Fender Tone Reviews

Let me start out by saying this. I am majoring in computer information technology at Purdue university, so before you assume I’m some old man who doesn’t know how to use technology, I can assure you this is not the case.

On paper FenderTone is great. It’s a revolutionary way to play your guitar with a great tone without all the hours of fine tweaking to get a better tone. However, whoever designed the Bluetooth/WiFi functionality of FenderTone needs to be fired YESTERDAY. FenderTone refuses to connect to your amp if you haven’t updated it which is fine, just update your amp stupid. But upon updating your amp there’s still a VERY solid chance the tone app will refuse to connect to your amp EVEN IF ITS ALREADY CONNECTED TO YOUR PHONE. This review would be totally different if this was a once in a while thing, but I’m consistently dedicating 30+ minutes every time I want to find a new tone to troubleshooting just because FenderTone, which is literally designed for the amp I’m using(Mustang GT 100 btw), is about as reliable as dog s***. I’m not one to write reviews so the bottom line is this: I want to love FenderTone, it’s a fantastic idea for FREE. But it’s poor network design is infuriating beyond belief. I guess you get what you pay for 🤷🏽‍♂️

If I were able to do a half-star, I would’ve rated FenderTone 4.5; it’s a very nice app, but has a few nuisances.
It’s a great way to immediately access certain presets without having to scroll through the whole list to get to the ones you want, and it’s very handy for creating/editing presets. This is especially true when renaming them; doing it from the amp is a time-consuming pain. It’s also nice to not have to put the guitar down or hang over the amp whenever you want to change something or adjust volume, you can just do it real quick from your phone.
The only issue I have is that the connectivity can be troublesome. My phone will have a hard time finding the amp through Bluetooth and usually have to resort to restarting the amp, occasionally twice over. Restarting the amp does usually do the trick, I originally wasted a lot of time trying many other methods to get around this obstacle.
Once it is connected, though, FenderTone is very resourceful and highly recommended. It’s worth the starting-up hassle when all is said and done.

Received my GTX50 last week. Connected to WiFi and updated firmware first thing. Then tried to connect via Bluetooth using fender tone app. Nothing, it cannot find my amp. So after spending 45 minutes doing various troubleshooting steps (turn Bluetooth on/off on the phone and amp, restart amp, restart fender tone app, force another firmware update) suddenly FenderTone can see the amp and I can connect. Great! I thought problem was resolved. Later that night, and now every night since then, every time I want to practice I spend between 3 and 30 minutes doing a random combination of the above steps until I get lucky and suddenly the iPhone app can see the amp. Usually after at least 4-5 amp reboots.

This just screams like a poor software problem. I cannot tell if it is with FenderTone or the amp’s firmware. My device is iPhone 12 Pro. I am considering returning the amp. I have reached out to customer support. All I can say is that I would highly advise against purchasing this amp if your decision is based in part on using the Fender Tone app as a way to control it. Nothing special about my iPhone setup so I cannot believe I am the only person experiencing this.

What a difference to be able to have built-in presets that change your Rumble 800 Stage bass amplifier to match the most popular amplifiers of all time in history. It like have a bunch of different bass amplifiers in your studio and switching from one to another on the fly with the turn if a knob. Then on top of that having the ability of creating your own sound that you created yourself. Forgot all those pedals you used to carry around and use the amp to build your own pedals that are like the classics of the past. Included is a multi function 4 button floor pedal that does looping and effects that you program yourself. Plain and short now you have a modern Bass Amplifier that can do pretty much anything.

I absolutely love this amp and all the different sounds you can get out of it. It is a one stop shop. That being said, I am having issues with the Fender Tone App. I’m not sure what’s going on with it. Amp and FenderTone are both updated. I have deleted FenderTone and reinstalled. When I attempt to swipe to a new preset in FenderTone it will say FenderTone is syncing and then revert back to a previous preset. It may be the one right before it or it may be two presets down. I can hear the amp change sounds/preset to the one I chose and then it immediately changes to another preset. Honestly, if FenderTone doesn’t work, the amp is basically useless. Having to go into the little screen on the amp to change anything is time-consuming and tedious. I hope that Fender customer service can help me fix this issue and if that is the case, I will change my rating to five star.

Using the Fender Mustang GT 100 as a beginner I thought would be too much amp for me but it makes learning wonderfully fun and FenderTone helps considerably. Only practice can make someone a better guitar player but there is something to be said for being able to hear such beautiful and unique tone coming through. Presets from other users further inspire my own creativity and, though I am just starting out, the motivation to find my own tone is there. I was able to grasp how to use FenderTone right away and find myself exploring features both using the controls on the amp or through FenderTone . Great design and all around great product. I’m having a blast!

