Mic or mic socket???

Now I really suck at recording and mixing and sh*t like that. I normally plug my amp straight into my laptops mic plug. Just wondering if it would be better if I used an external mic in front of the amp?

Try it dude,
I imagine you are using the headphones out on your amp. Although the two sockets work at different impedances you should be able to hear something.

AS for recording with an external mic, well the net end result will depend on many things like the type of mic / preamp you use, as well as how you use it.

It probably wont sound much better and may sound much worse !

This is one if the reasons Pods were developed, they are easy to use and sound fine for most applications.

Yeah I am using the headphone socket on my amp. So the sound I hear while playing comes through my laptop, so I have to turn the volume up quite high to hear the amp, which is annoying cos I then have to reduce the volume of the recording on my software.

That’s OK man, you want to aim to get your signal as hot as possible as fast as possible and having a good signal to start with is half the battle !