Fender Mustang Micro Plus review: Simple and great-sounding

Arguably the biggest points of friction associated with learning an instrument are money and space. Any gear addict knows that being a musician can be an expensive venture, and if you’re a student or kid trying to convince your parents to buy gear for you, forget about buying the best. But over the past few years, new gadgets and technologies have lowered the barrier to entry. Such is the case with the new Fender Mustang Micro Plus.

The Mustang Micro Plus can’t necessarily replace an amp over the long run, but it can serve as a practice amp replacement to help get you started. And, it solves the money and time dilemmas — it costs $130, and fits in your pocket.

But it also has to go up against the even cheaper original Mustang Micro. Is it worth the additional cash?

Fender Mustang Micro plus review

Fender Mustang Micro plus

The Fender Mustang Micro Plus is a great way to get more versatile tone in your headphone setup, and its sounds are quality enough to make a case as an inexpensive recording setup for home studios.

Design

9

Features

9

Sound

9

Value

9.5

Pros

Super portable

Great-sounding

App works well

Relatively inexpensive

Cons

Slightly cheap build

9.1

BUY FROM

Amazon

Reverb

Fender Mustang Micro Plus design

The Fender Mustang Micro Plus is small and rectangular, featuring a guitar jack that can swivel to allow for perfect placement. It offers a range of controls around its frame, allowing you to easily set it up when you’re using it.

Notably, on one side can be found the on/off switch, which also lets you set up Bluetooth. There’s also a Save button that you can use to save presets. On the other side, however, is where most of the controls are found. Here, you’ll be able to cycle through presets, change EQ, and modify parameters of different presets, as shown on the screen. There’s also a button that you can tap to set tempos for delay effects, or hold down to access the built-in tuner. On the end of the device, there is a headphone jack and a USB-C port for charging, or for outputting audio.

The front of the unit is where most of the magic happens. Here you’ll find a large knob that lets you control the overall volume to your headphones. There’s also a small chromatic display that shows information like presets, parameters, and so on.

In the box, apart from the Mustang Micro Plus itself, you’ll get a USB-A to USB-C cable that you can use charge the device. Notably missing is a case, which Fender sells separately. I think it should have included one in the box.

In general, the Mustang Micro Plus is well-designed. It doesn’t have the strongest build ever, as it’s largely made from plastic, but it should withstand most day-to-day use relatively easily.

Fender Mustang Micro Plus features

The main way in which the Mustang Micro Plus is better than its predecessor is in the number of sounds and presets it has to offer. The device steps things up, offering 25 amp and 25 effects simulations. Not only that, there are 100 preset slots, allowing you to easily save your preferred sound profiles as you go.

The variety of sounds is truly impressive, however it can be a little trick controlling them through the device itself. The device is designed to be used with the app, and in general, the app isn’t optional; it’s necessary. That’s not a bad thing. Most users will be fine using an app, and it helps give the device a more intuitive interface while keeping costs low, but it’s still important to note.

Fender Mustang Micro Plus app

The app is easy to use and well-designed, allowing you to clearly see the layout of a preset’s chain, adding stomp boxes, amps, and so on. It’s very full-featured, and through the app, you can easily tweak the effects and toggles simply by swiping up and down.

Fender doesn’t just have simulations of its own effects either; it has simulations of others as well. For example, it has a Big Muff emulator called Big Fuzz. I appreciate that the company isn’t just sticking to its own products.

There are other options in the app as well. You can set up things like USB gain level in the app, allowing you to better set levels for when you might be recording, and you can set a global EQ for the Mustang Micro Plus.

To be clear, there are some limitations to how you can customize sound. You can only add one effect or amp simulator for each “slot,” so you can have one drive pedal (called “stomp” in the app), one modulation effect, one amp, one delay, and one reverb. You can’t add extra slots to have multiple of a single type of effect, and there are no slots for compression or EQ, though you can separately add a global EQ to the output that will apply to all of the chains you use.

Perhaps the only other issue with the app is that it can only be used horizontally, but frankly, I can’t imagine wanting to use it vertically anyway. Still, it would have been nice if that were an option.

Fender Mustang Micro Plus sound

The Mustang Micro Plus offers a range of great-sounding simulations, and it’s packed with versatility. I was actually really impressed with the overall audio quality on offer by this tiny little device. Between the various different pedals and the different amps, there’s a lot to play with, and everything sounds clean and relatively realistic both through speakers and through a pair of headphones.

The reverbs and delays on offer help give your tone plenty of space without sounding overly digital or processed. I was able to add plenty of processing to the signal without it struggling to keep up.

At times, at loud volumes, the device did add some noise to the mix, but it was barely noticeable, and backing off on the volume a little essentially eliminated this issue. And this certainly wasn’t unexpected, especially depending on the kinds of processing that you add to the mix.

Generally, you’ll find that there’s a lot to play with in the Mustang Micro Plus, and you should be able to get a reasonable approximation of any sound that you’re looking for.

Verdict

The Fender Mustang Micro Plus is an awesome little practice device. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to amp up their tone with a portable and inexpensive product, and it makes a case for itself as a versatile simulator for recording as well. It’s easily worth the upgrade from the standard Mustang Micro, too.

FAQ

Does the Fender Mustang Micro Plus have distortion?

Yes, the Fender Mustang Micro Plus has distortion. It offers access to a range of different distortion pedal simulations, as well as distortion from amplifier simulations.

Can you play the Fender Mustang Micro Plus through a speaker?

Yes, the Fender Mustang Micro Plus has a headphone jack output, but there’s nothing stopping you from connecting that 3.5mm output to a speaker.

Does the Fender Mustang Micro Plus have a tuner?

Yes, the Fender Mustang Micro Plus has a built-in tuner. All you have to do to access that tuner is hold down the tap button, which will activate the tuner, allowing you to keep your guitar perfectly tuned.