Can you practice guitar with headphones?

This is the recommendation because it does the one hard job — speaker simulation — properly, and then has no accessories you need to buy. BOSS publishes 10 amp types in guitar mode and three in bass mode, over 60 effects in each, and 30 user memories per mode, which is enough that you set it up once and never open the app again if you do not want to.

The published audio figures are the reason to prefer it over a generic headphone amp: 48 kHz sampling with 32-bit AD and DA conversion, a 1 M ohm input at -10 dBu nominal, and a headphone output of 30 mW + 30 mW into a 4.7 ohm output impedance with 16 ohms or greater recommended. That last figure is the one worth checking against your headphones; almost all consumer headphones are above it.

Battery is a rechargeable lithium-ion cell giving approximately 5 hours, charged over USB-C in approximately 3 hours at a published 500 mA draw, and Bluetooth covers A2DP audio for backing tracks plus MIDI over Bluetooth LE for the app. It measures 45 x 125 x 29 mm and weighs 65 g.

The cons are worth stating plainly. No headphones in the box — you supply those. No 1/4-inch line output, so it cannot feed an amp, a desk or an audio interface; what comes out is a headphone jack and nothing else. The footswitch and expression pedal that would make it usable live are wireless options sold separately, and five hours of battery means you are charging it between sessions rather than forgetting about it.

The amPlug is the original version of this idea and it is still the cheapest sensible one. VOX publishes a dual-channel design with three built-in effects and a 9-pattern rhythm function, in a plug that weighs 40 g and measures 87 x 33 x 39 mm with the plug retracted.

Battery life is the specification that beats everything else here: 10 hours on alkaline cells with FX or rhythm off, 16 hours with them on, from two AAA cells — and because they are AAA cells, you can fix a dead one in a shop. The CTIA-compliant 3.5 mm TRRS AUX jack takes a backing track in, and VOX states the same jack can send the unit's output to a phone or tablet for recording.

The limitations are the price of the price. You are buying one voicing, not a range: Boutique is a clean channel and a bright overdrive, and the AC30, UK Drive, US Silver and High Gain models are separate products, not settings. There is no DC input at all, so it cannot be powered from a pedalboard supply — AAA cells or nothing. No 1/4-inch output, no presets, no app, and no headphones in the box.

The case for this over a pure headphone amp is that it does both. Positive Grid publishes 5 W class D into one 2-inch speaker with a passive radiator, a frequency range of 110 Hz to 20 kHz, and a 1/8-inch headphone / line output alongside the 1/4-inch guitar input. So it is a desk speaker when you are allowed one and a headphone amp when you are not.

It also records. The published USB interface is 1 in x 2 out at 44.1 kHz, 16-bit, which is enough to capture an idea. 33 amp models and 43 effects with four presets stored on the unit mean it works with the app closed, and the battery is a 2500 mAh cell giving up to 8 hours at mid volume or lower with a 2 hour charge. It weighs 346 g.

Read the SPL figure before you buy it as a speaker. Positive Grid publishes 82 dB SPL at 1 m, which is a desk and a sofa, not a room with a drummer in it — and the published low-frequency limit of 110 Hz is above the low E of a guitar in standard tuning. There is no power adaptor in the box (it charges from a USB-C charger you already own), no aux input is listed, and 16-bit at 44.1 kHz is a demo-quality interface rather than a recording one.

If this is already on your board, the silent-practice problem is solved and you need buy nothing: Line 6 publishes up to six simultaneous blocks from over 300 amp, cab and effect models with IR loading, and a 24-bit / 96 kHz multi-channel USB audio interface. Put a cab block last, plug headphones into the outputs, and you have exactly the speaker simulation the rest of this page is about, at a higher resolution than any other entry here.

It is also the only entry that is a real recording interface rather than a convenience one, and it has a genuine effects loop, so your existing pedals can live inside the chain rather than in front of it.

The reason it is fourth and not first is cost and power. Line 6 publishes a requirement of 9 V DC at 3 A, supplied by the included DC-3 brick — and no standard isolated pedalboard output provides 3 A, so it needs its own wall socket. As a thing to buy purely to practice quietly it is several times the price of the Katana:GO, and nothing about its headphone output is published as a figure the way BOSS publishes the Katana:GO's.

This is the purchase people make when they want to practice quietly and reason that a 10 W tube amp must be quiet. It is not, and the published connector list explains why there is no workaround: VOX lists one normal input and one external speaker jack. That is all. No headphone output, no effects loop, no line out.

Ten watts of EL84 power is a gigging amount of volume in a small room, and the character people buy a valve amp for appears when the power section is working — which is louder still. Turning the master volume down gets you a quiet amp that sounds like a quiet amp.

This is not a criticism of the amp, which is a fine thing in a rehearsal room. It is the wrong purchase for silent practice, and the spec sheet says so before you spend the money. If you want a valve amp you can also practice through, you want one with a published headphone or speaker-emulated output and an attenuator — see Best practice amps and Attenuator vs master volume.