Can You Play An Electric Guitar Without An Amp?

Every electric guitarist needs some sort of amplifier. The pairing of guitar and amp has dominated popular music for nearly half a century and has created some of the biggest star musicians in history.

Over the long term, there's simply no replacement for the various tonal options and precise control over your guitar's sound that a real amplifier gives you.

However, there are situations where guitarists may want to go without an amp for a variety of reasons. In these cases, there are ways for you to play your electric guitar without an amp.

While they might not make your guitar sound quite as good as it will through a dedicated amplifier, these strategies can help you continue to practice and improve even if you don't have access to an amp.

Why Play Without an Amp?

Amplifiers are the best thing around for electric guitars in terms of sound — but for all their positives, there are some significant drawbacks that can lead many players to skip them in favor of alternative solutions.

First, amplifiers are loud (duh). Many guitarists love the extra volume, and for good reason — let's face it, who doesn't want to hammer open chords in front of an eight-foot-tall stack of Marshall cabinets?

With the being said, though, players who aren't regularly jamming or playing gigs have little use for the louder sound an amplifier puts out.

In fact, in some situations, that sound can actually be a detriment. If you live in a dorm room or share your living space with housemates, turning an amp up to practice every day simply isn't an option. The same goes for guitarists who love to practice in the early morning or late at night when neighbors are sleeping.

Amplifiers can also be expensive, particularly for new or beginner guitarists. When buying your first set of gear, it can be tough to find space for an amp in a tight budget — and even if you can afford to buy an amp, oftentimes you'll have to compromise on the quality of both that amp and your new guitar in order to purchase both without breaking the bank.

Many new guitarists simply learn on a classical or acoustic guitar; among other advantages for beginners, these instruments circumvent the need for a new amp.

If you're dedicated to learning on an electric instrument, however, waiting to buy an amp until you've played for a few months and have built up some ability to jam or play gigs is a perfectly viable strategy.

Finally, amplifiers can simply be very bulky. While digital and solid-state amplifier technology is constantly improving, making amps lighter and more portable without sacrificing as much in terms of sound quality, prized tube amps are often unwieldy to carry and weigh backbreaking amounts.

Transporting your amp to and from jam sessions, rehearsals, and gigs is a major hassle. Faced with the ordeal of carrying an amp everywhere, plenty of advanced guitarists opt instead to leave their amp at a practice space and go without an amp when playing around the house.

Ways to Play Your Guitar Without an Amp

There are plenty of ways to play your electric guitar without an amp. Each method has its own advantages and drawbacks. While none will sound just as nice as using the real deal, each one can be a better option than using an amp depending on your situation. Take a look at all the different strategies and figure out which one is the best for you.

Playing Unplugged

If you don't have an amp, this is the classic way to play your guitar. It's also the easiest to set up — in fact, you don't have to do anything at all! Just play your guitar unplugged without an amp or any sort of device to change the sound.

Electric guitars produce a much weaker sound than acoustic guitars because they lack sound holes, resonance cavities, and other built-in amplifying features. In a perfect world, the pickups solve that problem by capturing the acoustic signal from your electric guitar and sending it to an amplifier or another device to turn it into a louder sound.

But even though many electric guitars don't sound as loud or strong as acoustic guitars without some external aid, they can still be played perfectly fine unplugged.

The action, feel, and other technical aspects remain unchanged whether or not your guitar is running through an amp. Though you may miss out on some of the tactile response you get from playing an electric guitar through a cranked amp, an unplugged guitar still retains all of the features you need to improve your playing skills.

In many ways, playing unplugged can be a great practice method even if you do have an amp. Separating yourself from the amp will expose some flaws in your playing — like fret buzz or slight string dampening — that might go unnoticed when you bolster your signal electronically.

It's also a great way to practice guitar even if you're not in the same room as your amp. The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia famously developed his improvisational vocabulary of chords and scales by practicing scales every night with his guitar unplugged while he watched TV.

