The Single Coil

About a month ago, I replaced my Marshall MG15CDR amp with a new Fender Mustang I and I have to say this amp is a lot more versatile and fun to use than the Marshall.

It’s a 20-watt closed-back combo with an 8” Special Design speaker that sounds great and pumps serious volume. I use it for jamming and recording and seldom turn the Master Volume above 2 or 3 which is plenty loud for me. It contains 24 on-board presets with tones from vintage Fender clean to modern metal distortion and can be tweaked to just about everything in between. It also has 24 built-in effects including chorus, flanging, phasing, tremolo, vibratone, step filter, reverb, echo, octaver and more — 12 modulation effects and 12 delay and reverb effects in all.

Its 1/8” headphone jack lets you play loud, when you don’t want to disturb anyone or can be used as a line out to record. It also has a USB connection to your PC to use with the free Fender FUSE software which gives you on-screen parameter control, deep editing, additional effects, unlimited preset storage, and online preset swapping with the Fender FUSE community.

The USB connection can also be used for a recording input to most any DAW including the Abeton Live Lite 8 which is included. It is a Lite version which limits some of the features that comes in the full version of Ableton Live 8. Although Ableton is a nice piece of software, I prefer to use Reaper for my recording.

Overall, this amp beats the Marshall I had hands down and I continue to be surprised and pleased with the sound and performance.