How to Record Electric Guitar at Home: Amp, DI and Plugin Routes
Mic a guitar amp with a Shure SM57 touching the grille cloth, angled between the centre of the dust cap and the edge of the cone, and record a dry DI on a second input at the same time so the tone can be reamped later. In a home where volume is limited, use a low wattage amp, an attenuator, or a plugin amp simulator fed from that DI. If you use two microphones, align the capsules in the same plane or they will comb filter.
Definition: Recording an electric guitar means capturing a system rather than an instrument: the pickups, the amplifier, the speaker and the room are all part of the sound, and the microphone hears the last two as much as the first.
An electric guitar signal is not finished until it has been through a speaker. The pickups produce a thin, wide-bandwidth signal that sounds like nothing at all on its own; the amplifier distorts and compresses it; and the speaker, which typically rolls off hard above about 5 kHz, is doing more tone shaping than any EQ you will ever apply. That is why microphone position on a guitar cabinet matters more than microphone choice, and why the same amp can sound like two different instruments depending on where a capsule sits.
Where exactly does the microphone go?
Right against the grille cloth, and the decision is how far out from the centre of the speaker you sit. A guitar speaker is not uniform across its surface. The dust cap in the middle is stiff and radiates the most high frequency energy; the outer part of the cone is more compliant and produces a warmer, thicker sound. Move the capsule across that surface and you are sweeping a tone control with far more range than an amp's treble knob.
| Position | Distance from centre | Character | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dead centre, on the cap | 0 in | Brightest, most aggressive, most fizz | Cutting through a dense mix, clean funk parts |
| Cap edge | 1 to 1.5 in | Bright but with body | The default starting point for rock rhythm |
| Halfway to the cone edge | 2 to 3 in | Balanced, the classic recorded sound | Most things, most of the time |
| Outer cone | 3.5 to 4.5 in | Warm, thick, rolled off on top | Taming a harsh amp, layering under a bright part |
| Off axis at 45 degrees | Any | Softer top end without losing level | Fizzy high gain amps |
| Pulled back 6 in | Any | Less proximity, some room | Cleans, and single mic room tones |
The workflow that finds it fastest: put the microphone at the cap edge, get headphones on, and have someone play the actual part while you slide the capsule outward an inch at a time. The change is obvious and immediate, and it takes about two minutes. Doing this once is worth more than owning three microphones.
Distance from the grille is the second variable. Touching the cloth gives maximum proximity effect, maximum isolation from the room and the most consistent result. Six inches back trades some of that low end for a slightly more open sound. Twelve inches and beyond is a room microphone rather than a close one, and in a home room that is usually a bad trade.
The Shure SM57 is not on amps because it is accurate. Its presence lift and its limited top end happen to flatter a distorted guitar, it handles any level a cabinet can produce, and it does not print the room behind it. The Beyerdynamic TG I51 is a modern alternative with a similar job description, and a Electro-Voice RE20 gives a bigger, flatter picture if you have one. The dynamic microphone roundup covers the alternatives.
Why do two microphones make it worse?
This is the trap that catches everyone who reads that professional engineers use a 57 and a condenser together. They do, and they align them, and the alignment is the entire point.
Two microphones at different distances from the same speaker receive the same waveform at different times. Sum them and you get comb filtering: a regular series of cancellations at frequencies where the path difference equals half a wavelength. Sound travels about 13,560 inches per second, so the first null sits at 13560 divided by twice the path difference in inches.
| Path difference | First null | What disappears |
|---|---|---|
| 1 in | 6780 Hz | Air and fizz only, often inaudible |
| 2 in | 3390 Hz | Pick attack and bite |
| 3 in | 2260 Hz | Presence, the part that cuts through a mix |
| 6 in | 1130 Hz | Upper midrange, the core of the guitar |
| 12 in | 565 Hz | Body and warmth, the guitar goes hollow |
Three ways to handle it. Get both capsules in the same plane, measured with a tape from the grille to each diaphragm, so the path difference is close to zero. Nudge one track in the DAW by a few samples until the summed low mids come back, which is the fastest fix and works even when the geometry is awkward. Or separate them deliberately so the second microphone is at least three times as far from the source as the first, the 3:1 rule, which puts the bleed 9.5 dB down and reduces the comb filtering to something you can live with.
