Mustang Micro Plus

[MaxPower93]

You CANNOT connect your headphones/speakers to MM/MM+ via Bluetooth, full stop.

However, your phone can connect to MM+ over bluetooth. MM+ only plays the audio from your phone but the sound only comes out from the wired-headphone jack. So you hear both your guitar signal from MM+ and music from your phone through the wired-headphone jack on MM+.

ohh. Ok. Thanks for clarifying. I was hoping to use a beautiful pair of wireless headphones my son bought me for Christmas. They are so much better than the corded ones I have. I also just hate the chord. Thanks again. You saved me money! The plain MM is just doing fine with me.

 

[Blrfl]

Mine came in today's mail. First impressions after an hour or so of playing with it? Big improvement over the first version.

Physical: The MM+ is about a quarter inch longer than the MM in the long dimension. Build quality is about the same; my MM is now three and a half years old, has done lots of travel and isn't any worse for the wear. The volume pot on the MM+ has more drag than the MM's, which keeps it from getting moved by accident. Props to Fender for fixing that.

Effects Chain: There are five slots that can be placed in any order: Amp, Stompbox, Modulation, Delay, Reverb. The amp cannot be removed or bypassed; the other effects can.

Amps: Same quality as the ones in the MM, but being adjustable and the extra effects make a lot of difference. Of those I tried, the Orange 120 turned out the be the biggest surprise. The 1950s tweeds are very good, too. Need to tinker with them some more, but I was a little underwhelmed by the blackface models. The acoustic simulator is decent but plinky. The small room reverb helps with that a bit but then there's no way to add some hall to it. I think Fender would do well to stick an acoustic IR at the end of it if there's CPU available to do it.

Stompboxes: Pretty good assortment. The Klon model doesn't hold a candle to the one in my Helix, but considering where the MM+ is in the price spectrum, it's very good. The EQ and envelope filter seem like they belong somewhere else so they could be used with the ODs. The Octobot isn't polyphonic (no surprise), but it's more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

Modulations: The usual suspects, all very serviceable.

Delays: Again, all serviceable. I'd love to see the GTX's ping-pong, Memory Man and RE-201 models brought over to this platform. Could live without the reverse delay because there's not much else in the arsenal to make weird sounds.

Reverbs: All decent. The spring reverb sounds good but comes up short on the sproingy quality I like.

Other Stuff: The tuner works well. Global EQ is a nice touch and helped match the output to what it was plugged into (my audio interface used as a headphone amp in this case). The MM would have been better with that rather than the amp EQ setting it had. The MM+ comes up a little short on oomph when plugged into a high-impedance line input and the volume has to be cranked fully up. I'll try it direct with headphones tomorrow.

The App: So far, the app is as good as I thought it would be. It's a different model than the way Mightier Amp does things, and I could make the case for either. Some of the type is a little small for my eyes and might do better on a tablet. I haven't made a Fender account yet and haven't tried any of the features that require it. BIG GRIPE: Not being able to export/import individual patches to/from local storage or do backups/restores without using the cloud is disappointing. Please do something about that. Fender would do well to take a page from Mightier Amp's book and take input from HID devices as triggers for changing presets, toggling effects on or off and activating the tuner. I've found my Boss FS-1-WL good for that with Mightier Amp. MIDI directly to the USB-C port would be even cooler.

Comparative Sound Quality: Somebody asked about this vs. the Mighty Plug Pro. So far, it's a toss-up. The British amps on the MM+ are very good for this price bracket and NUX's Twin and Tweed models stand up a little better. I may change my opinion on that after more time with the MM+. The MM+ gets a slight edge in having more tools available to sculpt patches into what I want.

Conclusion: A welcome addition to the headphone amp and sub-$200 modeler categories and a worthy successor to the MM. (Edit: ...but marred by app and firmware problems. Those will be outlined in detail in a future post.)

 

[Blrfl]

More gripes: The Android app has problems. I'm going to drop Fender a line about it and see what they have to say.

 

[Blrfl]

Just got to opening a case with Fender Support, but...

After a bunch more experimentation, the problems I'm having look like the result of flaky Bluetooth communication between the MM+ and Tone. I tried Tone on other devices I had around the house and found that Bluetooth 5.x devices work fine and Bluetooth 4.x devices (which includes the phone I was using yesterday) exhibit the flaky behavior. The MM+ manual says it's 5.1 and the Bluetooth standard says it should interoperate with 4.x. I passed all of this information on to Fender.

That aside, I've spent some more time with the MM+ using a device that works and still think Fender has a good product here. It's probably not going to replace my MPP, but it may end up in the bag alongside it.

 

[Senor Blues]

There is a new iOS Fender Tone app today, its better.

 

[Blrfl]

There is a new iOS Fender Tone app today, its better.

Same for Android. The release notes say "improved Bluetooth scanning and connection stability." Scanning, connecting and small transfers (changing patches, editing the effects, etc.) seem more-stable. Still not good with BT audio being streamed in and it still can't do a backup or restore.

Fender wrote back, thanked me for the detailed information and said they'd pass it on to the developers.

