Fender Mustang Micro Plus – Tone Master vibes in a pocket-sized package
$129/£129, fender.com
Back in 2021 we were all doing a LOT more playing at home, and so it was no surprise that Fender’s smallest ever amp – the original Mustang Micro – was something of a hit. When I reviewed it back then, I was hugely impressed with the sounds on offer as well as the simple and intuitive user interface. There were no menus or deep-editing features to worry about – just a simple and easy-to-use set of presets, that sounded great and even offered some cool effects to add into the package. In a world where most people’s experience of a plug-in headphone amp was the good-sounding but limited Vox AmPlug range, it felt like quite a leap forward.
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That was three years ago of course, and in the intervening time things have changed quite significantly in the practice amp space. Positive Grid’s Spark series continues to dominate the home amp space with its innovative and seamless smart amp concept, while various other amps have come to challenge the Mustang’s position as the best headphone amp. Most notable amongst these is the Boss Katana Go – a very similar product to the Micro that added various interesting new features, including a much more comprehensive suite of sounds and the ability to edit it all via a companion app. It’s hard not to feel like the Micro Plus is a direct response to this, so let’s dive into the important stuff…
Stadium Lead preset on the Micro Plus. Image: Adam Gasson
How is the Fender Mustang Micro Plus different to the Mustang Micro?
The most obvious indication that the Micro Plus is here to see off any competition from the Katana Go can be found right on the front. Just like Boss’s headphone amp the Plus sports a black and white OLED display to make things easier to navigate, while also allowing you access to the new built-in tuner – a very welcome addition.
With the original Micro, the magic number was 12 – you had 12 built-in amps and 12 effects presets that paired with them. Here, the number has been increased to 25 of each, but there’s much more to it this time. In addition to selecting the presets, you now also have two buttons to select the EQ preset on the fly with 9 different preset options – from a flat response to various options to boost or reduce the lows, highs and mids. You also get a set of buttons to tweak the level of the chosen effect for each model, and the tuner button also doubles as a tap tempo. You can also save your chosen settings tweaks with a touch of the save button on the left-hand side.
While you can happily make musical hay with the whopping 70 presets that come with the Micro Plus out of the box (with 100 available in total), should you wish to get deeper, the new Fender Tone app allows you to go in and edit (or indeed completely replace) any of the existing presets with your own preference of amps and effects. The app is extremely reminiscent of the very intuitive GUI on Fender’s Tone Master Pro modeller, and you get slots for drive, modulation, delay and reverb, all of which can be active at the same time.
Headphone and charging jacks on the Micro Plus. Image: Adam Gasson
Is the Fender Mustang Micro Plus easy to use?
The basic functionality of the Micro Plus remains incredibly straightforward – as it was with the original Micro. To get playing, you simply grab a pair of wired headphones (they’re cool again, after all), plug the moveable jack into your guitar, hit the power button and you’re off.
Cycling through the presets is significantly easier now that you have a display to show you what you’re doing, and while the position of the buttons on the side mean that it’s easy to hit the wrong one at first, before long you get used to the layout and can easily do what you need to do by touch alone. Connecting the amp via Bluetooth enables you to stream your music directly from your phone, and you’ll also need to connect there for the dreaded app-based features.
I say dreaded, because if there’s one thing I’ve come to realise over the last decade or so of reviewing various types of modelling amps – guitar companies are not always great software companies, and more often than not, the oft-alluded to ‘companion app’ causes as many problems as it solves. It’s part of the reason why the Spark amps are so good and so successful – the Spark App just works.
Fender Tone App
So imagine my pleasant surprise when the beta version of the Fender Tone amp simply connected first time to the Micro Plus without any complaint, and proceeded to remain connected and functional for as long as I wanted it to.
