Fender Rumble Studio 40 - What Were They Thinking???

[Mossman]

As some of you know, I recently ordered a Fender Rumble Studio 40 bass amp from Sam Ash, which I finally received last weekend (the black one on the left):

I didn't post an NAD thread because I wanted to get to know the amp first, and discover all its features, etc., before I commenced to publicly render an opinion about it. I think too many people rush to sing a product's praises five minutes after they open the box, while they're still flush with the dopamine rush of acquisition. That's why I never trust customer reviews on Amazon, Sweetwater, etc.

Well, I will never get to sing the praises of the Fender Rumble Studio 40, because the Fender Rumble Studio 40 is an over-engineered, gimmick-laden piece of questionable tech that failed right out of the gate.

Allow me to explain... Like many amps that have been coming out in recent years, this amp has Bluetooth for streaming music to the amp, and for connecting with Fender's "Tone app" on mobile devices. Ok... Fair enough. Not something I can say is a "must-have" feature, but I can see the benefit of it. However, it also has wifi...

Why on God's Earth would an amp need wifi, you may ask?

Firmware updates.... That's it.

That seems a little redundant and unnecessary, since I can't say that plugging an electronic device into my computer's USB port to update its firmware has ever been anything I'd consider a "hassle", especially since I was going to have the amp connected to the computer for the Tone app anyway, and possibly recording through USB, but ok, I was willing to roll with it.

When I got the amp home, the first thing I did was cycle through all the pre-sets, and most of them actually sounded pretty good! I was particularly excited to see some presets with names like: "The Trees", "Red Barchetta", "Limelight", "Rubber Soul Fuzz", "Come Together", etc. There were, of course, the odd handful that I couldn't see myself ever using, and a few that were just "meh", but the ratio of usable, stock presets to filler was unusually high for a modelling amp, and of course, there's endless tweakability...

I typically don't like to play bass through anything smaller than a 12" speaker, so I had my doubts about the 10" in the Studio 40, but this amp gets a lot louder than its 40 watt rating would suggest, and the speaker has a fullness that sounds much bigger than I ever expected from a 10" driver!

Ok, so far, so good... Now it's time to set up the wifi and update the firmware, because the Tone app won't connect to the amp if it doesn't have the latest version. I got it connected, and started the update process, which took a very long time... After about 15 minutes or so, it started to download, and then I got this message:

Which, according to the user manual means that the firmware is up to date, and you're good to go. But when I tried to connect my iPad to the amp with the Tone software, I got an alert that said that the amp needed a firmware update, and refused to connect.

Huh?? I figured it didn't take, or something, so I went through the process again, and got the same message on the amp that no updates were available, and I tried to connect the app again, but no luck.

I tried connecting with my cell phone... same thing.

So then I thought: "No worries... I'll just plug it in to my computer via USB, and update the firmware that way". Guess what? The desktop version of the Tone software doesn't support this amp... Only the mobile versions work, and it's not set up to communicate with the amp through USB!

Why??? This amp is locked out of the desktop version of the software just to justify jamming a wifi transmitter in there?? If it had USB connectivity, it wouldn't NEED wifi, and people wouldn't be forced to use a tablet or cellphone to edit its parameters! This just kept making less and less sense as I went. It's a solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist! Worse than that; it's a product of circular logic:

Me: Why doesn't this amp have USB connectivity?

Fender: Because it has wifi.

Me: Why does it have wifi?

Fender: Because it doesn't have USB connectivity!


But then,in a frustrated, desperate moment I thought: "maybe it's the app!". So I tried uninstalling and re-installing it on my iPad... But it still said the amp needed an update.

Since it's not the app that's failing, I went digging through the amp's menus to see if I could find out what version of the firmware it actually has, and it said: version 2.0.11, while the latest update was 3.2.something. So for some reason, the amp thought 2.0.11 was the latest firmware version.

After scrounging through Fender's website, I found out how to to do a "forced" update... That didn't work either.

I did a factory reset, then an update... Still 2.0.11.

Factory reset, then a "forced" update.... Nothing changed!

I sent an email to Fender tech support, and after thoroughly explaining the situation, and everything I did, they responded by telling me to uninstall and re-install the app!! Really?? Did he miss the part where I told him I did that already, and that it's the amp that's malfunctioning, not the software??

