When it comes to tracking guitar, there’s always the question of DI vs amp. Let’s cover how the two options differ and which is better for yielding better sounding results.
DI Vs Amp
Let’s compare the pros and cons of recording your guitar each way, beginning with DI, or direct input.
Recording Guitar DI
This is where you go straight from your instrument, in this case the guitar, into your recording interface/preamp. This is done using a standard 1/4″ instrument cable.
As I covered in my comparison of bass DI vs amp, recording directly in has a number of advantages:
Cost
One of the most obvious advantages of recording DI is the relative cost savings. Recording guitar DI just requires the guitar, a cable, and your audio interface, the latter of which you’d need in both scenarios.
That means no microphones, no microphone cables or stands, and no amp. To add on to this point and reference another advantage, you don’t need to spend any money treating your room for recording.
Even without worrying about room treatment costs, that’s a savings of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.
Of course, that’s not accounting for the money you might spend on digital/plugin or analog amp modelers, but that said there are plenty of great free options for amp modeling today.
Ease
Recording guitar DI is also considerably easier than recording via an amp.
There’s no sweating dialing in and finding that perfect tone before you record, not to mention the anxiety of committing to that tone forever.
With DI guitar recording, you can plug in and start recording when inspiration strikes, even using a VST-based amp modeler to get a temporary, non-committed tone to help inspire your performance while you play. This makes DI recording much more practical than painstakingly setting up the amp and mic for the best results before you even play a note.
This is great for the many musicians who understandably feel their initial performances are much better when you’re feeling inspired and excited about the song or part.
No Room Needed
Speaking of practicality and to return to something I touched on earlier, you don’t need a perfectly treated room or perfect conditions to record DI.
It’s silent which is another boon for musicians living in apartments or houses where they’re sharing ear shot range with neighbors, roommates, family members, etc. they need to be respectful of.
Recording straight in makes recording in the middle of the night a lot more practical, as well.
You can even use impulse response guitar files to recreate a realistic amp miked sound/environments while still going straight in. While most professional studios are still miking amps, you’d be surprised at how many are tracking guitar DI and doing everything “in the box”.
Options For Later
Lastly, let’s not discount the value in recording DI for leaving all of your options on the table for later.
Assuming you weren’t using some kind of amp modeling pedal or interface going in to fully process the tone, you still have that clean audio to process and color as you like after the fact.
You even have the option to record THAT recording through an amp as if you were playing it fresh later on via reamping.
Recording Guitar With an Amp
Now let’s take a look at the other option, or recording guitar with an amp.
In this case, we’re placing one or multiple microphones in front of/around a cab/amp.
Similar to recording DI, let’s talk some advantages of doing the more classically conventional method of recording guitar with an amp:
Better Tone
Let’s be honest, the vast majority of songs we think of when we think of guitar tracked that guitar via a miked amp or amps.
While amp modelers both analog and virtual have come a very long way over the last couple few decades, there’s no substitute for the analog warmth and realism you get from putting a microphone on an amplifier.
This gives you the character of the amp as well as the unique character of the guitar, strings, and performance, all through that amplifier.
You don’t even need to break the bank to get a great tone. A very affordable SM57 can still be bought for under $100 and it’s STILL the go to choice for a lot of producers and engineers in some of the finest studios in the world for miking a guitar cabinet.
Recording guitar via an amp also gives you the character of the room, more or less depending on where you situate that microphone, as I covered in my overview on how to mic a guitar cabinet:
As you can see, you can capture more of the room by moving that microphone farther away from the source.
I recently mentioned this in my overview on recording with two microphones, it helps to balance a darker, more low and mid heavy mic like the SM57 with a position to offset this like dead center on the speaker.
Speaking of which, you can add in a second, brighter microphone 3-6 inches up/down and to the right/left of the speaker to offset that mic’s relative brightness, giving you more similar options to balance hard left or right if you choose (just be aware of phase issues).
It’s best if you have someone else play while you listen through a good pair of headphones and move the microphones and adjust the guitar amp EQ as necessary.
More Time in, Less Time Later
Yes, dialing in the perfect guitar tone through an amp can be painstaking (though less so the more you do it), but once you’ve found that perfect tone, you can save yourself a lot of time later on when you reach the mixing stage, knowing the guitar is going to need a lot less adjustments.
DI Track
As an aside, there’s no reason you can’t split your signal to capture a DI version of the record, as well.
It’s a good idea to do this alongside the amp miked version of the recording to give yourself options later as mentioned in the DI section. This allows you to swap out the tone later on or beef up your existing tone with the same performance processed a different way in the box (or amp miked through reamping).
DI Vs Amp Verdict
Given the quality of virtual amp modelers these days and the relative practicality in terms of cost, ease, and more, I would argue recording DI is the best option and how I record my guitar 90% of the time.
Aside from all of that, it’s worth another reminder that you can even run that DI track through an amp later on via reamping, so all options are always on the table with DI..
On that note, it’s once again a good idea to record a DI track even if you DO end up going with a miked amp in case you want to change the tone later without sacrificing the performance, or even supplement the existing natural amp tone with a virtual amp modeled instance of the take later on.
However you choose to record your guitar, once you’ve got your track(s), check out my many tutorials on processing electric guitar in the mix to get it sounding its best.
