Let me start off by saying that I am not a gearhead. I’ve always taken a fairly organic approach to playing guitar, deciding on which gear to buy, and on practicing. To me, that means finding the best amp and guitar possible that I can afford and then maybe adding a delay pedal or pick-up booster in my pedal board chain. Simplicity. This is all I’ve ever used to practice or to play a gig.
Because I lived in apartments for most of my guitar-playing life before gear like this was invented or at least mass-produced, I chose to either write and practice on an acoustic guitar or go to the old band rehearsal space, which wasn’t always affordable, convenient, or ideal. I have also been known to brush off new gear with the usual dismissals of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” or the specifically 21st-century mantra, “I’m too busy and overwhelmed, and I don’t have time!” I will admit that I was surprised and skeptical, to say the least when I was asked to review the Fender Mustang Micro Plus. However, this mighty little personal guitar amp modeler pleasantly surprised me. Yes, ME! That’s really saying something. Let me dive into it.
First off, the Mustang Micro Plus is so unbelievably easy to use. I literally plugged my cheap wired headphones into the mini headphone jack, plugged the module into my guitar jack, turned it on, and immediately had an impressive tone. I should also admit here and now that I didn’t have any directions, and I probably wouldn’t have read them anyway. (Editor’s Note: My bad. Unfortunately, they were thrown out when unboxing.) So, I was relieved and intrigued.
I first tried out the built-in tuner. It was accurate, easy to read, and simple to use. The,n the real fun began when I started scrolling through the variety of 70 customizable factory presets. These include all the major food groups of amp varieties, including Twin, Deluxe, or Champ, Marshall, Vox, Hi Watt, Orange Amps, metal amps similar to EVH amps, as well as 25 effects onboard, all of which you can edit and save to quickly pull them up again. I immediately played around with a Purple Rain-type tone cleverly called Lavender Rain (must be a copyright thing), a Voodoo Child Hendrix tone, a Derek tone for slide (mucho sustain), and some other cool sounds including surf, rockabilly, blues, country twang, Brit pop, spacey, trippy, groovy, fat lead tones, Jazz tones, and the always desirable super big arena rock tones. There’s even an acoustic guitar simulator, though that may have been the least satisfying of all the presets that I paired with my Strat, even after adjusting the EQ. I will say that it did make my Hamer Duotone acoustic pick-up sound better. You can change the EQ on each presetting by rolling off high or low end, adding more or less reverb or distortion, for example. In addition to that, you can adjust the tremolo and delay speed by either adjusting with the tap tempo button or the modify button.
If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for (which reminds me, yes, there are U2-sounding presets), and you want to create a tone that pleases your ears, you can use the accompanying app to get into the signal chain and tweak it til you’re content. To do this, just plug a stereo break-out cable straight into your audio interface, and you can go through and adjust all the nuances of the amps, effects, and EQ options to get them exactly where you want them. In this case, you would be using your studio speakers instead of headphones, which may or may not defeat your purpose of wanting a personal “silent” guitar amp, but it is a cool option.
Want some more great reasons to purchase this gadget? You can pair it with a mobile device or computer using the built-in Bluetooth and play along with your favorite songs or videos in real-time. Another is that you can use it in your apartment, van, or hotel room any time of day or night without disturbing a soul. Another is that it holds four hours of battery charge. That’s long enough to fully get your jam on. Another is that it puts the joy back into playing guitar. I know that sounds far-fetched and ridiculous, but as an industry veteran with 17 albums, countless gigs, and hundreds of thousands of miles on too many vans, making music can sometimes feel more like a J-O-B than an adventure. We know it’s both, and though I have immense gratitude to get to do it, I sometimes forget why I picked up a guitar in the first place. This little tool reminded me of just that.
The only cons I can come up with is that it would be cool if it had even more effects options like a plate reverb, but what it does have sounds pretty darn good. Let’s face it — this device isn’t made or used to capture your ultimate dream tone. The most annoying thing is that when it’s plugged into a guitar that has a jack on the side, like a Les Paul, Hamer, or acoustic guitar, the unbalanced weight of it causes it to swivel around, making it difficult to see, but it’s not like you’ll be using it on a gig, so it isn’t really a deal breaker. One more thing some of you may not like is that you have to use wired headphones with a 1/8” mini plug, but you still have a pair in a drawer somewhere, don’t you?
All in all, it was a lot of fun to just plug in a little device that I could easily fit in my pocket, that weighed next to nothing, and play songs in the style of any number of familiar artists who have and or had an immediately recognizable tone. I’m pretty sure at no other time in my life have I ever sounded remotely close to Eddie Van Halen or even thought I wanted to, but for an hour or so, I felt that same excitement and unbridled joy I remember getting back when I was first learning how to use an amp and an electric guitar. For a brief time, I felt like a kid again, and I’m convinced that type of escape in these heady days of 2025 is well worth a mere $129.