Miking a real amp captures something amp-sim plugins still chase: the actual movement of air from a speaker in a room, complete with its character and grit. Learning how to mic a guitar amp comes down to a handful of precise, repeatable decisions, mic choice, distance, angle and where on the speaker cone you point it, and once you understand them you can dial in a tone in minutes. This guide gives you the exact placements in centimetres and inches, the gain targets that keep the take clean, and the tricks that make a single microphone sound like a record. It works whether you are recording a tiny practice combo or a stack.
Choosing the mic and setting levels
The classic guitar-amp microphone is a dynamic mic, because it handles very high volume without distorting and rejects room reflections. The Shure SM57 is the industry standard for this exact job, on countless records, and the Sennheiser e906 is a popular alternative designed to hang in front of the grille. A ribbon mic like a Royer R-121 gives a smoother, warmer top end but is more fragile and pricier, so it is a step-up rather than a starting point.
Set your interface gain so the loudest chords peak around -12 to -6 dBFS in your DAW. A loud amp produces a strong signal, so you will often need less input gain than you expect; keep well clear of 0 dBFS so transients never clip. Because you are capturing a real acoustic source in a room, latency is less critical than with software monitoring, but if you monitor through the computer, a buffer of 128 to 256 samples keeps things comfortable while tracking. Set the amp itself first: dial the tone you want in the room, because the mic captures what the speaker actually produces, not what you wish it produced.
How to mic a guitar amp: distance and angle
Start close. Place the mic right up against the grille cloth, roughly 2 to 5 cm (1 to 2 inches) from the speaker. Close-miking gives a direct, present, isolated sound with minimal room bleed, which is why it is the standard for rock and metal rhythm tones. From there, the exact spot on the speaker is your main tone control.
- At the centre (the dust cap). Aim the mic straight at the middle of the speaker cone and you get the brightest, most aggressive, most detailed sound. Great for cutting leads, sometimes too harsh for rhythm.
- At the edge (the cone). Move the mic toward the outer edge of the cone and the tone becomes warmer, darker and rounder. Somewhere between the cap and the edge is where most usable rhythm tones live.
- On-axis vs off-axis. Pointing the mic straight in (on-axis) is brightest. Angling it about 45 degrees across the speaker (off-axis) tames harsh high end while keeping body, which is a reliable fix for a fizzy tone.
Move the mic in small increments and record a few seconds after each change. A shift of just a couple of centimetres audibly changes the tone, so let your ears choose rather than guessing.
Adding room and multi-mic options
Once your close mic sounds good, a second mic adds dimension. A common approach is to place a room mic, often a condenser, one to two metres back to capture the amp blooming in the space, then blend it under the close mic for depth. This only helps if your room sounds decent; in a small untreated room, keep the room mic low in the blend or skip it.
If you use two close mics, beware phase problems. When two mics sit at different distances from the same speaker, their signals can partially cancel and thin out the low end. Keep multiple mics as equidistant from the speaker as you can, and always check the combined sound in mono; if it goes thin or hollow, nudge one mic or flip its polarity until the low end returns full. For a single-mic recording you do not need to worry about this, which is why one well-placed SM57 remains the most reliable starting point.
Practical tips and fitting it in the mix
A few habits make amp miking easier at home. Keep the amp off the floor on a stand or chair to reduce boomy low-end buildup, or angle it slightly. Track your rhythm parts twice and pan them hard left and right for width, exactly as you would with DI recording. And commit to a tone you like rather than planning to fix it later, because a miked amp is far less flexible after the fact than a clean DI capture. If you want that flexibility instead, our guide on how to record DI guitar covers reamping with amp sims, and many engineers record a DI alongside the miked amp to keep both options.
In the mix, high-pass the guitar around 80 to 100 Hz to clear space for bass and kick, and carve any harshness with a gentle EQ cut rather than piling on more processing. Our how to mix guitars guide covers seating a big guitar tone in a dense track, and the home recording hub has companion walkthroughs for the rest of your production. For free browser-based tuners and metering tools to check your levels while you track, visit the Violet Recording tools hub. Master how to mic a guitar amp with these placements, protect your headroom, and a single microphone will give you tones that genuinely compete with any plugin.
