Poulin makes some great ampsims. I use Hybrit ‘all the time.’ … with the Redwirez IRs.
[i]"Wolfgang Palm has released for free a new version 2.0 of his Plex Restructuring Synthesizer, formerly distributed commercially by Steinberg. It’s available for Windows as a VST instrument plug-in.
Wolfgang says “I had done some extensions on Plex, just for myself during the last years. Doing that, I found the sounds Plex produces interesting again. So I decided to do a new version, and offer it for free.”[/i]
I havn’t tried it yet though.
Wow great news
Bootsy’s VST’s are awesome.
I use FerricTDS, NastyDLA (tape echo), epicVerb (reverb) and NastyVSD (limiting) in just about every song.
http://www.u-he.com/TyrellN6/downloads/TyrellN6V2Win.zip
Synthesizer Tyrell 2.0 released today by Urs Heckmann in collaboration with amazona.de (http://www.u-he.com/)
German text + downloads:
Piano One is my go-to VST for piano sounds. They’ve also got some other commercial piano VSTs on their site, but this freeware is so high quality that I don’t even really care xD
I’d like to share some of my up-to-date VST arsenal (I’ll try to write down these not mentioned here yet…)
Synths/Instruments
TwinBass for bass - http://www.interruptor.ch/vst_overview.shtml - I can make basses with more character than before on that, plus it’s easy to program
U-he Bazille - http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=258683 - but only till the end of this year!! The CPU hit is really high, though, higher than Tyrell N6
IK Multimedia Sampletank Free - http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/sampletank/index.php?pp=sampletank-2-xl-versions - good pianos and guitars out there!
Phutura - http://www.phuturetone.com/phutura.php - another easy VSTi for characteristic synth sounds
Effects
Compressor:
jsCompShaper - http://electric-snow.net/plugins.html - I still can’t tweak it to show the full capabilites and it changes the sound pretty much, I usually scroll through the presets to get the impact I want and tweak from there
DCAM Free Comp - http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=185 - very easy one, should have the same architecture as DCAM Dynamics, which says it all…
Filter:
Engineer’s Filter - http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?plugin=Engineers_Filter&id=951 - my go-to filter for highpassing stuff (using it instead of Renoise butterworth filter), only drawback is the cutoff is not automatable, so it’s useful only for static filtering
Filterbank v3 - http://www.pluginboutique.com/products/237-Filter-Bank-V3 - used it on vocals processing lately, and was amazed by how smoothly it took away the low/high end and still kept the color
EQ:
Fnequalizer - http://www.oceanturtlemusic.com/drupal/node/3 - didn’t mess with that one so much, as it has pretty high CPU hit, one can’t use it on more than a few tracks
Delay:
PPD Echobox - http://www.pluginboutique.com/products/278-PPD-Echobox - especially the “Analg Delay” knob!!
Reverb:
HybridReverb2 - http://www2.ika.rub.de/HybridReverb2/ - haven’t tried yet, it seems pretty technical to me and there should be much control over the
final sound…
Coloring:
BitterSweet - http://www.pluginboutique.com/products/90-Bittersweet-II
Other:
Stereo Tool - http://www.pluginboutique.com/products/387-Stereo-Tool
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Why not take your drum bus for a rough ride ?
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u-he has a good collection of freeware synths like Podolski, Zebralette (one fully functional voice of their Zebra synth), Triple Cheese and TyrellN6 (already mentioned in this thread).
Just my 2 cents 
I went searching for some new free VST effects and synths about a month ago and stumbled across these two articles:
***I removed these links because another forum member advised that they contained some malicious/aggressive adverts. Sorry for those who encountered problems with the links. 
***
These articles certainly include some repeats of others suggestions, but I thought they were worthwhile for finding some new free “toys” 
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I have also been using gsnap a lot recently for auto-tuning vocals. That plugin can be downloaded here:
http://www.gvst.co.uk/gsnap.htm
Thanks for this thread.
This pack is free and UNBEATABLE: http://www.jeroenbreebaart.com/audio_vst_jb.htm
otherwise…
Tweakbench
Voxogeno http://www.voxengo.com/group/free-vst-plugins/
ODO Synths http://theodosynthsarchive.wordpress.com/
TAL
Proteus VX (Free waldorf soundplayer)
DARKWARE http://jackdark.proboards39.com/index.cgi
and…
Superwave P8
I’ve got to second Jack Dark’s DARKWARE. Pretty much every vst he’s made sounds absolutely insane and is well worth the hard drive space. I think that link’s broken, and the only place I know to get his stuff now is here: http://www.gersic.com/plugins/hosted/darkware/darkware.html
Yeah he did take them offline a few years ago. Was about to provide that same link which I found quite quickly searching this time. Some of them are pretty poor for CPU usage (although computers were a lot slower when he made them) and some are a bit buggy all are very experimental and can produce some crazy sounds so are worth checking out.
Recently, I found 2 amazing free VSTi’s.
Well, first is the free version of Aalto. I was going to buy the polyphonic version and then, I see that you can get the monophonic version for free through this site: beatdrive mag I know, It’s in German. Not a big deal even if you don’t understand German.
The second one is absolutely amazing. I think the sound is astounding. And it’s modular!! It’s just awesome, I can’t say it enough(that’s all I use now for pads and synths):
Sonigen’s Modular: sonigen.com
Also a bunch of smaller vst that are really cool if you’re into glitchy, noisy stuff are all the Smart Electronix plugins and these Tweakbench: tweakbench.com
And at last, if you’re a spectral synthesis freak like I am, you already know the Soundhack plugins both free and not: soundhack.com and this wonderful plugin that’s really cool even on drums: Get it! it’s Rekkerd’s Dtblkfx.
Best freeware effect plugins, rated by a pro mixing engineer:
mixing secrets
Dig deeper into this site, you can learn a lot!
Headphoneusers: New, check out the Beyerdynamics Virtual Studio:
BVS
If you use headphones you just throw this VST on the master track and then you can emulate (done via IR samples) the sound of:
studio monitors, 5.1 monitors, car hifi and (dance) hall. I just checked it out briefly but to me it look very useful
Tal has some excellent free VST instruments, with really clean interfaces - My favourites are the U-no6 and the Noisemaker.
Noisemaker has enough options to get a nice variety of standard voices, without being overwhelming, so I use it quite often.
I second lonewolf. the Tal plugins are great. I especially like the reverb and delay plugins.
Tweakbench tapeworm is a great find! No more digging around for Emulator 2 sample packs 
/> [edit sorry, mellotron sample packs - how embarrassing!]