Playing Guitar With Headphones: 5 Methods To Get You Started

Practicing your electric guitar can be exhilarating, but it can quickly become frustrating when your roommate, spouse, or your cranky neighbor Mrs. Grouch asks you to hush.

There are other ways you can play your guitar without an amp, although it kind of defeats the whole idea of playing your electric guitar—blasting the sound through the amp and rocking the house—and they all have to do with headphones!

However, you can’t simply hook up your headphones directly into your guitar. With our 5 easy methods, you can play your heart out without irritating everyone around you, including Mrs. Grouch! So when you’re looking for the right headphones, make sure you’re looking at the best picks!

The Advantages of Playing Guitar With Headphones

It’s more fun to play the guitar when you can rock the house. All guitar players will agree on this. And while playing alone in the room isn’t much fun, it does feel rewarding to hear your music echo off the walls and floor.

However, people living with and near you may not feel like it. They don’t think it sounds bad or anything. It just feels too loud to them. If you don’t want to sleep on the couch tonight, you may want to use headphones when you play your guitar.

The best part about playing with headphones is that you can listen to the sound of your guitar more closely, which will help you hear subtle tones you may have missed when playing your guitar with an amplifier.

Also, playing your guitar with headphones on is a simple way to maximize your practice time. Be it day or night, you can play your guitar anytime and anywhere you want, as you never have to haul a heavy amplifier. The more time you spend on something, the better you get at it.
Lastly, if you’re familiar with effects pedals or stomp boxes, you know it’s one way to add grit and energy to your guitar tones. But, through your PC or smartphone, many guitar apps allow you to link your guitar to your headphones so you can create and record your own music with similar sound effects to a stomp box without an actual stomp box. It’s pretty great, right?

Using Your Electric Guitar With Headphones On

The following are some of the ways you can play your six strings with your headphones:

#1: Plug the Headphones Into an Amp
Here’s a way to quickly and easily play the guitar with your headphones. Plug them into an amplifier! The amp converts your guitar signal and delivers enough power for you to listen to the sound by means of your headphones.

If you connect the headphones to an amplifier, make sure you turn down the master volume before putting on the headphones. Gradually increase the volume to a level you feel most comfortable with to prevent the loud music from blaring through your ears.

#2: Using Multi-Effects Pedal
A multi-effect pedal alters your original guitar input signal to produce a range of sounds, giving you an amp-like tone while saving amp space.
Almost all modern pedals with multi-effects feature an output labeled appropriately as the “line out,” which will allow you to plug in headphones if it has amp modeling of some sort. There may also be output labeled as “phones” or “headphones” for that specific device.

#3: Connecting Your Guitar to a Mini Amp
Your regular amp can be utterly loud, and for someone who wants to practice, it may not be the best device to practice with. This is where mini amplifiers exist.

These amps are tiny that you can bring them with you anywhere. They are typically battery-operated, so you don’t have to carry cables and electrical sockets with you. In most cases, all you need to do is plug the mini amplifier into the guitar and play.

Many of these mini amps are designed with a 3.5mm output intended for speakers and headphones. It’s an excellent choice for your practice sessions mainly due to the minimal configuration it requires.

#4: Using Audio Interface
You can also try using an audio interface. It allows you to record yourself playing through your PC or smartphone, and with a good guitar amp simulator, you can make incredible guitar sounds. Now we know why these devices are quite popular!

To set it up, you can plug your guitar into the audio interface. Then connect the interface to your computer. Once it’s done, you can use your headphones to listen to the guitar sound.

#5: Connecting to Smartphone
To set the record straight, you cannot connect your guitar to your smartphone directly. A regular cable and adapter cannot be used as smartphones, including tablets, feature a headphone jack.

To make this work, an interface of some sort is needed. It’s worth noting that not all audio interfaces will work on smartphones.

The Takeaway

Due to a number of factors, playing the guitar with an amp is not always doable. Sadly, we often find ourselves in scenarios where playing with an amp is not an option.

The quickest and easiest way to keep playing without disturbing everyone around you is with headphones. Make sure your pedal or guitar amp has an output for headphones. If so, all you really have to do is simply connect the headphones!