The answer to my prayers!

I have been waiting all my life for an amp like this! It has everything I ever needed or wanted an amp to do including having effects. I never want to turn this thing off, it's so fun and usefull. Thank You Fender!!!

AMAZING

The GDEC 3 Thirty is simply amazing technology. Superb job Fender! It’s the bomb! The GDEC3 Thirty is a different creature than the two Mustang Vs that I am using live at present.

The GDEC 3 Thirty contains the SUNN Model and the Mustang V has the Modern Metal model instead that basically sucks. If this is Fender’s idea of a 5150 Metal amp then go to your rooms and no porridge for supper tonite. I prefer the SUNN high gain better but then I owned a SUNN high gain amp once upon many a moon ago and it’s a monster of an American amp.

The Vox, JTM 45, Plexi, and JCM 800 are superior on the Mustangs maybe because the way I am running thru the custom cab with custom high output speakers, but then all the Fender models seem to have better articulation on the GDEC 3 Thirty. The singular speaker and tweeter maybe? But that’s my opinion. Both systems are quite amazing for what they have utility for.

I have all the models saved to my hard drive now and all I can say is in rating terms of Best (4) to Good (1) The ranking would be:

Country – 4
Blues – 3
Standard Model – 2
Metal - 1

4- The Country presets are absolutely marvelous. I don't care for all the modern player new country defined tones that are all vanilla and overdone just like everything now in Nasville ‘new country’ anyway, but the old school Chet and Burton and Rockabilly and Setzer and Memphis stuff is holy crap they absolutely nailed it! There's even two patches that absolutely nail Danny Gatton and Roy Buchanan. Pathces from the Blues model are included here so many many bases are covered -

3- The Blues/Jazz come in second and pick your flavor here 60 Brit Blues a la Rory Gallagher/Early Clapton to later Clapton to BB to whatever floats your blues, blues/rock, country/hard rock boat -

2- The Standard Model is eclectic and a sampler of the other three -

1- The Metal to me is the least useful as the amp models are there but the artist presets are not happening for me anyway for the broad-spectrum of what I do. Head bangers and detuners will find their bliss here as this is what the patches are directed toward. The only presets I actually found useful was the Collen 1 & 2, but then Phil is a tasteful player from way back. Fender has no clue how to set up a Marshall anything rig nor EQ it but that’s ok. They mastered the American Fender combo and they did just fine in that arena-

The Standard Model is what I bought and downloaded the others from Fender website. You upload each system on a SDHC and it takes about 10 mins to load all the presets and WAV files. Then you save the bulk and you have the set. Then you do the next etc., and you have the entire enchilada. So the GDEC3 Thirty actual ‘hardware box’ itself becomes a cosmetic gimmick, and the style associated 'GUI' is a visual gimmick. But since that tickles people's feet and keeps them fat, dumb, and happy consumers that’s all that counts LOL

The GDEC3 thirty is an amazing studio composition tool, an amazing live thru PA tool, and an amazing practice tool. But be advised it will NOT cook your dinner, nor light your pipe, nor bring your slippers after a hard day, nor find the lost TV remote control buried in the couch, but oh well you just can’t always get what you want huh? (Sorry Mick had to insert that in there)

So then, Further Words Are Not Necessary!

Actually just one: ~fuggedaboudit!~

~skygod~

Fender Did It Right...

I usually love a fine tuned tube amp, all modded to my specs and military caps and all, but Fender takes a few near perfect tube amp emulations and allows you to tweak it further to your liking. That is the deal for me. I have A/B it with my beloved Blackface Twin Reverb and the Gdec . After an hour of tweaking, the GDEC actually had slightly more presence, like a new set of tubes.
THEN, to top it off you can spend hours going through the thousands of presets the FUSE community can come up with, practice with millions of loops or any MP3 for that matter, The possibilities are just endless. I still use the old tube stuff for gigging, making this thing the best practice machine any pro or weekend warrior could ask for. I have been experimenting with the stereo outs to the board, another great feature if you are falling in love with the rest of its possibilities, and begin to think all you need for a great stage tone is this little guy. I have had success using it at a few small bar gigs, no need to mic, just plug it in to the board and use your monitor and the amp as a stage volume.
It has also worked plugging it into a stereo amp that powers a 2x12 cab to jam with the band at practice. Like I said, endless possibilities. The 12" speakers color the tone some, but still you can tweak till you are sick of tweaking remember? The stock speaker seems to push the emulations the best, I may look into a cab made of the same speakers... but, JBL K-110's seem to be doing the best of my few speaker cabs I own, which is plenty of stage volume for me. I am still working on how to get more headroom this way from my setup, a stereo 50 watt amp seems to be just loud enough for my 5 piece band.

Big Bang for the Buck!

I ordered this amp on Monday from Sweetwater, they shipped on Tuesday and it arrived on Thursday! The amp itself is tremendous. I haven't had time to surf all of the amps capabilities yet, but from what I've already heard from my telecaster is just terrific. What a buy I've made!

Great Little Amp!

If you are looking for an amp that can create just about any tone and have great backing tracks to jam to then this thing is the ticket. Just checking out each preset and backing track is fun and will keep you entertained for a long time. I have also gigged with this amp just to see if it would work. I ran the stereo out to a 400 watt powered PA speaker and could knock you over with the sound. The foot pedal is worth the $60 and change just for the tuner feature. I loaded up a preset for each song of the gig (Santana, BB King, etc.). So with a click of of the foot switch I could from song to song and tone to tone. Just for fun sake it's worth the money. Also I love the ability to hook up to my laptop and pick amps, pedals and tweak them live. The sit e with presets uploads and backing track uploads are also great. Fender hit a home run!!

Simple & Fun

Summary: Great amp, super fun, super easy to use, lots of value

I greatly appreciate the simplicity of the "everything-in-one-box" design. What I like most is the motivation I get from the repeating backing mp3 tracks. These not only provide a more exciting playing environment but it teaches you to listen to music and identify how/when your playing compliments the music in a variety of genres. There may exist already ways to have backing music, but I have not seen a clean/easy, single-source implementation before now.

Speaking of easy, it's the best selling point of the amp. Easy to connect up, easy to adjust/configure, easy to capture what I am doing on my computer, etc. I am not a gear head and I don't want to be, I just want to have fun playing music and capture what I am doing to share with friends or track my progress. Minimal cabling using standard computer interfaces guarantees I can do what I want to do, quickly.

So Far So Good

So far it has done very well. I am new to playing so I am still discovering the many ways I can use this. For me having the band and the metronome coming out the same place as the guitar playing is less distracting.

A great learning tool

I have not explored all of the features yet, but so far it's been fun to play with. It's a great learning tool. The only thing I wish it had is the ability to plug into an extension cabinet. Matt Masek, my Sweetwater sales engineer, as always, was great to deal with.

MAC Software not available yet

Received April 23rd and you can imagine my disappointment to learn that the MAC software to load stuff is NOT YET AVAILABLE!!!! Very misleading because the website etc all says that supports MAC/Windows but only the Windows version is available. I contacted Fender Support and all they would say is "soon".

Also- unlike original GDec, you cannot change song key........