Fender Mustang Micro Headphone Amp Demo and Review

Video Transcript

Note: a machine made this, so it’s not perfect, but if you’re hearing impaired and have any questions about what we said, please feel free to ask us in the comments or send us an email with the form below. 

Welcome to get offset. My name is Emily and I’m here today with the fender Mustang micro. Now there, there are a lot of products that fender calls, Mustang. They have, um, most famously the guitar. Second, most famously the bass guitar. They also have a series of amplifiers and this falls under that family.

So the Mustang micro, as you can see, is the guitar headphone amp. As you can see the picture here. It plugs directly into the input shack of your guitar. So you can plug your headphones in, uh, you can connect it to Bluetooth, play music, like fender, play lessons, or YouTube lessons, or just song you’re trying to learn along with you.

And, um, you have some effects built then. So let’s, let’s, let’s take this thing out of the box. That’s the first step, right? Do a little unboxing. Uh, Mike came, it’s a demo unit. So. It came, the box was already opened, not a big deal, just so you know, this is actually my first unboxing and here’s the unit itself, the Mustang micro all covered in plastic.

It has some instructions there. Absolutely ETQ control effects, select modify control, volume control on off pair. So obviously turn on and off and pair with your phone so you can play your music through it. While you’re playing along with whatever sound or lesson you’re going. Uh, you’re you’re, you’re using volume control to your headphones.

Uh, modify control. Each effect has different modifier that you can change. Uh, I’ll get into that in a bit affects slut, select an amp select. So there are one, two, three. Four five six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 amp models and 12 effects models that you can use with this little guy. So let’s take it out of the box here.

Show that off. I’m going to go ahead and take off the plastic. There it goes. Easy enough. Got my long, longer fingernails on that hand, slide it off. Looks pretty slick. See how it can flip around because not every, not every guitar is input. Track is the same easy enough for, uh, a right angle, like a jazz master front facing Jack, um, like that jazz master there go out like that for a Stratocaster cause like, This would be more like a right angle cable that doesn’t work on.

Every guitar straight angle cables will work on essentially every guitar. Um, if it’s actually on the side of the guitar, you could probably do either depending on whether or not it’s an electro socket. Uh, that’s not, it, it looks like it would fit and work with indie guitar. Like this is perfect for right angle.

You wouldn’t lose any, you would lose, will not lose any functionality with it like that. Um, I think this is going to be great for my jazz masters. All right. So, uh, then we have on the side there, let’s make sure that that’s in focus. I think it’s pretty in focus. All right. Sorry about that. And ETQ effects modify up and down selectors.

They’re pretty. Self-explanatory EKU is like a tone control. Um, but let’s see. What else, what else is in the box here? I can pull out that front. Fantastic, uh, owner manual@fender.com. Uh, that’s becoming more and more common. I have kind of mixed feelings about that on one hand, not everybody looks the owner manual, so, uh, there should be no reason to, to waste trees like that.

Uh, when most people are just going to look at, look it up on the website at the first couple of times, uh, we have a USB charging cable here. That looks like a USBC connection. Really, really common. So if you lose this cable, you’re not completely screwed. I like that. All right. We have the instructions here taped to the box.

You can see my beautiful bamboo tape. This is actually one of the cheaper finishes for this table. So don’t feel it’s not that fancy. Let’s take this out. Safety manual import a bunch of different languages, English. Okay.

Step one. Read these instructions. Step two. Keep these instructions steps. Step three, heat. All warnings. That sounds like the start of a scary movie follow all instructions. It’s basically just read and do the instructions and you won’t get hurt clean only with a dry cloth. Don’t use near water. Don’t use electronics near water.

Um, yeah. Don’t block any ventilation openings. I don’t think there are any boiler plate stuff. Keep it and read it. Uh, here’s the thing that you’re going to want to keep a in your wallet and your guitar case with this. Somehow this is a man, a little, a cheat sheet for all the effects. So they’re going to be different colors.

You can see that on this box here. They’ll probably not in this video as much. Um, it shows you what the amps are by what the color selection is. What the effects are by the color selection. And then each one has its different modifier, lots of reverb and delay levels, core step, the flanger depth, and one triple a speed on one, but not depth by Bravo speed though.

Not depth on one and a one has the lay time. So you have basically, it’s mostly reverbs. I think they all have some reverb in them. So had delay some, of course, some of tremolo with some have by Berardo. So you can experiment with those different sounds. This is not the kind of thing that you’re gonna be able to tweak endlessly to your desires.

But if you just wants to like play guitar on the sofa while your partner and you were watching a movie or something and you want to be present and with them, but also do your own thing. This is a really cool if you’re in a hotel room, have your guitar. Uh, just want to get some sounds in your own ears and not bother the people around you.

This is going to be really cool for that. So I am going to actually, for the whole of my demo, I’m really this visible, um, I’m going to refigure my setup just a little bit. Um, and so, because this has just like the headphone Jack. Um, I can’t plug this in to my, um, well, I can’t, I can’t plug it into my focus.