The single-microphone answer is not a compromise. A well-placed 57 on a good amp is the sound on an enormous number of records, and the second microphone is an optimisation you should only add once you can hear what the first one is doing.
The mistake I made for years was checking the mic position on its own, soloed, with the amp sounding great in the room. A guitar tone that sounds huge soloed is usually too wide and too full to sit in an arrangement, and the position that sounds slightly thin and nasal on its own is very often the one that cuts through when the drums and the bass arrive. Now I set the capsule position with the rest of the track playing, at mix level, and I never solo it. The position I land on is reliably an inch or two closer to the cap than the one I would have chosen soloed.
Why should you always record a DI?
A DI is the dry, unamplified guitar signal, taken directly from the instrument and recorded on its own track in parallel with the microphone. It costs you one input and nothing else, and it is the single best insurance policy in home recording.
What it buys you. If the amp tone is wrong in the mix, and you will not know that until the mix, you can reamp the DI through a different amp or a plugin without booking the player again. If a doubled part is loose, the DI's clean waveform makes visual alignment possible where a distorted signal is a wall of energy. Pitch following effects and octave plugins track a clean signal far better than a distorted one. And if the microphone was in a bad spot, you find out with a solution already in hand.
Getting the split is easy. A Radial ProDI passive DI box takes the guitar, sends a balanced feed to your interface and passes the unaffected signal through to the amp. Or, if your interface has two instrument inputs, some players run the guitar into a pedal with a buffered output that feeds both. The cable and connector chart covers which cable goes where in that arrangement.
Reamping later needs a reamp box, not just a cable. A DAW output is line level and balanced; a guitar amp input expects a high impedance, unbalanced, instrument level signal. Feeding one directly into the other gives a thin, harsh tone and frequently a hum. A reamp box performs the conversion and usually includes a ground lift.
How do you get a real amp tone at home volume?
Understand the actual problem first. A guitar amplifier sounds good partly because the preamp distorts and partly because the power section and the speaker are being driven hard, and the second part only happens at volume. Turning a 50 watt amp down to conversation level does not give you a quiet version of its loud sound, it gives you a different and worse sound. So the strategies are all about reaching that behaviour at a lower absolute level.
A low wattage amp. A 1 to 5 watt valve amp reaches power stage saturation at a level you can talk over. This is the cleanest solution and it is why small amps are disproportionately common in studios.
An attenuator. A load box between the amp output and the speaker lets the output stage work hard while the speaker sees a fraction of the power. Good ones preserve the feel well. They are not free of side effects, particularly at extreme attenuation, and they must be matched to the amp's impedance.
A load box with impulse responses. Take the speaker out of the equation entirely, capture the amp's output electrically, and use a cabinet impulse response for the speaker and microphone part. Silent, repeatable and increasingly the normal way this gets done.
A plugin amp simulator. Feed a DI into a modelled amp and cabinet. For high gain and heavily processed tones this is now good enough that the recording does not give it away. Where a real amp still wins is edge-of-breakup cleans, where the interaction between playing dynamics, pickups and a moving speaker is the sound. An interface with a good instrument input helps: the IK Multimedia AXE I/O One is built specifically around that, and the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (4th Gen) has two instrument inputs so you can take the DI and something else at the same time.
What levels and what sample rate?
A close-miced guitar amp is one of the easiest sources to set, because it is loud, consistent and does not move. Aim for peaks near -8 dBFS with the average around -18 dBFS RMS, set from the loudest part of the actual part rather than a chord strummed at half intensity. Distorted guitar has relatively low crest factor, typically 10 to 14 dB, so once it is set it stays set.
A DI needs the instrument input setting engaged, not the microphone input. That changes the input impedance to something high enough that the pickups are not loaded down, which otherwise costs you high end and output. If a DI sounds dull and quiet, this is almost always why. The full level discussion is in how to set recording levels.
On sample rate, 48 kHz is fine, and the one honest argument for going higher is that some amp simulation plugins alias less when run at a higher rate. Most now oversample internally, which achieves the same thing without doubling the size of your session.