 

[richey88]

Guitar experiments by Richey Lather and the Conditioners

Guitar experiments - Mustang Micro + into GarageBand minimal processing #MustangMicroPlus

soundclick.com

Tried this…..

 

[quadtele]

I remember someone posted the fixed preset parameters of the old Mustang Micro on some other thread. If that info is still available, the settings could be matched and see how they compare but maybe that's not needed.

Fender asked me to remove it. In retrospect the timing suggests this might have been around the time time they started development on the Plus. If you look at the executable (app) with a tool that displays text in binary file, you can extract it yourself.

Converting presets from the OG to the Plus isn't straight forward.

 

[Andy4731]

Random thought.

Has anyone run the MM+ through an FRFR?

Just wondering how it sounds.

 

[northernguitar]

Random thought.

Has anyone run the MM+ through an FRFR?

Just wondering how it sounds.

Nope. But for fun, and to see if it would work, I had a short jam with the first MM through our PA. Sounded good in the mix.

 

[Coxon2323]

I have a katana go and original mustang micro, don’t think I need one of these.

 

[richey88]

Another thing all MM+:

Sensitive working P90 more by Richey Lather and the Conditioners

Barn burin' rave up, get down, ass shakin' fun! #FireflyFFDC #MustangMicro

soundclick.com

 

[quadtele]

Has anyone run the MM+ through an FRFR?

No (sold the MM+), but I did try the Katana:Go through a Fender FR-12 last week. Didn't get much time with it. I used my goto preset without any tweaking, played an intro alone and then the band joined in. It sounded great.

 

[Andy4731]

No (sold the MM+), but I did try the Katana:Go through a Fender FR-12 last week. Didn't get much time with it. I used my goto preset without any tweaking, played an intro alone and then the band joined in. It sounded great.

Just curious, why did you decide to sell off the MM+?

 

[Coxon2323]

Might be an Xmas present.

 

[quadtele]

Just curious, why did you decide to sell off the MM+?

There were three issues for me:
- There was a noise in the low end which I couldn't dial out.
- It didn't drive my Senn HD-6xx headphones very well. Sort of worked, but it was always a compromise and led to finicky gain staging
- If I plug in an iPad via USB (for Loopy Pro), I have to provide a power source or USB won't connect.

It has a lot of promise, and I hope Fender continues to improve. The Katana:Go sounds great and doesn't have the above issues.

 

[vlamopican]

Spark go sounds so-so on cleans, mid gain is ok. high gain is the typical awful digital mud. Latency was 1200ms yes, 1.2 s, with Ableton. Firmware was updated, I get around 10ms easily with anything else. I didn't even find worth trying with other saw. I returned. Speaker was farty af. Look fancy and good idea, but it's of no use for me.

I tried nux mighty plug, it was ok, fun for a day or two then boring. App require tweaking some autorizations on my - recent - phone, erratic to sync. and I don't like using app. My understanding is nux mostly rely on ir, which is kind of cool and limited at same time, so the low latency certainly. Sounded ok for mid/high gain but clean sounded bad. It was so-so, had a mixed feeling.

I'll order mustang micro plus, 6.2 ms latency is perfectly ok, I won't stack plugins. Clean sounds, at least from those Yt reviewers, are awesome. High gain still sounds bad to me but that's ok. Maybe stacking good ir in the mix later, that usually do the trick to de-mud. Also seems the simpliest. It can sound great without having to spend countless time In app. Expensive for what it is but if the cleans sounds as good as I heard and usb implementation good enough, that's great.

Katana go not my thing. Said on back order on some shops.
I have a boss gigcaster, i don't like the sims, even their more recent dynamic multi-ir sims. Boss sims very powerful and reliable, many fans. I heard it has trrs mic input also.

 

[TokyoPortrait]

Hi.

mustang micro plus...It can sound great without having to spend countless time In app. Expensive for what it is but if the cleans sounds as good as I heard...

I messed around with one the other day at the Fender Flagship store. Probably for about a half hour or more.

I thought the app was great. Simple to get stuff that sounded good.

And yeah, I thought the cleans were really nice. And the lighter end of the overdriven spectrum, that was good too. That's sort of the range I'm interested in.

I'm not a heavy gain / distortion kinda person, so even if it does sound good at that stuff, I'd probably still think it sounded bad. Or, at the very least, I wouldn't know.

But, I don't really have much to compare this type of device with. Faint memory of the older model when I tried it - the 'plus' I feel wowed me more, when I think back to my reaction with the first model (as I remember that more than the actual sounds).

I'm tempted to get one. I don't really need one, but on occasion it might be useful (like now at 12:30 am when I'm up and wide awake). We'll see.

Pax/
Dean

 

[RodeoTex]

Sorry if it's already been answered here or elsewhere, but is it OK to short the stereo output by plugging it into a mono amp?

 

[Blrfl]

Sorry if it's already been answered here or elsewhere, but is it OK to short the stereo output by plugging it into a mono amp?

You'd be presenting a dead short to one channel of the amplifier in the MM. It can probably handle that in small doses but isn't a good idea in the long term.

I'd be quite surprised if somebody doesn't make a summing cable with resistors built in to keep the channels from back-feeding each other.