Fender Mustang IV - How do you deal with a brief encounter?

ESBlonde

I attended a chariddee Jam on Sunday at a local RBL.

Very large selection of aged/relic musicians of some caliber. I even felt like a youngun because I'm still of working age although there were some whippersnappers in thier 40s!

Anyway the 'house' band did a short set and kindly left the backline for everyone else, I passed another guitarist going back out saying "I'll get a proper amp for us to use". When my first turn came to play I just went for the house backline only to find it was a Mustang IV with a pedal board driving it. Being totally unfamilar with the board and amp, I pulled it and went straight in, after all I know how to deal with that right.....wrong! The emulation only fakes the tones at certain settings and adding gain on the rotary does nothing to provide grit when you give it the beans from the guitar. So pretty much all the subtle nuance that you can coax from an amplifier are in an instant rendered null and void. Yes you can induce feedback, and playing dynamics will respond to a degree in terms of volume, but without any inflection bought about by a clipped transient and the peak of a note when the plectrum gets pushed in hard or that nice envelope as the note swells. So I had just clean to play with for everything. To make matter worse I'd taken my Aria PE1000 which is prabably the least charactureful guitar I have in terms of tone. The amp owner said it sounded fantastic at the back of the room but I had to fight it all the way.

So apart from learning every type of common amplifier I might encounter (stage too small to accomodate any more gear, I stood on the floor at the side for my second session) what do other players do when they encounter this sort of scenario!

JayGee

If it's just a jam then shrug my shoulders, gets on with it, and do what I can with what I've got. Important thing being that it's just a jam so everyone (except the house band presumably) is in the same boat, and, well, it's just a jam so (hopefully) nobody's taking things too seriously.

Backline supplied gigs are another matter, my pedalboard can be reconfigured in about 30 seconds to work with any reasonably bright, clear, clean amp with a reasonable amount of headroom but absent that (and fortunately it hasn't been a problem so far) I'm floundering right along with you...

DulcetJones

I only use my Mustang 1 for at home recording for this reason.  I think using the setting marked "65 Twin Reverb" is good for a clean reverb sound but otherwise I'd rather use a more conventional amp live.  I have an older Kustom combo that is nice and basic, works great with a distortion pedal and a volume pedal.

Richardj

I had a Mustang III for a while (until @erky32 blagged it from me) and they are actually very dynamic, once you have had a few minutes to get it dialled in. The models will actually respond to changes in guitar volume well. but as said it does take a bit of settling in.

p90fool

I encountered the same problem with a Line 6 rig last summer. Jam bands need an amp which responds on the fly to the guitar's controls, and I've never played a modeller which does that properly. 

It could only do too loud or too quiet, there was nothing in between because all your hard-won dynamic techniques as a musician become meaningless. You may as well just play a "guitar" patch on a synth through it. 

Sassafras

I've played through all kinds of amps. With some you just have to grin and bear it.
I have found that taking an AMT preamp to gigs at least allows me to get close to the sound I'd normally use, if the amp's really awful.

bobblehat

I Gig with my Mustang III and IMHO sounds fantastic and gets plenty of compliments. I do sympathise with the OP though as its not ideal for sharing. Controls are better and more intuitive than most modelling amps but you still need a few minutes a get accustomed to it.

EricTheWeary

I love my Mustang I but there's probably less than half the voices I find useable. 
One of the worst amps I've ever had to plug in and play was a Triple Rectifier, not because it was a bad amp but because I didn't know one end from the other. 
Sometimes you've just got to play the sound you've got, if it's a jam rather than trying to recreate something specific that seems less of a problem. And if it sounded good to someone else then it probably did. Sometimes the subtleties and dynamics you hear aren't heard by 99% of the audience anyway. Although as there are no subtleties and dynamics to my playing so I might not be best placed to say...