The plugin in this case is the TH-U thingie, I only use it as a workaround for missing looper functionality, and only because it’s built into GP.
Interesting, but not really surprising, given how bad TH-U is in other respects.
What is so bad with TH-U?
That plugin has been my goto for years, still is. The new update has some nice new stuff too. Why don’t you like it?
Bad UX, awfully sounding amp sims (only guitar rig is worse in this sense these are the only two where you can actually distinctly hear aliasing, or IMD, or whatever that horror that plagues amp sims is), and whoever came up with that looper logic where you can’t turn overdub off, undo doesn’t work until you stop the looper, there are two channels but their modes affect each other, must resign and never get involved in developing software again. That should be enough for starters.
It’s good to have it in GP though, to quickly find some stop gap effects.
What amp sim are you using?
I currently use four NDSP plugins for different sounds, with cab simulation turned off, I use a separate IR player for that. That’s more or less okayish.
I’m not that nitpicky. I enjoy all plugins: Guitar Rig, S-Gear, TH-U, the complete suite of ML Sound Lab, Audority, Amplitube Metal …
(this one is TH-U)
Yeah, note how they filtered out all the high mids, typical processing needed for bad amp sims, just put a blanket on top and pretend the nastiness isn’t there 
In a recording it’s possible to carve out something that works even from guitar rig sometimes with careful eqing.
But why, what’s the point.
Well, as a keyboard player, I don’t use it for guitar processing or amp modeling and I think there are much better plugins out there for guitarists and our guitar users use a number of them.
But for keyboard players, the effects in TH-U are pretty damn good and just as importantly, they’re reliable.
But I know from the guitarists in the bands with which I play, that they are very very … very fussy about getting the exact sound they want to the extent that, as far as I can tell, they never quite get, so they’re always tweaking
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^^^ accurate
Sure, like I said, it’s certainly good to have it available for occasional effects here and there.
Well there are a few problems with guitar sound that make it difficult.
First, especially with distorted sound, it kind of conflicts with a lot of things including vocals from the frequency perspective, and in a live show the foh engineer won’t think for a second about his priorities, he’ll turn the guitar down. So it’s tricky to do right to begin with.
Second, most guitarists learned to play through amps, and an amp in the room is a very different sound from a close miced cab, which is what everyone else hears and what amp sims produce. So guitarists have this eternal cognitive dissonance.
Third, no matter how good the amp sim is, it is never a good enough substitute for a loud tube amp from the feel perspective, because there’s resonance between the guitar and the air being pumped. It affects sustain a lot, and the instrument simply behaves differently.
That said, most of the time a loud real amp on stage might make the guitarist feel good but make everyone else miserable, and ruin the whole mix in the venue.
So no wonder guitarists are never happy.
Axe-FX is the solution for most problems (except feedback), but Fractal Audio don’t make plugins and most probably will never do.
I’m not all that super picky, I set a few sounds and don’t touch them again except when I need to adjust something for a new song or a new room/speakers. But bad plugins produce horrible IMD-like noise that isn’t harmonically related to what you’re playing, and that’s just incredibly annoying to hear. In a mix you can hide it, but when you’re playing through headphones it’s like someone is drilling through your head.
I was setting up synth patches in my band, and when we lost the keyboardist, I also recorded some playbacks. So for my experience I can tell that synths are much much easier to do right.
God, I wish 
Actually, there’s a rather clever way to get feedback when you’re not using amps and speakers. Hang a pair of monitoring headphones on a stand that only receives the guitar and plays it quite loudly. Then hold the guitar near those headphones and stand back (well, don’t actually stand back, that will break the feedback loop )
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For feedback you could try this
Ahaha 
That takes care of the sound but not the feel.
I used a pitch shifter in Axe-FX controlled by an expression pedal to fake feedback, that also worked, but it doesn’t give the joy of overdriven tubes. 
This is just the matter of personal taste, as otherwise we wouldn’t have any guitarist/bassist customers. 
Of course, I’m not pushy about my taste
Aliasing isn’t a matter of taste for sure, there’s no scenario when it’s a good thing.
And I’m also a guitarist customer, so that point doesn’t prove much, not to mention that GP isn’t an amp sim.
Thanks, I know this plugin. Just to clarify, my comment was about why guitarists constantly tweak sounds, not about myself missing something.
I try to explain to our guitarist that a pianist used to playing on a grand piano and listening to the sound of his piano with a certain proximity to the soundboard has the same feeling. In the audience, it’s a different story, and if the piano is miced, then the best plug-ins often sound better than a miced piano in live condition.
But well, you can’t stop a pianist from loving the closeness of his soundboard. And you can’t stop a guitarist from loving his tube amp, which he’s probably the only one to hear correctly when playing live in a large venue. The paradox is that when our guitarist happily listens to the records of his favorite guitarists, he doesn’t hear a live tube amp, but at best a miced amp and at worst… an amp simulator… in fact he often doesn’t know, but I’ve never seen him say that the sound isn’t good. Even if he doesn’t listen to it on a tube amp. It’s all very strange…
And while he swears by analog pedals, he’s got a Strymon delay on his pedalboard (he loved it so much before I told him it had AD and DA converters in it). And while he swears by his tube amp, he’s just bought himself a TONEX pedal… I don’t know whether it’s our guitarist who fascinates me or guitarists in general… 
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I get that but …
When I first started touring with some major performers, I was using IEMs and was struggling a bit to get used to them and with what I was hearing. I commented about it to one of the other performers and his answer was insightful … "you’re playing in front of an audience who paid good money to hear the band and your goal is to produce what they expect to hear, regardless.
In other words, the audience can only hear the sound - they don’t care what it “feels” like to you. So if that headphone trick produces the needed feedback for the sound, that’s all that matters.
Interesting perspective. My experience when I first started using IEMs was that they allowed me to hear more clearly what I was sounding like, thereby improving the way I was feeling about what was being played/sung—which in turn translated into better playing and singing.
Definitely true about the audience–they have their own experience and expectation with the music, and regardless of how you’re feeling about it as a person on stage, the show must go on.
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Yes, that was totally true but I was having problems keeping them in my ear for long periods of time