6 Tips for Great Electric Guitars Without Amps

With direct guitar recording into virtual amps you can now rock out through the guitar chain of your dreams in the comfort of your home studio and without the neighbors calling the cops.
In this article I've outlined a few tips and best practices for getting great guitar tones without amps or mics.

1. Go Direct - 'going direct' means connecting your guitar into your recording interface by means of the high impedance (HI-Z) instrument input if available or through a DI box (Direct injection box). A direct box converts the hi-impedance signal from the guitar to low-impedance, mic level signal to connect to any preamp. Great results can be had with either though the best results come from the best signal chain including quality cables and DI box. The Radial JDI and J48 are professional studio standards and are actually quite affordable.
2. Avoid hum and buzz - LCD and LED monitors (computer screens) are now the norm and while they don't emit as much noise as CRT  monitors some noise can still be picked up by your guitar pickups. Computer fans, cell phones and even a wrist watch can be sources of unwanted noise in your guitar tone. To reduce and avoid the noise sometimes you just need to move around the room a little and the noise will be gone. Additional noise suppression is best done with a noise gate plugin in your DAW.
3. A virtual guitar rig - The quality and quantity of virtual guitar amps has increased dramatically over the past few years to the point where you may not even want a real amp anymore. Amplitube 3, Guitar Rig 4, and POD Farm 2 (to name just a few) are all top notch virtual guitar processing systems. They've really raised the bar in sound quality. The flexibility and ability to select from hundreds of pedal, amp, cabinet and mic combinations at will makes them invaluable tone shaping tools for guitar, bass and beyond.
4. Latency - With guitar recording, the lower the latency the better. 128 samples is good, but 64 samples or lower is ideal. Latency affects the way you play and you want the immediacy that plugging into a real amp has. You'll need a good firewire interface to achieve this kind of stable low latency.
5. Timing and tuning - As always, timing of the performance and tuning of the instrument are so important. Most of the major virtual amp packages have a tuner option, check the tuning often! With a DAW you can actually see and hear how far off your timing is. Record each section of the song multiple times, choose the best or best bits of each performance and edit a composite that's in time and in tune.
6. Filtering out the bad stuff - Virutal amps don't sound 100% real but they're getting closer all the time. Where the current virtual amp systems fall short is in the cabinet and microphone options. I always use an EQ after the amp plugin to get rid of the harshness and fizz that can make an amp sound fake. If you boost with a sharp Q between 3kHz and 12kHz you can usually find 2-3 really nasty areas. Isolate the frequency and cut it out by a few dB. Here's how that sounds: No EQ (mp3) | Fizz Cut (mp3)
   

These are just a few tips to get you started with direct guitar recording. If you'd like to see more on this topic leave a comment below.

5 tips for recording great Electric Guitars with amps

5 tips for recording great Electric Guitars with amps 

Recording guitars can either be a lot of fun, or a lot of frustration. Here are a few tips for recording electric guitars in your home studio.

1 - Guitar and amp selection - All guitars sound different. A telecaster will never sound like a Les Paul, no amount of processing will change that. So if you need the sound of a Les Paul for this recording, your best bet is to have one available. There are some amps that do well in many recording situations but forcing your amp to sound like something it's not will just lead to frustration. Both a Fender Twin and Vox AC30 sound great for clean tones, but they are drastically different sounds. Using the same guitar and amp for every part of every song gets kinda boring, have a few options available and choose what's best in that situation.

2- Consider the room - Don't underestimate the impact the room has on amps. Generally speaking, you want the amp well away from walls and up off the floor a little. If a small amp doesn't sound big enough, try putting it in a corner to get more bass. A carpet in front of the amp will help keep reflections from getting into the mic. 

3- Tuning, new strings and intonation - I mentioned this in the article about Acoustic Guitars, and it is just as important for Electrics. A properly set up guitar with new strings will allow you to play optimally with every note in tune. A guitar should be set up each season as humidity and temperature can really have an impact. Check the intonation whenever you change strings.
 
4- Mic selection and position - For electric guitar amps the two most often used mic types are dynamic and large diaphragm condenser. The dynamic mic will shape the sound somewhat and the condenser will be more true to the source, not always what you want (too much fizz?). Distance, angle and position across the speaker greatly affect what the mic picks up. Take the time to experiment and get it right, don't just put the mic where it looks like it should be or the place that worked last time, always listen. Adding a second mic is another challenge but can be very interesting.

5- Double track - Record a double of each rhythm part. A double is the same part performed as closely as possible to the original. Every strum and chug in unison. The original is panned left, the double to the right. When recording doubled guitars you can dial the gain back a bit for each. You can leave the guitar, pickup, amp and mic selection the same, or change it up a little, not too much.