I tested Cali Reverb and it was an absolute garbage and at the time all their other stuff was meh…no go for me after an never looked back.
I feel like whatever approach Nembrini uses for modelling power amps, it simply doesn't sound good or accurate for how people typically use Rectifiers. It's either using a goofy load box, or the modelling just doesn't do the "no negative feedback" thing very well.
I feel like there are some good plugins in his lineup, but they can vary a bit. The rack stuff is all pretty good (I like the JMP and MP-1 especially). His 2210 is cool, the Ecstasy was better than I expected. The ENGL one was really weird to me, and not what I expected. Not overly struck on his 5150 and SLO when others have done those so perfectly already.
Some of his older Brainworx ones are worth a look too, I think the Diezel plugins are OK, as are the Suhr, Dirty Shirley, ENGL Savage, Fuchs Train II and the bass amps. The BE and recto's are bad, the BE sounds like it's broken and the Recto's have the power amp issues I mentioned above. I'm not really convinced on the power amp modelling of some of the others but I think on some amps it doesn't show as an issue so much. Some of them are possible to bypass the power amp and you could use a NAM model or another plugin that allows power amp only (lots of them are pretty standard Marshall style power sections).
For me Nembrini are good, but they are a tier below Line 6, NDSP, Mercuriall, UAD but probably better than Amplitude and similar to STL. Nembrini are well priced (well, always on sale) and they are reliable and well maintained which I can't really say for a lot of other smaller companies, and sometimes a small compromise in tone or features is worth being able to actually use it without issues.
![[Nathan]](/data/avatars/s/0/613.jpg?1726885163){kind=avatar}
