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For background, I am an average guitarist and these days I primarily play jazz rock, or progressive-ish styles of music. I gave up gigging in my 40’s and now spend my music time recording below average original compositions at home. I was looking for a small versatile amp to keep in the living room to play at low volume while my main rig stays in the music room. This is my second go-around with the GT40. I picked my first one up the week it was released and ultimately felt it was not quite ready for prime time and returned it. Over the next year I went on a quest to find the perfect practice amp that combined versatility, ease of use, and above all great sound. I took home the Blackstar ID:Core, Marshall Code 25, Line 6 Amplifi 30, and yes, even the mighty Boss Katana 50. All had attributes I was looking for and for the most part sounded good, but I found I was always comparing them to the GT40. The versatility of this amp is its greatest strength. It really shines with clean and crunch tones but can also hold its own in the higher gain regions. The list of available effects and ability to place them almost anywhere in the chain is a huge plus and not something commonly found in this price range. The amp is easy to use. If you know your way around an amp you can dive right in and tweak with relative ease. Fender does a nice job of walking less experienced players/users through some of the basics of amp modeling on their website. It’s not without faults, there are still glitches in the firmware and the Tone app seems to be forever a work in progress, but Fender is continuing to update both and significant improvements have been made since the product was first released. Overall the GT40 is a fine practice amp that should provide most players everything they need for late night jams or intimate gigs. It has some nice features for the price, and if you are willing to suffer though some growing pains you will end up with a great piece of gear. Fender is really making a push to introduce the guitar to a new generation, and I really appreciate what they are trying to do. I wish them great success and products like the GT40 should help them on that road. They just need to fill in a few potholes first. I give it 4 stars for its overall great sound and versatility, but there’s plenty of room for improvement in the user experience area.

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It sucks? Sounds like a tin box? Like a wet blanket over it? Just a bunch of people who are not willing or not bright enough to use it properly, so I will just make a couple points. Ok, yes actually, it is really loud if you want, with gain, volume, and master, it can have a ton of clean volume, and don’t be fooled, you can run any boost or whatever external pedal you want. You don’t have to point it at your face. Second, you should NEVER buy a digital amp for presets, and if you do and then you think they all suck so the amp sucks, then it’s your fault. The whole presets idea is so stupid. It has all these amp models with full original controls and you can adjust eq, cabs, sag, bias, and then highly highly tweakable effects of nearly every kind. I will give advice real quick to the preset crowd. If you hate a preset and don’t want to create your own patch, then TURN THE KNOBS DUMMY! Between the knobs on the guitar and the knobs for each digital component there’s infinite combinations!!Third, and most important: I have my GT 40 sitting right there, next to an all tube Princeton Reissue. The GT can sound so close that the only way to hear the difference is to be playing through it because it feels and reacts slightly different to touch. Which should take you 2 minutes to get used to. You cannot put the digital knobs in the exact place the tube amps knobs are and get two Princeton’s. But you can dial in a little bit of this or that and bang, it is great! I use my Princeton and GT 40 in stereo, and you can run it into a lap top, and it is capable big beautiful tones with my pedals, like a fuzz or other drive and time pedals. You just can’t plug them in, select a preset and strum. Just like a REAL amp you can’t do that which tells you that having to listen and change accordingly is not equal to a crappy amp. I believe the cons are simply that it doesn’t come with the foot switch controller and they could include one, even if it only switched patches and had no extra features. It’s a great and capable amp, especially if you take a minute to create the sounds you want just like on that vintage tube amp you have never actually even tried. Use your brain!

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I bought this little amp on a whim and I am so glad I did. I love how you can tweak every setting on every effect and amp, then place them anywhere in the signal chain. You can change the factory presets and rename them to make it your own. The ability to download new Fender and user presets wirelessly. You can also control most of the features with your smart phone including streaming with bluetooth. Granted this amp is mainly for home use and the local coffee house but if you need more sound it has 2 bigger brother amps. The only thing I didn't like is the head phone jack. It is plastic. I have pulled the jack apart just from pulling the headphone cable out. My repair tech has replaced it with a metal barrel type. Problem solved. I have played thru this amp for 3 months having no desire to play thru any of my others. Hands down the best amp I own!

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This is a great amp. It's thoughtfully designed, it works well, and it sounds fantastic. I bought it primarily because I wanted a little practice amp to have in our family room. I have young children, and my vintage tube amps are too loud and too valuable to have in a family space where there are frequent stumbles, spills, etc. I also wanted something small enough to take on trips and carry to and from my home studio space as needed. However, the GT40 has far surpassed my modest expectations. First of all, it sounds very good. I haven't owned or played all of the amps it models, but the ones I know well are nicely emulated here (Blackface Fenders, Tweed Deluxe, Bassman). The others sound fine to me, although they're not all my thing. The effects are likewise well-done; they're musical, useful, and satisfying. The level of tweakability for each effect and amp model is just right: you don't have to get lost in menus or knobs to coax out a usable sound, but you can customize details like bias and rectifier sag if you want to. The user interface -- and I can't believe I actually own (and like) an amp that has a "user interface" -- is clean and intuitive. One of the best things about the GT40 is the Fender Tone app. I'm really enjoying how easy it is to adjust the signal chain and modify amp settings from my iPhone. The Fender Tone interface is clean and intuitive, like the amp itself. I’ve seen a few reviews complaining about the sound quality or a “phasey” tone. I don't really hear anything weird or off about this amp. It sounds very good, even — you may need to adjust the EQ to suit your style of playing, and you shouldn't put the amp in the floor, blasting sounds at your feet. Same as any other amp, really. It sounds good out of the box, but I switched to the "Guitar Focus 1" global EQ and found that most amp models sounded a little bit better. I'm playing a recent American Standard Telecaster and an old 50's Les Paul Jr (P90), and I like how the global EQ brings out the upper midrange in both of them. YMMV; find what works well for your guitar and style of playing. In summary, the Mustang GT is a lot of fun, the iPhone app makes tweaking easy and immediately gratifying, and the tones on offer are mostly great. At this price, it's hard to go wrong if you're looking for a portable and inspirational practice amp.

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Great little amp. Very versatile. love the effects in this little amp. you can move the effects around just like a real pedalboard. the Fender tone app is pretty cool lots of cool patches. Bluetooth works great as well as WIFI. lots of great stock tone. It is not full tube tone but it is a great little lightweight amp.

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Okay- I've seen the reviews- many say this amp Sucks. Wrong- it's mostly a novices point of view that doesn't have an ear. Here are some tips. 1. The amp is too small to provide headroom of a 100 watt Marshall or a Fender Twin. 2. You MUST not position the amp below you ears. In other words make sure the speakers are pointed directly at you at ear level or it will sound like a tin box. 3. Go to the 60's-80's British amps and make adjustments. Think AC/DC. Turn off effects on those amps or turn down bass or add treble until they sound good. I referenced AC/DC because that's what most amateurs are looking for because they can't play anything beyond that. Don't play on the fender settings because you don't play clean. You instead add overdrive or distortion pedals to sound like a Marshall. They won't. You don't play clean so use the Marshall settings.

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