Fender Mustang Micro

[marnold]

Lemme just blow some dust off of this sub-forum...

I just bought myself a Fender Mustang Micro (https://shop.fender.com/en-US/guitar-amplifiers/headphone-amplifiers/mustang-micro/2311300000.html) amph! I've been watching a lot of videos about it. It seemed like it would help me in several ways. In the house I'm living in now, they have three-prong plugs but didn't run a discreet ground to all of them. I'm going to get that taken care of at least in my office this summer. Besides being dangerous with my tube amphs, it also adds a bunch of unwanted noise. Also, my office is now on the main floor, adjacent to the living room and bedrooms. Can't crank it up mindlessly like I could before when I was in the basement.

This seemed like it'd be a good way for me to practice silently and also enable me to record easily. I also like the fact that it is somewhat limited in options so you don't die of paralysis by analysis. For someone who is a computer geek like myself, you'd think I'd like all kinds of options but I really prefer simplicity.

I'll give you my impressions of it as soon as the UPS truck shows up!

[marnold]

I got it, let it warm up (it's surprisingly cold for the end of April) and gave it a quick run-through on both my Jackson and my Fender. I plugged into my Sony Playstation Gold headset. It seemed to play most nicely with the Fender. Not a real shocker there. On the Jackson it sounds a bit indistinct. Having said that, I didn't futz with the EQ settings and I had hall reverb on the whole time which will cause some of that.

My Tele sounded exactly as I thought it should. The Vintage Noiseless pickups sounded even a bit more true vintage through it. All of the effects are nice. The 2290 Delay has a stereo panning effect which is really cool. I think I like the '57 Twin amph setting the best with it. I'm definitely going to have to try it out more. There's a lot to explore! I also want to try it out with different headphones. My Sonys are relatively flat but also a little dull.

I didn't try recording or streaming a backing track via Bluetooth, but that's coming. So far I really like it with my Fender but my Jackson needs some work. We'll see what a little tinkering can do.

[marnold]

I did try streaming a backing track on my phone. The first one YouTube found was our very own Quist's blues in A! I reminded myself of how terrible I am at improvising, but the feature works well.

Also, I found out why it only took two days instead of the 5-8 they told me. Apparently if a Guitar Center nearby has it, it ships from there instead of from Musician's Friend's warehouses, so this came from down the road a half hour.

[marnold]

Tried it with my bass last night, both on the studio preamp setting and some of the amph settings. Works great!

So the scorecard so far is that it works extraordinarily well on clean amph settings and with my bass. To me, the heavy gain tones leave something to be desired. I'm going to try recording with it and see if how it sounds that way. The issue might be with my headphones, but I don't have anything to compare them with right now.

[marnold]

I managed to find a "sweet spot" for my Jackson. I need to set the EQ to its brightest (the EQ changes can best be described as "subtle") and put on tape delay and reverb while lowering the delay level one notch. The Metal 2000 amph is supposed to be a 5150 model and you can get some EVH tones out of it. I think for George Lynch stuff I prefer the BassBreaker 15 model surprisingly while rolling off the volume on my guitar a bit. I'd like to try the '70s British with my DVM overdrive in front of it. That could be really cool.

The distortion tones are cool to practice with, but they can't hold a candle to my Jet City as far as I'm concerned.

[Zip]

Jet City pedal or amph?

Reason I ask, I've got a Jet City head and cab around here somewhere. Haven't played through it in years....I may need to dig it out and fire it up.

[marnold]

Amph! JCA22H Twenty watter, two channel, effects loop. I replaced all the tubes with JJs which was a good improvement since the stock Chinese tubes were noisy and somewhat fizzy.

[Zip]

Got the same one, swapped in the same tubes. Did BitMo's Suffrajet mod, w/2 extra switches in the front panel. Highly recommend doing it.

[sunvalleylaw]

Congrats on the new amph!


(Cracks me up that all these years later, we still call them “amphs!”

[marnold]

Congrats on the new amph!


(Cracks me up that all these years later, we still call them “amphs!”

In case anyone missed it the first time, here is the original "amph" thread (http://www.thefret.net/showthread.php/403-quot-With-this-amph-I-get-no-screaming-solos-quot) from a mere 15 years ago!

[stingx]

Congrats on the new toy, Rev. I have been eyeing some new toys myself in Sam Ash and I feel a serious buy coming because it gets harder to leave empty-handed each time I go.