Right. Like I normally do. I’m not going to. Thankfully what my, what my, um, camera here has, it has a headphone and, uh, align in input jacket. It had phone out. So that’s how I’m going to monitor my signal. That’s how I’m gonna feed into my signal. I think it’s going to give you the, you the listener, the best, uh, indicator of what this actually sounds like.

All right. So, you know, I’m not going to be put like, pulling any weird, like. Post-production stuff, which I never do anyway, but just, I just want to explain like why and how this is going to be different than, than my regular setup. All right. All right. Cool. I’m going to come back, uh, with my fucking heart out.

I want to use, I want to use my fender American pro to a series Jazzmaster. All right, great. See you in a second. All right. Well, I am back and, um, I really wish you could see this a little bit better. Uh, first things first, this is what it sounds like when the power is off. Not really anything much of anything, but, uh, and then now it’s on

and I’m giving it a little notification on my phone that it’s connected to the Mustang micro cause I did the Bluetooth thing. And, uh, I’m not actually going to play any music through this, cause it would probably be copyright infringe, but I can confirm that it works. I just want to confirm that really quickly.

So right now, um, I don’t have any lights popping up and you can’t really see that, but uh, let me, let me unplug this really quick show you what that looks like under the screen there. So you see everything lights up like that. That’s changing and it changes color based on the amp situation. Um, the cue just kind of has a few moments there.

I see blue green, that’s a white, that’s a yellow and that’s a red, and then it kind of goes to nothing. So I’m going to stick that in the white, which I assume is sort of the middle position. Sorry. I’m kind of a little half off screen there. And it’s sort of the same situation for the modifier. Meanwhile, effects also goes into a lot more colors.

They’re always going to be hard to pick up on the screen. Uh, so I got everything set to the basic beginner colors. I will, uh, explain what each thing is.

All right. So I have that sticking up on the guitar, just like, so I have it kind of, uh, Propped up on my whammy bar, which is pretty convenient because it helps me see what is due. Everything is doing otherwise. It’s kind of loosey goosey, not a problem with that. Um, the headphones that you use are going to sort of impact what, uh, what you’re hearing.

I really recommend using, uh, earbuds or headphones that have a low. A low noise floor, which is the amount of buzzing that happens afterwards. I recommend something that has passive noise, isolation versus active noise cancellation because active noise cancellation actually creates like an equal, but opposite out of phase sound, uh, to the noise around you to cancel out that ambient noise.

It distorts tone. So you might not like as much what, you’re, what you’re hearing quite as much, uh, for that reason. So something that has a good seal, a good fit, um, that’s a good passive noise isolation. And as opposed to using something like, um, beats by Dre that has, uh, they kind of boost the base. I recommend looking for something that has a flat, uh, frequency of response, which is, um, to say more like a Hi-Fi system.

Hi, actually high quality headphones that does a better job of recreating the music you’re listening to. That’s my techie spiel for the moment let’s play with this. So right now, uh, this is the twin and compressor sound with the hall Reaver.

I will say you have a lot of volume on

like that’s barely on and it’s about as comfortable as I can get. Um, with my ears. So

um, cool. So I’m going to go, I’m going to go to the amps and then I’ll probably go back to. The twin was the compressor and then go through the effects. Um, I hope some of the IEPs have a little bit more game on tap, so I have to hit, it wants to activate the colors. Is it I’m going to go up again to get to the red there.

Nice.

So that one feels it’s got a little bit of dirt. It’s like all it’s almost not clean. Um, so you’re getting a little bit dirty there.

It’s very classic kind of sound.

very nice. Uh, next sound is a 57, uh, twin twin.

So that one’s also not quite dirty, still largely clean. Uh, let’s go to the sixties. British sound. That’s the, uh, blue, blue color. Wait, I’m actually having a little bit of trouble with the colors. Yep. That’s blue.

I think we can officially call that dirty. And I’m going to officially say, I think this sounds fun. I’m enjoying

Nice

in order from cleanness to dirtiness. Dirty dirty, IST, but last was you preempt. So I’m going to assume that’s pretty clean. Moving on to the yellow. That is 65 deluxe plus green box. I see a green box. This is a green box. I’m assuming that means tube screamer, ESC

all right. That’s cool. I like that. Next to seventies, British. That’s kind of a.

nice nineties American.

doesn’t really make sense.

bye. Next is boss breaker 15. That’s a yellow orange

next is F B E. I am old 100.

I don’t know why I did that.

even it’s wrapped around my mammy bar. I can still use the whammy bar.

Metal metal, 2000.

One more time.

all right. Next is just a city of preamp. And I expect that to be pretty crystal clean, but I will be some I’ve been surprised before. Nice.

It’d be cool. If this thing had a tuner, I don’t think it does.

second to last note gets me every time. All right, I’m going to take it back to all. That’s fine.

Let’s listen to that spring. Oh, that’s the cue.

So that is going up. So that’s increasing the trouble and your equalization equalization. And now we’re going to go down the middle again.

and that’s kind of base year, generally more mellow. Um, now we didn’t incur, I didn’t increase the amount of the river. But you can hear it. When I do a quick, like a bomb beat situation, um, increase it.

