Making your acoustic guitar quieter means you can play it at home, at the park, or anywhere you want without disturbing other people. It’s also an excellent idea if you have neighbors who complain about loud sounds or roommates who don’t want to hear you play the guitar late into the night.
To make an acoustic guitar quieter, put a shirt in the soundhole, choose lighter strings, and stick to fingerpicking. You can also get a feedback dampener or an acoustic silencer to quickly reduce your acoustic guitar’s volume. Thinner picks and lighter strings will slightly lower the sound, too.
In this article, we’ll show you how you can make your acoustic guitar quieter with high-quality products and at-home modifications. We’ll also mention playstyles that are better for quiet guitar playing.
Related: how to make any acoustic guitar louder and how to make an acoustic guitar sound better.
Put a Shirt in the Sound Hole
According to Guitar Gear Finder, stuffing a guitar’s sound hole with a shirt is one of the most well-known ways to reduce the sounds. Large guitar bodies resonate sound much more, so stuffing a shirt into the space will reduce the area for the vibrations to resonate. When there’s less room for the sound to sustain, there’s less overall volume.
Try these suggestions:
- Roll up several shirts and place them in the sound hole for maximum effect. The more shirts you have in the guitar, the better. If you don’t want any sound coming from your guitar, you’ll have to clip the strings to the base of the fretboard. However, this method will reduce a customizable amount of volume.
- Toss a few socks or one shirt into the sound hole to slightly dampen the sound. If you don’t want to completely dampen the noise, you could stick to a few pieces of small clothing or small hand towels. They’ll reduce some of the sound waves, making your guitar sound slightly more muffled than usual.
- Keep the clothes and other soft items near the edges of the guitar rather than right under the strings. Most of the sound bounces off of the outer walls of the guitar’s body. If the walls are covered by clothes, they’ll reduce the vibrations and minimize the sound hole’s volume output.
- Remove the clothes from the guitar if you want to record your instrument through the pickup. While this method is great for playing without a plug-in recording setup, it’ll muffle and distort the sound when it’s plugged into something. For example, it’s not too useful if you have an audio interface.
- Make sure the shirt doesn’t contact the strings from underneath. If the clothes or towels in the sound hole touch the strings, the string won’t make any sounds. If they do make noises, they might buzz or hum. Compress the items under the sound hole, then fluff everything around the edges.
Get Lighter Strings
Lighter strings are much thinner than heavy strings. They’re the best choice for people who have trouble fretting their favorite chords, but they’re also an excellent option for fingerpicking. If you want to produce less noise when playing the acoustic guitar, we suggest looking for a lower gauge for every string.
Here’s a list of reasons lighter strings make your guitar quieter:
- They carry fewer vibrations. As we’ve mentioned above, guitar sounds are primarily based on vibrations. If you reduce the string’s gauge, you’ll lower the vibrations, thus making the guitar quite a bit quieter. It also means the vibrations don’t send as much pressure or tension through the sound hole.
- Lighter strings don’t sustain the sound as long as heavier strings. Thick strings have more surface area to resonate. When the strings resonate longer, they produce louder sounds that stick around for a few more seconds. Choose thin, lightweight strings if you want to reduce the sustained sound output.
- Thinner strings can bend easier, so you won’t have to add too much pressure (which reduces the noise output). Bending the strings while strumming or fingerpicking increases the pitch and alters the vibrations. When the strings are thin, they move much easier and don’t increase the vibrations at all.
- You don’t have to strum as hard when you have light strings on your acoustic guitar. The harder you strum, the more vibrations happen in the guitar. When you can strum lighter due to the lighter strings, you naturally reduce the vibrations. Your guitar will be much quieter.
Install a Feedback Dampener
Feedback dampeners connect to your guitar’s soundhole. Since the vibrations and noise come out of the sound hole, you can instantly quiet the instrument with various dampers. Find the right size for your acoustic guitar, then choose the thickness and density. Thicker, denser materials dampen the sound much more.
The D’Addario Planet Waves Feedback Dampener is designed to fit most acoustic guitars. The thick material prevents too many sounds and vibrations from coming through the soundhole. However, you’ll still be able to hear enough to practice your favorite chords and strumming patterns.
Fingerpick Instead of Strumming
Fingerpicking is often seen as a bit more challenging than strumming. However, it’s much quieter because there’s less pressure and fewer vibrations. You can practice your favorite melodies and combine fingerpicking with hammer-ons, bends, and pull-offs. Some of the best acoustic guitar solos use fingerpicking, so why not give it a shot?
You can mix fingerpicking with thumb strumming if you don’t want to be too loud. Speaking of which, strumming with your fingers is always quieter than using a pick.
Try an Acoustic Silencer
Acoustic silencers are soft pads that gently touch each of the strings. They often sit near the saddle, providing strong sound dampening. The best part about using acoustic silencers is that they won’t slide around, scuff your guitar, or ruin your chords. You’ll be able to hear the strings, but your roommates and neighbors won’t have to.
The Dilwe Guitar Mute Silencer is a universal acoustic silencer that drastically lowers your guitar’s sound output. While you won’t be able to hear as much intonation as the aforementioned feedback dampener, you can still get a solid practice session out of it. Fit it to the base of the strings and strum as hard as you want to.
Mute the Strings With Your Palm
Muting your guitar strings will make them close to silent. However, you’ll still be able to hear minor key changes, which makes this technique a great choice for beginners. If you want to play your guitar at night or in a quiet place, it’s an excellent idea to master the art of palm muting.
Soundproof Panda shows palm muting can be done by putting your strumming hand’s pinky on the strings.
However, you should remember these palm muting tips:
- Never lift the far end of your palm (or your pinky) off of the base of the strings. The constant pressure is what prevents the guitar from making too much noise. The second you pull the edge of your palm off the strings, it’ll be just as loud as it usually is. It