July 29, 2024
About the Author: Cameron Hayes
The unfortunate reality for most of us is that we aren’t able to crank our big powerful tube amps when practicing at home. But how can we get that desired tone at low or no noise for home practice?
Amp Modelers
A very popular option for not only home practice but live guitar performances over the last 15 years or so have been amp modelers, which offer the cranked sounds of many different iconic amps all in one small unit. I have personally been using the Line 6 HX Stomp for the past 4 years or so, for both live gigs, studio recording, and home practice.
The beauty of these types of units is that you have access to a plethora of different guitar amps, pedals, and effects all in one unit. One of the reasons for me getting the Line 6 HX Stomp, for example, is the physical size of the unit, which fits on my already smaller pedalboard (Pedaltrain Jr).
Although tempting, I won’t bore you too much with the different features and possibilities of this amp modeller. Instead, let me talk more about how this can be a great option for home guitar practice.
First of all, this unit can be used completely silently through headphones, so you can have a cranked Marshall Plexi preset with everything on 10 while still having a baby sleeping in the next room. This can be done by plugging directly into the unit or running it through your computer and interface to record directly into your DAW.
Some other popular amp modelers include the Kemper, Boss Multi Effects Processor, HeadRush amp modeler, and the Neural DSP units.
Speaker Emulation with Real Amps
Another option that I have been a big fan of for home recording is to use real tube amps with a speaker emulation unit attached. This allows you to use the front end of your tube amp, using the volume and tone controls as you usually would, but taking the speaker section out of your amp and digitally recreating this.
Like amp modellers, this can be done at low or no volume thanks to headphones, recording a direct line out of your speaker emulation unit into your interface. I have been a big fan of the Universal Audio OX Box over the past 5 years, using this to achieve studio quality guitar tones with some of my favourite guitar amps.
This has also allowed me to use many different types of virtual speaker cabinets to get different desired tones, from Fender combos to Marshall quad boxes to Vox style cabinets. Other speaker emulation units include the Torpedo Captor, the Suhr Reactive Load and the Boss Waza Tube Amp Expander.
Attenuators
So all of the above options give you lots of different options for low to no noise home recording and practicing, but what if you have no interest in recording your guitar into a DAW and simply just wanted to practice guitar through your favourite tube amp at low volume so you don’t get evicted from your apartment?
An attenuator can be a great alternative for this. Basically, an attenuator allows you to run your amp as loud as you would in a rehearsal or gig to get the tubes cooking while stepping down the overall volume that is being fed into the speaker.
Essentially, you are pushing the front end of your amp to its sweet spot without having to deal with the volume that it would naturally belt out.
Another great feature of the OX unit that I mentioned earlier is that it also attenuates, but find a more cost-effective alternative if you are only after the attenuation. It could be the Fryette Power Station, the Tone King IronMan, or some of the other Two Notes Torpedo Captor units.
Solid State Guitar Amps
All of our options so far have been assuming that you want to practice with a tube guitar amp at home, although this may not be the case. If you are not familiar with it, guitar amps are usually classified as tube amps or solid-state amps.
Tube amps use tubes (they look like little light bulbs) to send the electrical current through to produce the sound, and typically are a lot louder than solid state amps.
This is why they are often favoured for live performances, as they have the power to cut through a loud band and in particular a drummer.
Solid-state amps replace the tubes with transistors, which do not affect the tone depending on how loud you have the amp itself. This can be a major advantage for practising at home, as you prioritise the volume level over the tone for home practice.
However, this is why tube amps are usually considered to sound ‘better’, as all of the famous guitar tones that you hear on guitar recordings are a tube amp cranked to its sweet spot to produce the lovely sustain.
No matter how loud you crank a solid state amp, you will not get the natural distortion or break up that you get from a tube amp, which is often the appeal with tube amplifiers.
Some famous recording and performing amps such as the Roland Jazz Chorus are actually solid state, so can produce a great sound at any volume. The amp that I recommend to all of my students who are looking at purchasing their first good practice amp is the Boss Katana, which comes in many different sizes (I usually recommend the 50w version).
The Boss Katana is a solid state amp which allows you to sculpt a variety of clean and distorted tones, saveable preset options, the ability to plug in headphones, and also plug in an AUX cable to play songs/backing tracks off of a mobile device, as well as many other handy features.