You could also decrease it. So this again is the base level.

You effectively cannot turn off the reverb. And that is good because you don’t want to, um, for, for the sort of younger players, haven’t played as long. I mean, um, you need, you need reverb or it’s going to sound very flat. It’s going to have no sense of space. You need it. Uh, but let’s go to the spring Reaver, which is based on models.

Commonly found an amps.

Okay.

increase that. Let’s just turn that up so you can hear it.

nice. All right. So you can hear the, hear that, and if it’s just decreased all the way, which we don’t really want.

Sounds a lot flatter back to back to the, the middle. I actually really liked it with a lot. Um, modulating and reverb is next. And modulation is typically just means like, Imagine the pitch going kind of in and out, like you’re doing a bet.

I I’ve been there.

cool. Next is chorus and reverb. So kind of a purple rain sound or a very 87. Okay.

Where is it?

and we can, uh, Greg give the chorus more depth there to kind of make it more obvious. So.

I love chorus. I think it gives a very good at the real kind of vibe. Like

all right. Uh, next is flanger and rebar. Planter is very similar to river, both in how it works and how it sounds.

also, I can still use my whammy bar, even though I have it, it headphone cable kind of wrapped around.

I’m running out of time. Let’s go to the tremolo and reverb. I think that’s next? Nope. Yeah. Vintage trickle and reverb. Trello is volume modulation trying to sell up and down the volume. Oh boy. What am I doing wrong?

I hit my volume,

the song

So what you can adjust here as a tremolo speed, make it faster.

very cool vintage effect. I love Trimble.

next is a vibraphone and Viber tone and reverb.

think about like a Leslie speaker sort of sound, you know,

I don’t think it’s actually, this is normal. Lebrato.

Uh, so, uh, uh, triple a is when the volume goes up and down and vibrato is when the pitch goes up and down,

you guys have more vintage sound and like a modern vibe Bronto, which is going to get kind of woozy. Next. We have a harmonic tremolo, which is just different than a regular tremolo and how it works. I don’t really want to get into the math. That’s basically it. You can look it up.

that is one where I would change the tone a little bit.

all right. Now let’s look at the slap back delay. That’s going to be fun.

That’s just a really quick delay. It’s great for country pickup.

So

very fun country and like rockabilly blue sometimes, but a slap factor, just one quick delay, right after that initial notes, you can control the volume of that delay. Essentially. Next is a tape delay. Which is more of a vintage you kind of delay

So you can hear those repeats continuing on more. You can control the volume of the delay there as well.

yep. Next is chorus delay and reverb. That’s going to be a very eighties sound.

Very cool.

last but not least another delay and reverb

that’s in stereo. So that sounds really cool with headphones. And you can control the number of repeats. So let’s max out the, Oh, that’s the late time. So you can listen to let’s do us to delay time changes.

I turned off my guitar. It’s still going. Uh, so let me give some final thoughts on this guy here.

I will eventually turn off that volume. I’m going to unplug it. Great. Uh, this is the offender Mustang micro. I have to say. I think it’s a ton of fun. I think it’s a great alternative to a official kind of amp and a box that I talked about a lot. Those are the traditional kind of amp in a box is great for like, um, recording can be super playing live.

It’s wonderful for silent practice to feed your existing effects into it. But if you’re on the go. Traveling in a hotel room on vacation to see your parents or your kids. And my mother’s case will be see your kids. You can have this with you. You can play it in the guest bedroom, the hotel room, whatever nobody’s going to bug you.

You’re not going to bug anybody and you have a litany. Of effects. I think it’s really easy to use. I know there’s some competitors out there. I know Vox has some, but it’s basically what you like. It is what it is. Like you can get one amp sound in it. Uh Nuxe in UX has one that might be more versatile.

However, um, what was I going to say? Oh my goodness gracious. Oh yeah. You have to use an app to, uh, To change everything. And that’s not, that’s not very easy. You can also, what’s going to be fun is you can plug this into your effects into the end of your effects chain. So you can have like this guy, you just plug it in to the out there, put your headphones in, and then you could have whatever, like drive section you want, you can use it with your board.

That’s honestly really fun and cool, um, charging. Like I didn’t even charge out the box. I’m going to be honest. It came charged not to play it for 30 minutes. Um, so it seems like the battery is. Fairly robust. I don’t really know what it guarantees, uh, that doesn’t seem to be on the packaging anywhere. Oh, four hours of continuous battery life.

That’s awesome. That’s really cool. Uh, 25 amps and effects. That’s a combination, uh, really easy to connect to the phone. You just, I just had to slide it into the Bluetooth. Signal there, uh, pull up on my phones. Blue. Sue’s a connected easy-peasy. All right. Well, uh, thanks for watching. Thanks for understanding.

That’s all I have to say about that great product vendors sent it to me to review. Uh, so do though that thanks so much. Um, yeah, until next time, my name is Emily goodbye.