I want to to like FenderTone and my GTX amp, but it’s inability to connect to the amp reliably makes it a pain to use. Frequently FenderTone cannot find the amp, and no amount of turning on and off the Bluetooth on either side would make it work. I see this issue being mentioned all over the internet yet Fender never offered a workable solution. I do know what the issue is so I’m offering it here, hopefully it will help you. But, to the developers: if you see this, please fix it ASAP! It’s a big that’s greatly cripples an otherwise great amp.

The solution: your phone needs to be near the amp when you turn the amp on! Otherwise FenderTone will not find the amp later even if the phone is already connected to the amp via Bluetooth. I haven’t tested the maximum distance for this to work, but I estimate it’s no more than a few feet. I know, it’s stupid and beyond annoying! Please fix it!

The new Tone app freaks out about the NEW firmware on my GT100 (not GTX100). I have the newest 3.0.43 on my amp as I literally did a firmware update and then when it alerted to a new firmware on FenderTone , I tried a “Full Firmware Update” to the amp just before writing this review just in case. However, the most newest firmware on the Fender website is listed as 3.0.31... I believe that the Tone app is looking for that firmware and is popping up a message to update the amp. It refuses to even connect to the amp until they update FenderTone in FenderTone Store to reflect the most current firmware in its internal change log. When it worked, it was OK to use. But still preferred the physical knobs. Was hoping to see the new changes, but that isn’t possible at this time.

The functionality of FenderTone is great: it lets you tweak the amp's sound, and edit and create presets. This saves you from having to walk over to the amp and lean over it to see the controls. I really appreciate being able to do this wirelessly.

But the UX is eye-candy at the expense of usability, with a lot of wasted space. The realistic pedal graphics mean the pedal's name is pretty small; on an iPhone it’s unreadably tiny in the patch overview, which defeats the purpose of that screen. Meanwhile, in the detail view everything’s nice and big but you can only see one pedal at a time. On an iPad screen there would be plenty of room to show multiple pedals at once.

The only missing functionality seems to be marking a preset as a favorite, or assigning to a playlist in general. I’ve tried and failed to find a way to do it. Fortunately it’s easy to do on the amp.

In the few hours I’ve used FenderTone I’ve had it get out of sync with the amp once or twice (showing a different patch than the one the amp is using), and one time the amp itself entirely froze while I was using FenderTone and I had to reboot it.

I got my GT 40 when they were first released and it has only gotten better and better with firmware updates and the Tone app. Aside from the crappy headphone jack (which I don’t use and couldn’t even if I wanted to anymore) this amp has been a favorite of mine. And now the v3 version is next level. Love the Blues Jr. model. And the new UI is excellent. It’s so great that my amp sounds better now, by a long shot than it did when I got it (2017?). Thanks. Now my only question is to get the GTX or just keep my GT 40 till it melts down one day!!!

Decent amp but the companion Tone App makes it fantastic and a compelling force on the modeling amp landscape. I own the Mustang III v2 yet couldn’t resist the additional purchase of the new GT 100.

After a couple years of perfecting Fender Fuse and still struggling to embrace it, The Tone App blows fuse out of the water and makes this whole tone control, tone presets and amp modeling thing fun again! Sorry Fender but yes, the Mustang III, V2 does have a slightly better sound and I wish GT was equal but it sounds good enough and with a little manipulation with tones using this amazing and easy to use app you can find your sound!

My only requests so far for future release...
1. Preset back up in a cloud!
2. A quicker way while in a preset to save it directly to a saved “Playlist” (or several) vs saving the preset and having to go all the way back to a Playlist, finding the new tone and then adding it.
3. Adding Wah pedal functionality using FenderTone vs going over to the amp

Outstanding job Fender App team, keep up the good work and don’t abandon this like they did Fuse and can’t wait for future updates!!!

I got the amp yesterday and the amp is great however started to slowly notice minor issues that soon became major.. with FenderTone the tones are great however today FenderTone keeps saying anytime i attempt to select a tone to try or create a setlist that I need to update to the most recent software( which i have) I have updated the firmware and the software to the most recent update that has been released. I have spent up to an hour trouble shooting.. turning off an on attempting to
update again, bluetooth on and on, deleting app and reinstalling.. after everything app still says to update to latest software to do almost any of the features..
extremely disappointed with app

In theory, the Fender Tone app should be a welcome companion to the GT series. However, the implementation is fatally flawed.