Semi-hollow and hollow-body guitars work best for this practice technique. Solid-body instruments produce a weaker sound that gets the job done perfectly fine. However, the acoustic resonance chambers in semi-hollow and fully hollow-body guitars make them practically acoustic guitars as well as electric instruments.

Some jazz boxes and wider hollow-body models can rival the tone and projection of a natural acoustic even when unplugged.

Headphone Amps

If you simply don't like the sound of your electric guitar unplugged but still want a quieter, more budget-friendly option than a full amp, headphone amps are a great middle-of-the-road option.

Headphone amps are manufactured by a wide variety of companies, including many of the traditional amplifier manufacturers. A pair of headphone amps works by plugging into your guitar's input jack, and they produce a sound only through their own headphone out jack. They're effectively their own miniature pre-amp, without a power stage or speaker to make the sound louder without headphones.

Headphone amplifiers all feature their own unique characteristics; many offer a basic spin on their manufacturer's distinctive sound. That means that Vox headphone amps like the Amplug 2 AC30 offer a brighter, crisper “British” sound, while Line6 models like the Pocket POD provide heavier, distorted tones with lots of additional effects to experiment with.

It's important to note that you won't be able to play through a headphone amp without a set of headphones or earbuds with a jack. They lack a speaker to amplify your sound any other way. Because of that feature, they can't be used for jam sessions or pretty much anything besides solo practice.

Non-Guitar Amplifiers

If you don't have an amplifier designed for guitar but do have a stereo lying around your house, you can plug your guitar into it with just a simple adaptor plug. Stereo systems run on a male RCA plug; music stores nearly always carry adaptor cables for you to convert from the 1/4″ jack found on your guitar to the RCA jack.

Using a stereo or music speaker won't sound quite as good as an amp optimized for guitar, but this is possibly the closest you'll get to an authentic electric guitar sound without a full amplifier. A stereo system or larger speakers will provide the same volume boost as real amps, just without a bit of the smooth tone that guitar systems include.

Playing Through Your Computer

The rapid advances in music processing and DAW software technology over the past decade have created another way to play your guitar unplugged that was extremely rare just a few years ago: playing your guitar through your computer.

You'll need to purchase a simple USB audio interface, which allows you to connect your instruments through to your computer and lets you adjust sound volume and frequency levels.

The FocusRite Scarlett 2i2 is one of the most popular models around for beginners — it's cheaper than a full-sized guitar amp and allows you the flexibility to plug other instruments into your computer as well beyond the six-string.

Some form of DAW software is also necessary to get your guitar's sound to come through your computer speakers. DAW software (DAW stands for digital audio workstation) allows you to record, edit, and mix music on your computer.

Apple's GarageBand software is one of the most widely known DAWs around today. Because it comes native on all Mac computers, it's far and away the best choice for beginners and offers all the basic tools you need to amplify your guitar and make more complex music.

If you're interested in music production beyond just amplifying the sound of your guitar, you might also consider ProTools, the DAW used by the vast majority of music industry insiders for their production needs. However, ProTools is expensive and completely unnecessary if you're just looking to play your guitar back through your computer speakers.

Computers also provide some advantages beyond other strategies to play your guitar without an amp. Digital amp plugins, like Bias FX, put the different tones of dozens of unique amps and pedals at your fingertips. These software plugins can load directly into your DAW after you download them and are intuitive enough for even beginner players to use.

Summary

Though amplifiers remain the gold standard solution for increasing the volume of your electric guitar, there are plenty of different ways to practice and play without the aid of a full-size amp. Whether you prefer to just play unplugged, want to jazz up your sound through DAW software on your computer, or anything in between, the solution will often cost less and provide a more portable, flexible sound than a traditional amp.

Experiment with different options to see which style works best for you. You may not even feel the need to buy an amp at all!

Featured Image: Pixabay License, by WolfBlur, via Pixabay