I write to picture, which means most of my guitar parts get recorded at whatever hour the cue is due, in a flat, with people asleep. What this taught me is that the constraint is not really about tone, it is about takes. A plugin sim I can run at 1 a.m. gets me twelve passes at the part; a real amp I can only use between 10 and 6 gets me two, and the second one is rushed. Twelve passes beats a better tone on a worse performance every time, and if the tone turns out to be the problem I still have the DI. That is the actual reason to record a DI on every single take, and it has nothing to do with tone chasing.
What about the room?
Close micing against the grille makes a guitar amp one of the least room-dependent sources there is, which is good news for anyone recording in an untreated space. The direct sound at one inch is so enormous relative to the reflected field that the room barely registers.
Where the room does get in is if you add a distant microphone for ambience. In an untreated bedroom that microphone captures early reflections off nearby hard surfaces and a modal low end, both of which sound like the room rather than like a room. If you want ambience in a small space, an algorithmic reverb on the close microphone is more convincing. If you do want a real room track, put the amp and the microphone in the largest available space and get the microphone at least six feet away, and check what the room needs first.
One more thing worth knowing about placement: an amp on the floor gets a strong boundary reinforcement in the low mids, and an amp in a corner gets more. Lifting a combo onto a chair changes the tone meaningfully before you have touched a knob, and it also raises the speaker toward ear height so what you hear in the room matches what the microphone hears. The instrument frequency range chart shows where the guitar's own fundamentals live, from a low E at 82.4 Hz up to a high E at 329.6 Hz, which is useful when deciding what is guitar and what is room.
Related guides
- How to record acoustic guitar at home: a completely different problem with the same instrument
- Home studio signal flow explained: where the DI splits and where the reamp path rejoins
- How to set recording levels: peak and average targets for amps and DIs
Frequently asked questions
Where do you put an SM57 on a guitar amp?
Touching the grille cloth, angled between the centre of the dust cap and the outer edge of the cone. Dead centre on the cap is the brightest and most aggressive position, the outer edge of the cone is the warmest and darkest, and the sweet spot for most rock tones is roughly halfway between them. Move it an inch at a time while listening on headphones, because an inch changes more than most EQ moves do.
Should I record a DI at the same time as the amp?
Yes, always, and it costs you nothing. A DI track is the dry, unamplified guitar signal captured in parallel with the microphone. If the amp tone turns out wrong in the mix, you reamp the DI through a different setup or a plugin instead of asking the player back. It also gives you a clean signal for pitch-following effects and for lining up doubled parts, and it takes one extra input.
Why do two microphones on one amp sound thin?
Because the two capsules are different distances from the speaker, so the same sound arrives at different times and the two signals comb filter when summed. A one inch path difference puts the first cancellation near 6.8 kHz, three inches puts it near 2.3 kHz and six inches puts it near 1.1 kHz, right in the middle of the guitar. Align the capsules in the same plane, then nudge one in the DAW until the low mids return.
Can I record a good electric guitar tone quietly?
Yes, through three routes. A low wattage amp reaching power stage saturation at a conversational level, an attenuator between a louder amp and its speaker, or a plugin amp simulator fed from a DI. The thing that does not work is turning a 50 watt amp down to bedroom level and micing it, because most of what makes a cranked amp sound good is the power section and the speaker being driven hard.
Do plugin amp sims sound as good as a real amp?
For high gain and heavily processed tones they are close enough that the recording rarely gives them away, especially with a good impulse response for the cabinet. Where a real amp and a real microphone still hold an advantage is edge-of-breakup cleans, where the interaction between the player, the pickups and a moving speaker is part of the sound. In a flat at eleven at night, a plugin sim is the recording that gets made.
What is reamping and what do I need for it?
Reamping sends a recorded DI track back out of the interface and into a guitar amplifier so you can mic it later. It needs a reamp box, because a line level balanced output is the wrong level and the wrong impedance for an amp input, which expects a high impedance instrument signal. Without one you get a thin, harsh tone and possibly a ground loop hum. A reamp box is the whole solution.
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