What’s more, the app itself is a reminder that this stuff doesn’t have to be complicated. The best thing about the Tone Master Pro was its impressive and simple GUI, and it’s clearly impacted the easy usability of the Fender Tone app. The interface is clean and sharp, tweaking parameters and swapping effects is a doddle, and you can even edit the signal chain with a simple tap and drag – want your amp before your drive pedals for some reason? Fender Tone will oblige – you can put any of the four effects and one amp in any order you desire. You can also select one parameter for one of the reverb, delay and modulation effects to be editable via the ‘modify’ button on the amp, which is nice. It’s slightly odd that you can’t do this with the drive pedals or amp gain though – certainly the thing I am most likely to tweak on the fly is the dirt, so it’s a weird oversight.
All in all though, it’s an incredibly impressive and useful tool that adds a huge amount of depth and flexibility to the Mustang Micro concept – it’s also significantly more straightforward and stable than the similar app for the Katana GO. Again, with 70 different sounds set up for you out of the box, you might never want or need to touch the app if you don’t want to – but you’re missing out if you do.
Delay Level on the Micro Plus. Image: Adam Gasson
Does the Fender Mustang Micro Plus sound good?
The sound was what made the original Mustang Micro such an appealing prospect – it really was something to find out that something barely bigger than a matchbox could pump genuinely great sounding Fender-y tones through your earbuds. Invariably with any Fender modelling software, you get the sense that the Fender amps have had the most time spent on them, and it covers pretty much all the bases here – you get four tweeds, four black-panel classics, and some more modern stuff that’s of less dubious provenance – who exactly is crying out for a Fender Bassbreaker model exactly? There is some fun stuff from the recent Fender catalogue however, including the Super Sonic and a modern gem from the old Pawn Shop range, the Excelsior (but where’s Vaporizer love, eh Fender? For shame!).
The rest of the amps are classics that emulate Vox, Marshall, Orange, Mesa/Boogie et al (though notably the 5150-alike isn’t EVH-branded here) and they all sound very decent – it’s not going to have you throw your Dual Rectifier in the bin or anything, but they’re perfectly serviceable and usable.
In the same vein as the TM Pro, the effects are primarily taken from Fender’s own range of stompboxes, but there are some generic alternatives to the classics – including a Big Muff, Tube Screamer and Klon. Again, these sound really good in the context of what this is – okay these effects are not going to win prizes for their uncanny sonic fidelity with the circuits that they inspired, but again, it’s worth remembering that this thing costs $129 and can just about fit in that weird tiny little pocket in your jeans that you probably keep guitar picks in.
Does it sound better than the Katana GO? I would say yes, but my tastes tend to veer more toward Fender amps so your mileage may vary on that.
Lavender Rain preset on the Micro Plus. Image: Adam Gasson
Is the Fender Mustang Micro Plus worth buying?
Fender is keen to emphasise that the original Micro isn’t going anywhere – as a pure entry-level headphone amp, it still remains a quality proposition for under a hundred bucks, and if you just want 12 good sounds and minimal messing around, that’s your Mustang. But for an extra $30 you do get a LOT more in the Micro Plus – so much so that I’d have a hard time recommending the original when this is on the table.
And it’s not just that you get more than five times as many sounds out of the box, with the potential for even more – though that in itself is surely worth the money. The wonderfully intuitive and accessible app makes this an important product for guitar players full stop – in a world of board-hogging modelling solutions, it’s a reminder that digital amps don’t have to be big to sound great and give you a huge selection of sonic options – in fact the future might be quite the opposite. If Fender were to stick this hardware and software in a pedal with a couple of footswitches and knobs, it would be all the pedalboard amp most people would ever need – it’s that good.
Fender Mustang Micro Plus alternatives
The original Mustang Micro ($99.99/£89.99) remains a decent alternative if you really don’t want to have the added flexibility of the Plus – the sounds are good and the user experience incredibly simple. If you want a different take on pretty much this exact formula, the Boss Katana GO ($119/£120) is basically what the Plus is here to take on but it’s been discontinued – at least temporarily – due to issues with the supply of its parts. If you’re really on a budget or really don’t want more than one sound, the plug-in amp game was basically invented by Vox, and its AmPlug 3 ($49.99/£39.99) range, while limited on features compared to the competition, still sound good and are unbelievably straightforward to use.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
