Should I hang on to my Fender Mustang 3 or move on to something else ???

[Dr. Scottie C]

Maybe I am too dumb to realize the full potential of what the amp can do..... but I cannot find a sound in it that really excites me. Should I keep tweaking or move on?

I am just using this as a practice amp at the house.

If you vote for moving it on.....any suggestions on what would make a better home practice amp?

[Temple of Light]

If you aren't getting the tone you want from it you're either tone deaf, tone illiterate or both. It comes with a 100 presets out of the box about half of which are actually pleasing to my ear. If you aren't satisfied from the relatively limited effects capability of the amp, I would put a seperate pedal board in front of it with whatever you want to dial in your sound. This amp with a GT Series FX board, some Toneworks or some Digitech in front of it would be quite dangerous, with a series of your own pick of stompboxes and a volume + a wah pedal and you could get pretty much any kinda tone you want. The modeling and tone tweakability of this amp is really quite superior, compared to a lot of other crap I've heard, sounds like you need to spend some more time trying to figure what you are really after in terms of tone , for this amp is the rock solid foundation for hundreds of different tonal voicings. If you are trying to dial in new sounds, like something that is URGENTLY STRIKINGLY DIFFERENT, then put a GNX4, a Zoom G9.2tt, a GT100 or a GR55 or for some real fun and games, a RC300 in front of it and see what it can do. Sounds to me like you aren't even trying.

If, on the other hand, you are trying to re-create a hundred different tones from all of your favorite recordings/ artists, to use in your own set, you are going to have to do a lot more work and spend a lot more money.

Nothing wrong with the amp, you need some skill to understand what it does, how it procceses tone and how it can be effected to compliment it's modeling capability. It's very good at Classic rock and Modern rock tones on it's own, but to bring it into the mind bending and bleeding ear range of guitar tone you will need to put a few things in front of it. Also playing a great guitar through the f-ckr will help a lot too.

 

[A_Gitarman]

 

I just started playing with a band that does a pretty wide variety of stuff & needed something light and portable that would give me everything from convincing cleans, to slight breakup, as well as classic gain sounds, so I picked up a Mustang III (V2) last week.

I had virtually ZERO time to dial it in, so rather than really tweaking it, I loaded up the first 4 presets as follows:

1. tube preamp w/ volume set waaaay down (used for tuning, warmups, etc)
2. Fender Twin clean
3. Marshall - esque w/ moderate gain
4. Marshall - higher gain & boosted for solos

I also threw my DigiTech RP500 into the FX loop (mostly used it as a volume pedal) and made up a couple of quick presets for it, one to add tremolo and/ or delay and another with a volume boost, just in case I needed a little extra kick.

I played 2 gigs on Saturday with it and found that while the overall sounds were brighter than what I'm used to (Jet City JCA22 into a 2x12 cab), it was plenty loud and cut through the mix well.  Also, while it seemed bright to me on stage, I found that it sounded HUGE through the FOH (mic-ed with a Sennheiser E609).

 

That being said, I found that while the RP500 worked through the FX loop, things got mushy if I tried to use any of the presets that I normally use with my tube rig (preset volume too high maybe?). 

Since I've got a week or so until my next gig, I'm going to sit down with the Mustang and really dial it in.  I'll likely also try the RP500 in front of the amp to see if that clears up the mud. I also plan on checking to see how it performs running direct out of the XLRs on the amp rather than micing it.

[Pine Apple Slim]

A guest dude came to our little band practice/beer drinking thingy no long ag. Played a 335 tru a Mustang lll and sounded glorious. Just like a real Fender Twin to me, except no ear drums were injured.

 

 

[Steve2112]

 

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Dr. Scottie C wrote:

 

 

Maybe I am too dumb to realize the full potential of what the amp can do..... but I cannot find a sound in it that really excites me. Should I keep tweaking or move on?

 

I am just using this as a practice amp at the house.

 

If you vote for moving it on.....any suggestions on what would make a better home practice amp?

---

 

Doctor...

the Mustang III isn't the best amp ever in the whole universe.....but you should be able to find tones that inspire you to practice. 1st world problems...right?

 

Don't worry too much about HCAF approved tone. Get down and get busy with what you have. You make IT sound good...it doesn't make you sound good.

 

For a small practice amp...the Mustang sound great. If you want inspiring tones and not really practice much...get Marshall JVM 201 head and 1960 cab and crank it up in your warehouse.

 

A good guitar player can make a tin can and string sound beautiful. But....I can't make you practice.

[Emory]

Be sure when you are tweaking to get into the advanced amp control section. You can mess with SAG, bias, cab model (try a twin with some 4x12s for instance), or even no cab modeling, which is a mod in itself...