I replied reminding him that I already tried that, and it doesn't solve the problem... Still waiting to hear back from them, so... thanks Fender Support!

At this point, even if Fender had come back with a solution, I no longer wanted the amp. Even if I could get it working properly, I'd always be worried that something will fail later on, probably right after the warranty expires (there's only a 2-year warranty on this amp, unlike Fender's customary 5 years), and good luck selling a partially functional amp when that happens!

There's no reason why an amplifier should be this complicated, and I really didn't like the feeling that a big portion of its functionality is contingent upon a wifi transmitter, and apparently sketchy code. When I went back to the Apple app store to download the Tone app again, I happened to notice the highlighted negative review was from am electronics engineer saying that whoever designed the wifi system for this amp needs to be fired yesterday, so I am apparently not the only person who has had a problem with this.

Adding wifi to this amp was obviously a board-room decision. I can't imagine anybody asking for this. Modelling amps are getting to be like cell phones. There's only so many features you can add to a phone to distinguish it from its competition and previous incarnations, but they have to do something to make it more desirable... Even if it's stupid, impractical, or unnecessary.

Needless to say, I returned this amp yesterday... I really should have never bought it in the first place. I have a Zoom B3, so I didn't really need the effects or modelling, but the amp is super quiet, and I bought it mostly for all the stereo inputs and outputs it has for recording...





...but now, I wish I hadn't wasted my time on this.

If anybody was interested in this thing, I'd stay far away from it and get the regular, analog version instead.

And to Fender: If it ain't broke, don't break it!

[Gear_Junky]

I'm simple and old-fashioned. If it has to boot, it can freeze. That "please restart your amp" pic is golden, would make an awesome avatar if it was readable. To me that sounds HILARIOUS.

I'm not laughing at your frustration, Mossman. In fact, I recently got an acoustic amp. Digital FX are pretty much par for the course and I feel it's great to have. I even found an extra awesome use for it - we plug in a tablet, look up karaoke on YouTube and just sing our hearts out. It takes up to 4 mics and has 2 channels so you can make it sound "almost" real, not karaoke-like. BUT those digital preamps do have to boot. And they have annoying menu-adjustable parameters that are a pain, so I just picked a couple of presets. But if that fails, I guess that's all she wrote. No WiFi or firmware updates but does have Bluetooth, which I don't use, just plug in direct via 1/8" aux. Bluetooth is a lousy protocol in my experience. Years ago we were told that it was a bridge to WiFi, which was better for this purpose, whatever. I am leaning Amish in terms of technology, with some liberties taken when practical

Thanks for the write-up, I'll hold on to my older gear.

[Mossman]

I'm simple and old-fashioned. If it has to boot, it can freeze. That "please restart your amp" pic is golden, would make an awesome avatar if it was readable. To me that sounds HILARIOUS.

I'm not laughing at your frustration, Mossman. In fact, I recently got an acoustic amp. Digital FX are pretty much par for the course and I feel it's great to have. I even found an extra awesome use for it - we plug in a tablet, look up karaoke on YouTube and just sing our hearts out. It takes up to 4 mics and has 2 channels so you can make it sound "almost" real, not karaoke-like. BUT those digital preamps do have to boot. And they have annoying menu-adjustable parameters that are a pain, so I just picked a couple of presets. But if that fails, I guess that's all she wrote. No WiFi or firmware updates but does have Bluetooth, which I don't use, just plug in direct via 1/8" aux. Bluetooth is a lousy protocol in my experience. Years ago we were told that it was a bridge to WiFi, which was better for this purpose, whatever. I am leaning Amish in terms of technology, with some liberties taken when practical

Thanks for the write-up, I'll hold on to my older gear.

Yeah, I have serious luddite tendencies myself, but I don't have an aversion to technology. I don't mind learning to use new gadgets (so long as there's a clear and palpable benefit), but I don't embrace tech just because it's new and trendy... And I certainly don't want to be held hostage by it, either. This thing felt like I was in service to it, instead of the other way around.

Something else I forgot to mention... Every time you want to use the Tone app, you first have to log in to your Fender account (I didn't even realize I had one), then turn on the Bluetooth within the app, (and on the amp), and connect to the amp. You can't just connect to the amp through your phone's Bluetooth settings and forget about it, you have to do it through the app, and you have to go through this ritual EVERY SINGLE TIME!

