealous of your vocal and mixing skills!

FWIW, this is an excellent library and the smart delay function is a thing of wonder!

I've seen it down to $80-ish I think, but that may have been by stacking a coupon or something.

Think yourself lucky. I'm lacking the ability as well!

Can't speak to the Softube offerings here, but $11 sounds hard to go wrong! It's obviously a totally different level of cost, but I got the AKG BX-20 spring reverb from UAD a few years back, and that's something pretty special. I wouldn't get into the UAD eco-system purely to get it, but if/when they port it over to the UADx semi-native platform, it could be right up your alley.

The players are free/downloadable with the products you get that use them. I find the old "VI" player pretty fiddly, but the Synchron player and Synchron piano player are about the best hosts I've come across. Really powerful and fairly intuitive. They even look nice! I've become a bit of a VSL fanboy in the last 3 years or so, especially for pianos. Their jazz drums and upright bass sound brilliant too...I just wish they'd port them to the Synchron player because I can't usually be bothered to use them because of the old interface.

Absolutely! I love my pretty GUIs as much as the next person, but these are ridiculously underpriced for the sound and functionality they offer.

Get all those VSL freebies! The harp and string runs are absurdly good!

I always wanted one of those Patitucci six-strings!

Thought for a minute that it might be a chance to get the Tweed at $49, but nah...'course not.

What is it about Swedes that makes them able to create perfect pop songs? I remember when Almost Unreal came out as a single and I thought it was three minutes of exactly what a pop song should sound like.