Moving Into an Apartment With Thin Walls — Need Advice for Playing Guitar Without Driving My Neighbors Crazy
So I’m moving to Montreal in about 2 months and the place I’m moving into apparently has pretty thin walls. I play guitar a lot and record pretty often, so I’m trying to figure out the best long-term setup without completely sacrificing good tone.
Right now I mainly mic up my Fender “Twin Amp” (not a Twin Reverb). It’s a 100 watt monster and even with the 1/4 power switch on all the time it is STILL insanely loud. I absolutely love the amp, but it’s definitely not apartment friendly. I also have a Fender Super Champ (my first amp) which honestly sounds really nice mic’d up too, plus a Boss Katana.
I’ve been researching solutions and I wanted to hear what you guys think.
My first idea was to sell all my current amps (Twin Amp, Super Champ, Katana) and put that money toward one really solid smaller Fender amp that would work better in an apartment. I was thinking maybe a Princeton Reverb or Deluxe Reverb used off Facebook Marketplace. Part of the reason is I’d still have a proper amp for jamming with friends, but it would be WAY easier to record/mic up than the Twin. Also no crazy fan noise.
Then over time I’d save up for a Quad Cortex. The idea there is long term flexibility: use the Fender amp when I want real amp feel and volume, but also have the option to plug in silently and basically access any amp sound I want for recording/practice. I’ve heard really good things about the Quad Cortex for both recording and running into amps live.
My second idea was keeping the Twin Amp and maybe pulling some tubes out of it. I saw some people on forums/Reverb talking about reducing volume and fan noise that way. Then I’d sell the other amps and save directly for the Quad Cortex instead.
I’m also open to totally different solutions. I even saw someone using a Roland SP-404MKII in a guitar setup and it looked pretty cool.
For context: I’m not really a huge fan of purely DI guitar playing. I still like having an actual amp in the room and I’d want something I can still use for jams with friends. But I also don’t want to be “that guy” in the apartment building.
What would you guys do in my situation?