That is sure to become tiresome after a while.

[Stoli]

Based on your pictures above and description of issues my Fender GT-40 seems to have the same or similar technology. I think I got instructions that came in the box that said I needed to load or update Firmware. I figured out the only way that I could do that was with my wife's Ipad as I have flip phone from the stone age. Once I went through all that it said it was up to date. I was sort of confused and called Sweetwater and they told me that they always updated the firmware on those before they shipped those amps and I should be good. I used the Tone app and just downloaded a few presets that interested me one day and use those from time to time. Some are great and some are not.

With the Bluetooth, I like to listen to Spotify and it took some trifling with but I eventually got that set up and bluetooth from my laptop to the amp just to listen to music. It seems like somewhere between 3-4 hours of doing that the sound starts breaking up. Most of the time the fix seems to be turn off the amp and then turn it back on and it works. At other times you have to do that and reset the bluetooth connection. I do not have to log into the Tone app to do that though. Maybe the difference is using a phone vs PC. You can get some pretty good jam tracks off of Spotify and I use those some to noodle around with as well.

I found a user manual that somebody that owns one of these amps wrote and have found it to be far more helpful than anything Fender has. I bought the amp as a practice/play at home amp as they seem to give you pretty good sound at low volumes plus I do not have any pedals and like the idea of being able to use the simulated ones that come with the amp. I have found that it works well with my cheap acoustic as well. I think it sounds better with the amp as you can fiddle with it and get the boxy sort of sound that it has out of it. I have a Gretsch Jim Dandy that I had a pickup installed under the edge of the sound hole and a cable jack out the end of the guitar.

[Mossman]

Based on your pictures above and description of issues my Fender GT-40 seems to have the same or similar technology. I think I got instructions that came in the box that said I needed to load or update Firmware. I figured out the only way that I could do that was with my wife's Ipad as I have flip phone from the stone age. Once I went through all that it said it was up to date. I was sort of confused and called Sweetwater and they told me that they always updated the firmware on those before they shipped those amps and I should be good. I used the Tone app and just downloaded a few presets that interested me one day and use those from time to time. Some are great and some are not.

With the Bluetooth, I like to listen to Spotify and it took some trifling with but I eventually got that set up and bluetooth from my laptop to the amp just to listen to music. It seems like somewhere between 3-4 hours of doing that the sound starts breaking up. Most of the time the fix seems to be turn off the amp and then turn it back on and it works. At other times you have to do that and reset the bluetooth connection. I do not have to log into the Tone app to do that though. Maybe the difference is using a phone vs PC. You can get some pretty good jam tracks off of Spotify and I use those some to noodle around with as well.

I found a user manual that somebody that owns one of these amps wrote and have found it to be far more helpful than anything Fender has. I bought the amp as a practice/play at home amp as they seem to give you pretty good sound at low volumes plus I do not have any pedals and like the idea of being able to use the simulated ones that come with the amp. I have found that it works well with my cheap acoustic as well. I think it sounds better with the amp as you can fiddle with it and get the boxy sort of sound that it has out of it. I have a Gretsch Jim Dandy that I had a pickup installed under the edge of the sound hole and a cable jack out the end of the guitar.

My only criticism of these amps is that wifi is absolutely unnecessary. The ONLY reason they have wifi is for firmware updates, but they made it impossible to use the editing software without wifi. Ypu should still have the option to connect via USB if you don't want to (or can't) connect with wifi. It's like they added a feature that nobody asked for just because they could, and made it so you have to use that feature to justify it being there.

[glasshand]

Ugh. Even though I work in the technology field, I shudder when I see things like this. Protocols are just advancing way too fast for me to feel comfortable ever using something like this. An amp from the 1930s still works the same way it ever did (granted the availability of tubes) but we've long since been seeing technology that has to be retired, not because it's inherently stopped working, but because it requires a support infrastructure that no longer exists, like cables you can't easily get anymore or software that won't run on a modern operating system.

[nomadh]

I bought the mustang floor and barely past the 1st firmware update they stopped updating the app. Not only that they didnt make the new sw connect to the old hardware. Not only that they took down the fender web page where you could still get the old software. Not only that they took down all the customers self help info and user setting they documented . I dont think I'm interested in anything digital coming from fender ever.

