Journal bearings as the important components are widely used in the rotating machinery. Early fault detection and diagnosis of journal bearings have received great more attention to ensure the high efficiency and safety operations. To overcome the shortages of low sensitivity from physical and chemical properties based monitoring, vibro-acoustics monitoring is focused on this study in that it can give real-time indication of tribodynamics of the bearing. In this paper, experimental investigations were carried out to monitor the lubrication regimes of journal bearings under varying loads ranged from 0 bar to 20 bar. Depending on the vibration analysis in the time domain (RMS) and short-time Fourier transform (STFT), the main effect of loads on the lubrication regimes can be found in the low frequency response (100 Hz–1000 Hz). Based on Stribeck curves, experimental results also allows for identifying the critical load under which the lubrication regime changes from full-film to mixed lubrication and even boundary lubrication, therefore, providing critical diagnostic features for online monitoring the lubricity of journal bearings.