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Post subject: How to use Mustang II with stomp boxes, tube preamps safely?
Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 8:00 am
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Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 7:17 am
Posts: 2
First of all, BIG thank you Fender for Mustang. The sound of this amp is amazing, and very versatile.

For the first few months I didn't even switched models, not to mention FUSE, kept playing just one preset, occasionally tweaking gain on the amp or rolling off the tone on my guitar :) !

...
Right now I'm starting to experiment with adding external stomp boxes, and here comes the question: is it safe to plug in hot signals into the instrument input ? I've just read on another forum, that some guitarist *fried* the input on Mustang by playing with a Vox Wah inserted !

Is it possible ? And how to avoid the risk ?



My H&K Tubeman Mk1 which I test with Mustang, has three outputs:
"mixer" (speaker emulated, line level),
"to amp", and "to power amp". I'm not sure what is the difference between the last two.

So, I'm using the "to amp", but with some settings (especially the rock channel which is a higain mesa/soldano "all sustain" lead type) seem to give clipping distortion (on the Mustang input or maybe farther in the signal chain).
Of courser I use very clean settings on the Mustang.
The sound becomes acceptable when I lower the Tubeman output a lot, much lower than any other Tubeman channel), but when output level of the preamp is low (much lower than the other channels), the sound becomes a bit muddy. Is it caused by impedance mismatches ?
(Tubeman mk1 schematics, just in case).

So, the next question, how to match levels properly, when using external boxes, preamps etc. with the Mustang amp?

Thank you in advance for spending your time to answer these questions.
Have a nice day !


Last edited by sebas777 on Sat Nov 12, 2011 8:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post subject: Re: How to use Mustang II with stomp boxes, tube preamps saf
Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 6:41 am
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Aspiring Musician
Aspiring Musician

Joined: Sun Jan 30, 2011 4:43 pm
Posts: 318
The Mustang amps have an input impedance of 1 megohms (100,000 ohms) the rule of thumb is that an preamp's/amp's impedance should be 10x greater than the output impedance of the instrument/pedal/device feeding it.

100,000 / 10 = 10,000 (or 10k ohms)

On an amp/pedal that uses an analog to digital converter (re: digital modeling amp), you'll end up over driving the converter and get digital distortion if you push the impedance threshold - which is real ugly.

It's easier to get digital distortion than you might think, not only is it a problem with the output from some pedals, but some pickups can do it all by themselves.

Most people don't have a problem with just the output of the guitar alone because most pickups are under 10k ohms output. But, stick the output of some hot 12k ohms (or hotter) humbuckers into a digital modeling amp with an 1 megohms input impedance and you'll be pushing the envelope.

There is a solution to the problem that will allow you to use the output of any guitar or pedal with a digital modeling amp but you have to be handy with a soldering iron. It is fairly simple and much less complicated than building the typical beginner distortion pedal a lot of people start out building - it's not rocket science.

Here is the link that will give you the schematic, the Mouser 42TM019 transformer can be purchased here.


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