If you want to enhance your guitar playing skills and take your sound to the next level, you need to learn how to use guitar amplifiers, commonly called amps, for your benefit. Guitar amps are your best friends and they can help you learn quicker, as well as ensure you get the most out of your guitar.

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Here’s a guide to help you find the right amp settings, if you’ve just started playing the guitar.

How Do Amps Work?

First, you should understand how guitar amps work in order to use them to your advantage. Even though there are now multitudes of different amps, the basic principles behind it have remained the same. The key steps for creating the sound include the below.

Input and pre-amplification

The pickup of your electric guitar will convert the sound your strings make into electric signals, which in turn are fed to the amplifier. As your amp receives the signal, the amp helps to strengthen the sound to a more usable level.

Tonal modulation

When the electric signals are fed to the amp, there is also a process of tonal modulation going on to make the sound pleasant. You can do tonal modulation with pedals as well, but for a beginner an amp is enough to do this.

Final amplification and output

Finally, as the above happens in the amplifier, there are vacuum tubes or digital processors in the amp, which help to create a number of copies of the signals. Eventually, these will create the final sound that comes out of your speakers.

The Best Amp for Beginners

Before we look at the different settings you can use, it is important that you get the right amp for your needs. Of course, finding the right amp depends on what your aim will be with learning to play the guitar. If you want to play in a band, then you might want to go with a more professional amp, but if you are only learning to play the guitar for fun, you don’t need the biggest and the highest quality amp.

You can check out the Dolphin Music’s guide to amps for suggestions.

Finding the Right Amp Settings

Learning to use the amp correctly will take some time, but just like with learning to play the guitar – the more you practice, the better you’ll become. So, don’t be afraid to try different things and find the settings that make a sound you love.

As you are beginning, you should start with the so-called flat settings. In most amps, the flat setting is when the tone controls are at a 12 o’clock position. For the volume and drive/gain settings, the position is usually at a 6 o’clock position.

You can check what sort of sound your guitar creates with flat settings. Once you’ve learned the flat position, you can start messing with the amp settings and create different type of sounds. Turn the controls (‘lows, mids and highs’) to different positions one at a time, so you can understand the kind of effect it has on the sound.

If you want to make a more heavy metal type of sound with your guitar, you want to turn your pre-gain settings high and have the low and mid settings turned up, with the mids kept relatively low.

For a jazzier sound, you need to turn the lows and mids settings higher and have the highs turned down.

The above tips will help you get started with your guitar playing in no time. The main thing is to keep trying different things and see what other guitarists are doing as well. Check with your guitar tutor to see what settings they recommend and keep practicing!