Spectrasonics Hans Zimmer Guitar 2
Size: 1.3 gigs
Price: $199
Rating: 4.4/5
Has: Velocity Layers (7), Key Switches (0), RAM efficiency (8), Mic Positioning (0)

Acoustic guitars are often a difficult instrument to capture. Many have them as a simple collection of tings and twangs and various styles of play which for the most part does a decent job with what you want. However all of them that I had tried to date (admittingly none of the ones i've tried were recent VST productions) just lacked something. It was useful as support, but I would never dare try to use them as a focus point in a song. Spectrasonics HZG2, is however, changing that.

There are 4 patches per guitar. Nylon Acoustic A, Nylon Acoustic B, Nylon Acoustic C, Nylon Acoustic D. Of course they're not called Nylon Acoustic but you get the idea. Whats up with this variations? Well see thats whats got me all excited about this library. Each letter has a different set of recordings of the instrument! For example Patch A might have excellent strumming, B might be focused on the upper levels, C might have really great vibrato and so forth. Putting each patch through the exact same notes and melodies I have creates an almost completely different sounding segment! The hours i've spent just switching things back and forth is remarkable in of itself.

Additionaly this library does not just come with western guitars. There is a decent selection of ethnical instruments like the Koto and the Oud guitar. Not every one of them will have the four variations model in place but they too are pretty damn decent.

Nearly all the patches are really light and don't take up much resources, and yet I find it has enough power to be used as an instrument to focus on. A rare combination let me tell you, most of the time if a patch is heavy and eats up a lot of RAM that is because it has so many layers, so many velocity switches on it. Despite it's small size to have the kind of power it pulls in is something worthy of tipping our hats to. Good stuff.

There is however no mic positionings. And really I felt that this was unnecessary. Not only because it would triple the size of the library to include all those mic positionings and still package the same power but because it's so easy to control what reverb you need without concern.

Recap:
Strengths
- Mad flexibility in styles of play
- Light on the CPU and RAM
- Has several other ethnic guitars packaged rather well
- Fast and sustained both handled well

Weaknesses
- There's no third one... yet?
- No keyswitches, everything is scattered and must program things individually.