[Stoli]

Based on your pictures above and description of issues my Fender GT-40 seems to have the same or similar technology. I think I got instructions that came in the box that said I needed to load or update Firmware. I figured out the only way that I could do that was with my wife's Ipad as I have flip phone from the stone age. Once I went through all that it said it was up to date. I was sort of confused and called Sweetwater and they told me that they always updated the firmware on those before they shipped those amps and I should be good. I used the Tone app and just downloaded a few presets that interested me one day and use those from time to time. Some are great and some are not.

With the Bluetooth, I like to listen to Spotify and it took some trifling with but I eventually got that set up and bluetooth from my laptop to the amp just to listen to music. It seems like somewhere between 3-4 hours of doing that the sound starts breaking up. Most of the time the fix seems to be turn off the amp and then turn it back on and it works. At other times you have to do that and reset the bluetooth connection. I do not have to log into the Tone app to do that though. Maybe the difference is using a phone vs PC. You can get some pretty good jam tracks off of Spotify and I use those some to noodle around with as well.

I found a user manual that somebody that owns one of these amps wrote and have found it to be far more helpful than anything Fender has. I bought the amp as a practice/play at home amp as they seem to give you pretty good sound at low volumes plus I do not have any pedals and like the idea of being able to use the simulated ones that come with the amp. I have found that it works well with my cheap acoustic as well. I think it sounds better with the amp as you can fiddle with it and get the boxy sort of sound that it has out of it. I have a Gretsch Jim Dandy that I had a pickup installed under the edge of the sound hole and a cable jack out the end of the guitar.

My only criticism of these amps is that wifi is absolutely unnecessary. The ONLY reason they have wifi is for firmware updates, but they made it impossible to use the editing software without wifi. Ypu should still have the option to connect via USB if you don't want to (or can't) connect with wifi. It's like they added a feature that nobody asked for just because they could, and made it so you have to use that feature to justify it being there.

Agree!

[Stoli]

I bought the mustang floor and barely past the 1st firmware update they stopped updating the app. Not only that they didnt make the new sw connect to the old hardware. Not only that they took down the fender web page where you could still get the old software. Not only that they took down all the customers self help info and user setting they documented . I dont think I'm interested in anything digital coming from fender ever.

If this one dies at some point due to no longer being supported then I will likely do the same thing and just go buy an old plug in the wall type thing and live with what it has. Tech and other companies just seem to try to make things to become obsolete for no good reason other than to try to sell something else. Other than the Bluetooth it seems stable enough to just plug in your guitar and and play. I got burned on what was a nice MP3 player that Logitech decided to no longer support a couple of years after I bought it.

[Stoli]

I bought the mustang floor and barely past the 1st firmware update they stopped updating the app. Not only that they didnt make the new sw connect to the old hardware. Not only that they took down the fender web page where you could still get the old software. Not only that they took down all the customers self help info and user setting they documented . I dont think I'm interested in anything digital coming from fender ever.

I guess yours was the model before mine? Mine is a GT 40 and I took it that it was more or less a Mustang. Fender is not a great company for support on these things and seems to have had engineers take some things that should be simple and make them complicated. One of the goofiest things that they did was not put a midrange know on the amp so you have to noodle through the buttons and knobs to adjust that or use the app to adjust it. I just wanted a decent sounding practice amps with some effects.

[Mossman]

Ugh. Even though I work in the technology field, I shudder when I see things like this. Protocols are just advancing way too fast for me to feel comfortable ever using something like this. An amp from the 1930s still works the same way it ever did (granted the availability of tubes) but we've long since been seeing technology that has to be retired, not because it's inherently stopped working, but because it requires a support infrastructure that no longer exists, like cables you can't easily get anymore or software that won't run on a modern operating system.

I see it as a lame attempt at "added value". Just like cell phones, digital amps have more tech and features jammed into them than they need already, but they always have to come up with new features to distinguish the next iteration of the model, and they're running out of ideas. Adding a wifi transmitter to an AMPLIFIER is not merely a solution to a problem that doesn't exist... it's a solution that creates more problems. But they had to come up with something new.

Products used to have a longer life-cycle. Amp manufacturers didn't have to come up with a new model, or a model refresh every two years, but in an age of cheap manufacturing, and the myth of infinite growth, ya gotta keep them people buying!

