Welcome to another episode of FAQ Friday (Frequently Asked Questions). This series is all about your questions. We go through the YouTube comments, look for the most common / interesting questions and answer them in FAQ Friday episodes!
Can you record guitar with a practice amp?
Well, yes!
I think we need to define what we’d call a practice amp. Traditional old school practice amps were 6 watt or 12 watt champs – That’s the Layla guitar sound (I believe it was a 6 watt Champ)
When Don Smith was doing all the Stones records and Keith Richards solo records, he also used a Fender Champ on Keith’s guitar sound.
One of my favorite producers and good friend of mine is Dave Jerden. Dave did all the big Alice In Chains records, the big Jane’s Addiction records, The Offspring, you name it! Anyway, a lot of the time he was getting those massive guitar sounds with a variation of amps. He almost always favoured small amps. He’d put a 57 on the front and a 57 on the back and flip the back one out of phase. (He’d use a small open back amp.)
Whenever I used to work with Bryan Carlstrom, it was always with small amps. Quite often we’d take a small 6 watt Champ and run another head into it and drive that speaker really heavily.
My point is: don’t be discouraged.
There’s a place for everything. Don’t believe when someone says you can’t use a specific amp to record guitar. Whatever you have, whether it be a little transistor amp that’s worth $20 all the way up to the most expensive tube amp on the market, there’s a place for it!
To be honest, I would use your practice amp because you’re going to have a far more unique sound than just getting the same standard tube amp sound that everybody else uses.
Whatever you’ve got, use it! Have fun and make some great music!
I go into more depth about recording and mixing and gear in the video below! I also answer the following questions:
• Can you record professionally a guitar with practice amp ? 1:16
• Do you ever reamp?
• What is for you the best technological improvement in music production in the past ten years?
• What is that (white box) on top of the Marshall amp head to the right of the screen? (over Warrens head).
• What is one piece of analog gear under $1000 you’d recommend for someone looking to go (a little) outside the box?
• How often do you rely on spectrum analyzer when mixing ?
• For those of us that don’t have zillions of dollars, would you do a video some time of your favorite Waves plug-ins and why you like them?
I hope you enjoyed today’s FAQ Friday! I’ll see you next week!
Ps. Since you asked…these are some of my favorite Waves Plugins:
Renaissance Bass: https://bit.ly/2rmmYF8
MV2 https://bit.ly/2HVhTy3
API Collection https://bit.ly/2rlAE3f