I read the Soul of Tone book about Fender amps. Very interesting, even to a guy like me who is not interested in vintage stuff. Well written. Lots of pictures. Authoritative history. Way too much detail in some areas, but it's easily skipped over because of good organization of the book. Very informative CD with sound examples of various models, both new and used.

The only think I would have liked as an improvement is better annotated schematics. There are some there, but they don't really communicate very well to me.

The amazing thing to me is that I never considered Fender to be a major amp manufacturer. I owned a GDEC and disliked the sound quality (but loved the concept), so I sold it. It turns out that all of the amps that I consider to be good are derived from Fender amps. Leo Fender and his team essentially invented the archetypes of the modern guitar amps.

Yup, great book.

And the two CDs are kind of fun, too.

And 'understandG-DEC ain't made for tone, but for quick and easy versatility.

The G-DEC we had was great in concept and it has a lot of very thoughfully designed features that I really appreciated. I play blues and the slide is a common phrasing technique (where you fret a chord, hold it, and then slide your finger tips to another fret). Those sounded really bad with the G-DEC. A lot of chords sounded bad too. If I were playing a style that didn't use much of those technques I would still have it.

I replaced the amp with a Line 6 Spider Jam which is a stunningly excellent piece of equipment that I will never part with. I hope they are selling well because if mine fails, I will want another one to replace it. Sound quality is excellent. It's great for home use. They stole the G-DEC concept and improved on it.