When adding pre-sets to a “favorites“ Setlist, certain presets were renamed and re-numbered. For example, I attempted to add “Basic Vibrato” # 24. FenderTone somehow decided to add “School’s Out” # 45“. When I tried to delete “schools out“ from my favorites, it warmed me that I was going to delete Basic Vibrato. Clearly there is something going on with the sorting in the database, and this phenomenon is not limited to the example above. Somehow the preset list has been corrupted… Not sure if this is app related or application related, but it renders FenderTone (and the usability of the amp) virtually useless to me. I do hope the developers fix this soon. This combo of amp and app has so much promise.

I am so proud to own this GT-100. I would have never believed that a Amp could do so much. I’m 58 yrs. and have been playing guitar since I was 10. I have recently decided that it’s time for me to learn how to play lead. And that’s why I bought this amp. The technology on Fenders Amp is simply unbelievable. I prefer southern rock you should here this amp playing train train by Blackfoot. Or Tuesday gone with the wind LS. I have already learned lead on black magic women. I salute the Fenders Engineer s designers and all of there employees! Well done.

i’ve had problems with it crashing multiple times, I’ve had to recreate an account, my presets have not uploaded correctly, my presets can’t be deleted after I upload them, the support seemed helpless as The gentleman at Fender couldn’t understand any of these problems and couldn’t communicate in a timely manner... probably wasn’t going to buy products from them again unless these problems were solved quickly.

That said, Fender did show that they cared about these issues are are now working to get them resolved. I am sure and confident future updates to FenderTone and firmware will only improve the user experience

I was very excited to see the 2.0 firmware update for the Mustang GT as I love this amp - when it works.

Unfortunately, the amp has a habit of cutting out randomly during use. It will behave briefly as if a noise gate's threshold is raising, until it overtakes all sound from the guitar. Then volume just seems to decay until it's entirely give. Sometimes changing the preset, and then changing back temporarily fixed things.. sometimes it doesn't, and you need to restart the whole amp. Very frustrating, and totally unusable for a live performance.

Fender, please please fix this bug so this amp and Fender Tone can live up to its 5-star potential!

FenderTone would be great in my eyes if it just worked reliably. I don’t get the same disconnecting issues but the glaring thing to me is the presets on FenderTone sometimes do not match the amp. At times I can’t tell to trust FenderTone or amp (but I do lean on just checking the amp). It’s very weird if you try to edit one of the erroneous presets in FenderTone because it’ll sometimes miss the fx of then preset on the amp. Either way that is weird so please fix it Fender. I like FenderTone so I cm easily scroll through the library of presets - it’d be great if it matched the amp 100%.

When I first downloaded FenderTone to use with my Mustang GT40 back in the beginning of 2018 everything worked flawlessly.... Today? Even with FenderTone up to date, the amps firmware up to date, and my phone able to play music through the amp via Bluetooth, I’m unable to connect FenderTone to make adjustments to my amp settings and add effects. My phone recognizes the amp and I’m able to play music via Bluetooth like I said, but FenderTone won’t connect. I’ve reached out multiple times with no help received. Perhaps a Boss Katana is the way to go for bedroom practicing because Fender has done nothing to rectify the situation.

FenderTone used to work great. But this is the second time I’ve run into a problem ... First off, I have an iPhone 12 Pro Max. No other Bluetooth device is connected. I try to use a preset from Fender Tone and I see it connected and changed to the tone on my amp, great! BUT my guitar sound comes out of the amp plain with no effects whatsoever, it makes no sense. What the heck. I’m so tired of putting up with this amp, and frustrated. When it is working, I also don’t like how some preset sounds come out sounding overly digital and unrealistic. I have a PRS custom 24, am I suppose to only use a Fender guitar with this? Ugh.

I have upgraded my amp to the new firmware and the iOS app is updated but when I try to select some of my presets, it switches back to a different preset automatically. I don’t know what that is all about but something in the software is screwed up and if I would have known about the issue before I upgraded my amp, I would have waited for it to get debugged.

I have already submitted the issue to support but have not yet received anything yet.

Fingers crossed! I really like this amp and would hate to see it crippled by crappy software.

Very nice upgrade to an app and amp I enjoy working, experimenting, and playing with. I’ve been a Fender Amp player for 50+ years now. The Bogner amp was a nice addition along with your Blues JR and Vibro-King. The GUI of each amp & pedal saved settings is impressive too!! Thanks for fixing the ‘ bug too. Can’t wait for the next version upgrade with more amps and pedal effects. BTW, I love the Mustang GT 100 so much, I bought three. One for my studio, live stage, and a backup!! Thanks Fender.