I’m working on a song that could really use an electric 12 string, but my wife is pretty sure I’m 4 guitars over the limit right now.
Has anyone found a good 12 string sim? I’ve tried just adding an octave up with a JS plug in Reaper, but it is warbling too much for my taste. Any help?
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I bought a cheap 12 string acoustic with a built-in pickup, last December. I bought it online (Amazon). It sounds fairly good. It’s amazing what kind of guitars you can buy for such low prices these days.
You can probably find a very usable 12 string acoustic for less than $170 USD. Don’t tell your wife and she probably won’t even notice that you got another guitar. 
Maybe I’ll post a recording that I did with the 12 string. I was thinking of posting a song in BTR, soon.
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You could capo up and add a harmony part or else do a Nashville tuning (buy 12 string guitar strings and restring a second guitar with some of the strings an octave higher) and layer a 2nd part.
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That’s what I do, though you can these days buy a separate set of Nashvile tuning strings. I have them on a (very) cheap guitar which my stepson left behind. That’s OK, you don’t need a great guitar to mix in the Nashville tuning. I use it only for this purpose. You do need to play pretty tight to make it convincing though…
Yeah, there are great guitars out there for not a lot of money. For this song, the 12 string would be for orchestration, and would be electric. The reason I was looking for the sim was to give me noodling time to work out parts. They’re generally going to be up the neck a bit, where an acoustic might be difficult.
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll look around a little and see what’s out there.
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I thought about the Nashville tuning, but it might be hard to play it twice to get the octaves right and make it smooth.
It is probably the best solution for a one song deal. Thanks.
Playing one part tight is hard enough, two would be a challenge. I’ve never tried the Nashville setup, but it might be a good option. I’ve never seen a plug-in for 12 string; doesn’t seem like it would be too difficult to add octaves, but maybe it is on multiple strings.
Hey - if it’s good enough for David Gilmour???
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Not tried this but I would go for:
Duplicate the track, pitch the duplicate up an octave and add chorus, then blend in with the original to taste.
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Thanks AJ, good to hear from you. I’ve actually tried that, but it sounded bad in the top end, like the top strings were warbling. It might work if I mute or remove the E and B strings, but the chord voicing might be difficult.
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