An old clip doesn't mean current priority

An LLM wrote this

If people fall in they're likely drunk or otherwise impaired

I recommend Vital. Different UI but it's free and can do most (if not all) of the same stuff, from what I can tell (I've not delved deep into Alchemy). Surge XT is apparently more powerful but I find Vital offers plenty of complexity and there's a much steeper a learning curve, so I wouldn't start there.

It shows the trend but the colors make this look far more severe than the scores reflect

I use ImagePipe, which has worked well for me

They will always sound different to some extent but the main tone change will be pickups (I'm guessing the LTD pickups will be higher gain). You might also want to change the other electronics (matching values there could help).

New strings will sound brighter but so will thinner strings. Try some different gagues and see what feels and sounds good to you.

More generally, does it need to sound the same or could you find a different sound that you like? Part of the fun of a second guitar is the variety and how different sounds and feels bring out different playing.

Okay, that doesn't sound too bad then!

I've been looking for a good channel strip for a bit as I've heard good things about them as a workflow. Also, aa it's an emulation of a physical device rather than a more perfect compressor etc, it adds some nice colouration that works really well for some instruments. The saturation is particularly nice and I'm surprised how much I like using the EQ.

And yeah, iLok is awful.

Thanks, I'll take a look!

Plugdata seems like a deep rabbit hole, so I'm a little afraid of it but maybe that's the next step.

For now, I'll share my latest Linux plugin find: https://store.harrisonaudio.com/all-products/harrison-32classic-channel-strip says it doesn't support Linux but if you buy it and download the "old" version from here https://support.harrisonaudio.com/hc/en-gb/articles/19516617411613-Harrison-AVA-downloads-OLD-VERSIONS (it has the same version number as the most recent Windows copy), then you can activate it and it works well. I think I had to say no to linking iLok when purchasing. It's crap that they've recently stopped supporting Linux (because they've moved to using iLok) but I've been happy with the plugin.