I used to use my laptop as a guitar amp. I have even put together a list of guitar plugins i used back then, and I want to make this remark now because, personally, I don’t use a single one of them anymore, and I feel like recommending people guitar plugins may throw them in a very wrong direction. There’s two main reasons for this:
1. Plugin Nerds are Masochists
Guitar plugins are only suitable for re-amping. Playing through a computer is very uncomfortable due to latency. Some fast passages become simply impossible to play. Plugin nerds who defend computers and say that now (thanks to powerful computers) the latency is “almost imperceptible” are pulling the wool over your (and their own) eyes, because they themselves have simply gotten used to playing with latency. Getting used to latency is harmful and unnecessary when you can can just buy an amp or a guitar processor and actually enjoy playing.
You yell at computers for the latency and recommend a guitar processor, which is also a computer!
The difference is that it’s a computer designed specifically for guitar processing, and it’s not busy running other programs besides actual guitar processing. Guitar processors usually run an operating system intended precisely for real-time audio. On top of that, I myself have managed to make guitar latency nearly unnoticeable on a computer (and I’m sure that those who claim “unnoticeable latency” didn’t come anywhere close with their Windows setups to what I achieved after nearly turning my Artix Linux into a real-time system), but compared to a dedicated processor the result is still pathetic. And more importantly, you’ll inevitably have other plugins running on your computer, and using them all together will force you to increase the latency anyway. If you want to turn your computer into a guitar processor—go ahead, but don’t expect it to do much else then!
Besides that, just to play guitar you’ll constantly need to boot up your computer, and when you want to go jam with someone, you’ll have to haul along the computer, the guitar, the sound card, and speakers (if there aren’t any at the place), and then awkwardly hook everything up—when you could simply bring a guitar and an amp.
2. Endless Search for the “Perfect Tone” (also a form of masochism)
On the other hand, guitar plugins (especially overbloated AI plugins with myriads of tone models in repos) feed the already uncontrollable urge of the plugin nerd to hunt for the so-called “perfect tone,” which he thinks will magically turn him into a legendary guitarist (yeah bro, these $100 dream theater IRs will totally make you shred like John Petrucci, just buy them already!). In reality, the perfect tone doesn’t exist, but only those know this who, instead of wasting their time searching for it, actually learn to play the guitar and become—if not legendary—then at least really good guitarists.
That is not to say that guitar tone doesn’t matter. Of course it does. Guitar should sound good (though that also depends on the context—it’s better to say that the guitar should fit in the mix). But in most cases it already does; a bit of EQ here and there, and literally no need to spend days torturing yourself in front of the screen to just end up with the tone that is not that different from what you’ve started with in the first place. Especially if you’re just starting out on guitar, the most important thing for you is actually learning to play. And there’s plenty to learn there.
Don’t waste time on nonsense. Tone-picking won’t make you a pro and it will waste you time you could have spent actually improving.
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