I bought the mustang floor and barely past the 1st firmware update they stopped updating the app. Not only that they didnt make the new sw connect to the old hardware. Not only that they took down the fender web page where you could still get the old software. Not only that they took down all the customers self help info and user setting they documented . I dont think I'm interested in anything digital coming from fender ever.

Yeah, Mustang owners (myself included) were not happy about Fender completely abandoning the amp line like that. I also have a Super Champ X2 that uses the Fuse software too. I can understand them not updating the software anymore. They've been supporting that since the G-Dec, but they should have either made the "Tone" software backwards compatible (how different could the architectures be?), or at least left the resources available. Fortunately, the Fuse software still works, and some people have taken it upon themselves to preserve the user patch library and other support material. I'll have to dig around for the links, but I'll post them here when I find them.

[Mossman]

I bought the mustang floor and barely past the 1st firmware update they stopped updating the app. Not only that they didnt make the new sw connect to the old hardware. Not only that they took down the fender web page where you could still get the old software. Not only that they took down all the customers self help info and user setting they documented . I dont think I'm interested in anything digital coming from fender ever.

One of the goofiest things that they did was not put a midrange know on the amp so you have to noodle through the buttons and knobs to adjust that or use the app to adjust it. I just wanted a decent sounding practice amps with some effects.

That's one of the few gripes I have with both my Mustang II and Super Champ X2. Neither of them have a mid knob, and I resent having to open the software to adjust the mids. To be honest, I rarely feel like I need more mids, but still, it should be ON THE AMP for the few times I do. I don't know why anybody would want to use these amps in a live setting. If I'm trying to tweak my tone at sound-check, the last thing I want to do is fumble with my cell phone, or ipad to do something a knob should be able to do.

Apparently they wised up and put a mid knob on the GTX amps.

[Stoli]

Usually if I want to mess with the midrange, I want to turn it down. If am messing with presets the midrange is often more than I care for. For most things that I like to play, I like a warm sort of tone with a lot of bass. The speakers in my amp are small compared to most amps so I would expect it to be a little harder to get a warm tone with bass and maybe those presets are made for the 100W versions.

[Mossman]

Usually if I want to mess with the midrange, I want to turn it down. If am messing with presets the midrange is often more than I care for. For most things that I like to play, I like a warm sort of tone with a lot of bass. The speakers in my amp are small compared to most amps so I would expect it to be a little harder to get a warm tone with bass and maybe those presets are made for the 100W versions.

The presets on any modeling amp, by any manufacturer always sound like shite. They're designed to sound good in a big, noisy guitar store, not so much in your home. To be honest, a lot of the effects and especially the patches on these amps are largely wasted on me, anyway. I pretty much just use reverb, delay, chorus... The usual modulation effects. It's fun to dick around with the pre-created patches sometimes, and it can be inspirational, but when I'm done dicking around, I usually go back to reverb, delay, chorus, etc. I use the guitar primarily as a writing tool, so I only need to sound like myself.

[Stoli]

Usually if I want to mess with the midrange, I want to turn it down. If am messing with presets the midrange is often more than I care for. For most things that I like to play, I like a warm sort of tone with a lot of bass. The speakers in my amp are small compared to most amps so I would expect it to be a little harder to get a warm tone with bass and maybe those presets are made for the 100W versions.

The presets on any modeling amp, by any manufacturer always sound like shite. They're designed to sound good in a big, noisy guitar store, not so much in your home. To be honest, a lot of the effects and especially the patches on these amps are largely wasted on me, anyway. I pretty much just use reverb, delay, chorus... The usual modulation effects. It's fun to dick around with the pre-created patches sometimes, and it can be inspirational, but when I'm done dicking around, I usually go back to reverb, delay, chorus, etc. I use the guitar primarily as a writing tool, so I only need to sound like myself.

I have a preset that I made myself after messing with it a bit that I use the majority of the time and it is strung together with a compressor, the 65 Twin amp emulator, then hall reverb. It is clean and warm and I can use my electric and acoustic with it and it sounds good to me. I just adjust the bass and treble a little depending on what guitar that I plug in. A couple of people that I play with like a lot of gain and distortion so they will pick something else and adjust it. I downloaded a Gary Clark Jr. preset and they seem to like that one.