Hi,

I hired a guitarist to record guitars for a song from me.
One of his tracks says it’s a 12 string:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s55y3y7663...uit_1.wav?dl=0
Starts around 0:33

To my ears it sounds like a plug-in, not a real instrument ringing and played by a guitarist. What do you guys think?

That is certainly processed to hell and back. Very synthetic. I think it has pitch-shifted components to the processing.

Is it a 12-string behind all that pitch processing and digital-chorus-like effects? Could be, it would be really hard to tell ... but my guess is that it's a 6-string processed to be a synthetic-sounding pitch-processed digital-chorus-ish poor imitation. That's the most likely thing here.

Looks and sounds like a VSTi. Every strum is perfectly on the beat, there's no finger or fret noise, no room ambience, and the slurs or whatever that is in bar 71 are very artificial.

Virtual 12 string for sure.

Dear god that sounds like it was just tabbed out in Guitar Pro

Sounds fake as sh1t. Very mechanical, flat and lifeless to put it mildly.
Have him play it over Zoom and see what happens.
Or else claim money back.

that's not a guitar. sounds like either a keyboard patch or a virtual instrument patch.
I use a Taylor 12, Rick 12, or Strat 12 on my projects...they're real.

Would be hard to play a 12 string like that, sounds very fake
It’s kind of cool in its fake ness though

Fake. Everything that makes a real performance is missing ie. the time it takes to get from one chord to another, the inversions, the variation in pick tone, etc. I hope you get your money back.

How much did you pay him?

€400

Yeah, that's clearly not a real guitar. I'm curious - you said you asked him to record 'some guitars'? Does that mean he sent you other guitar parts too? If so, were they real?
Is it a case of him sending you some genuine, usable guitar parts but then one '12-string' part that he has used a VST for?

Or was your 400 euros literally just for that '12 string' part alone?

I mean, even if he had used a real, beautiful sounding 12 string, playing that simple strumming part for 400 euros seems like very good money to me!

Do the other guitar parts he recorded sound similarly fake?

Does sound like a virtual guitar instrument to me - if you like the sound - get your $400 back and buy a guitar VSTi with (half the?) cash - you'll get a similar result.
It has a certain charm to it - almost Strangers-like harpsichord tone without the human touch!

BTW, Dropbox is a really, really obnoxious way to share tunes on here. Why don't you dimply use the site's "upload" function?

$400?!?!? I’m in the wrong damn business!!!!

(No insult to the OP, not their fault at all)

I couldn’t imagine charging someone $5 for that, never mind $400!

I’m wondering if the guy who supplied the “12-string” would be willing to detail his signal chain and guitar he used. Sounds more like a harpsichord than a guitar!

I wonder if this is the first time this guy tried pawning that off as legit or if he’s been at it for a while and no one called him out?

The electric guitars are real