There are two honest ways to record electric guitar in a home studio, and both can sound professional: put a microphone in front of a real amp, or plug in direct and use an amp simulator. Which you choose usually comes down to how loud you can be. Mic a cranked tube amp in an apartment and you’ll have angry neighbours; go direct and you can chase perfect tone at 2am in headphones. This guide covers both paths, with exact mic placement for the amp route and practical settings for the direct route.
Miking a real amp to record electric guitar
If you can make noise, a mic on a good amp is hard to beat. The standard workhorse is the Shure SM57, a dynamic mic that shrugs off high volume and has been on countless records. A ribbon mic like the Royer R-121 or a budget Beyerdynamic-style ribbon gives a smoother, darker top end that flatters bright or harsh amps, though ribbons need more gain and careful handling.
Placement on a guitar cabinet changes the tone dramatically over just a few centimetres:
- Distance: start with the grille cloth almost touching, 2-5 cm (1-2 inches) off the speaker. Close-miking maximises punch and rejects the room.
- Position across the cone: aim at the edge of the dust cap (the centre dome of the speaker) for a balanced tone. Move toward the centre for more bite and treble; move toward the outer edge for a darker, warmer sound.
- Angle: straight-on (on-axis) is brightest. Angling the mic 30-45 degrees off-axis tames fizz and harshness.
Pick one speaker, find the sweet spot by moving the mic in small increments while someone plays, and commit. If you want more depth, add a room mic a metre or two back, but check phase against the close mic and flip polarity if the low end disappears when you blend them.
Going direct with amp sims
For quiet flats and consistent tone, recording a clean DI (direct injection) signal and running it through an amp simulator is the modern default. You plug the guitar into a high-impedance (Hi-Z / instrument) input on your interface, capture the dry signal, and shape the tone with software. The huge advantage is reamping: you can change amp, cab, and mic placement after the performance is recorded, so you never commit to a bad tone.
Quality amp sims are genuinely convincing now. Neural DSP plugins are the current benchmark for realism, while Guitar Rig and Amplitube offer huge amp and effect libraries. BIAS FX is another flexible option with deep amp editing. Whichever you use, load a good impulse-response cabinet and treat the virtual mic exactly like a real one: nudge it off-centre and off-axis to kill fizz.
Levels, Hi-Z input and gain staging
Whether miking or going direct, set gain so peaks land around -12 to -6 dBFS. This is even more important for guitar than most sources: a hot DI feeding an amp sim will overdrive the plugin’s input stage in a way you can’t undo, changing the distortion character. Keep the recorded DI clean and conservative, then push the drive inside the plugin. Never let the interface input clip; the little red light means you’ve already lost the take.
Always use the Hi-Z / instrument input for a guitar plugged in directly. A guitar’s high-output-impedance pickups need that high-impedance input to keep the top end and dynamics intact; running into a line or mic input thins the tone and can lose treble.
Latency: the make-or-break for direct recording
When you monitor through an amp sim, you hear your own playing through the computer, so latency is felt as a delay between pick and sound. Set your audio buffer to 64 or 128 samples while tracking to keep round-trip latency under about 10 ms, which most players can’t feel. If you get clicks, pops, or dropouts, close background apps and raise the buffer only as much as needed. When mixing later, raise the buffer to 512 or 1024 samples so your CPU can handle the plugin load without stressing. Some interfaces also offer low-latency DSP monitoring, but for amp-sim tones you’ll usually monitor through the plugin, so a small buffer is your friend.
Room, noise and performance
Miking an amp captures the room, so the same rules apply as any acoustic source: close-mic to reject reflections, put the amp away from parallel bare walls, and add absorption behind the mic if the room rings. Single-coil pickups hum near screens and dimmers, so face away from your monitor and mute the guitar when not playing. Going direct sidesteps room noise entirely, which is why it wins in untreated spaces.
A few performance habits lift every take:
- Fresh strings and accurate intonation matter more once distortion multiplies every flaw.
- Double-track rhythm parts and pan them hard left and right for a wide, powerful wall of guitar.
- Gate or edit out amp hiss and buzz between phrases, especially on high-gain tones.
- Tighten palm-muted parts to the grid sparingly; a little human timing keeps energy.
Reamping: the best of both worlds
If you own an amp but can’t be loud tonight, record the clean DI now and reamp later through your amp when you can make noise, or reamp through a sim any time. Send the recorded DI back out of your interface through a reamp box (which converts line level back to instrument level and impedance) into the amp, then mic it as above. This workflow means the performance and the tone are separate decisions, which is a huge creative safety net.
Master both routes and you’ll always have a way to track guitar regardless of the hour or your neighbours. For interface and monitoring choices, see our home recording setup guide, browse tuning and timing utilities on the free audio tools hub, and when it’s time to fit those guitars around a vocal, our guitar mixing tips cover EQ carving and panning.
