Idiot question about amps/headphones

Ted

Sorry this is probably a really basic question.

If you get an electric guitar and connect to an Amp, is there a way of just  making the output come through headphones rather than through  the Amp's speaker - so as not to cause a noise disturbance for others

simonk

You need an amp with a headphone out (specifically one which mutes the speaker out when headphones are connected).

mart

That depends on the amp. But in many cases (most?) it will happen automatically - on most amps that have a headphone socket the speaker will be muted if you plug something into that socket.

Freebird

In my experience, it's easy to play into an amp sim on a laptop if you want to keep the noise down. You can record what you are playing too 

ICBM

Ted said:

Sorry this is probably a really basic question.

If you get an electric guitar and connect to an Amp, is there a way of just  making the output come through headphones rather than through  the Amp's speaker - so as not to cause a noise disturbance for others

Not unless the amp has a headphone socket. Even if it does, it may - like most older solid-state practice amps with headphone sockets - have no 'speaker emulation' (which makes it sound like the amp's own speaker), in which case it will sound terrible.

All modern digital modelling amps I know of, and a few other non-digital ones, do have emulated headphone outputs - this is what to look for if you don't have an amp already.

This isn't an idiot question by the way - it's not obvious when you don't know that the speaker is an important part of the 'right' sound of an electric guitar amp.

ecc83

No, certainly not a 'idiot' question. The whole home recording world has come on apace since the advent of PC recording (peeps COULD have been doing it en'mass for years with hi fi cassette but few did. My son was one 30 years ago but there were a few technical challenges and I guess few had an  'Electronic Dad!").

Then, you cannot just bolt on a headphone/line out onto a valve OP stage without a load or do something clever as (cough!) did for a certain 5W amp.

Dave.

Gadget

And just to be clear, as it hasn't been explicitly stated yet, DO NOT plug your headphones into the 'speaker output' jack of your amp.