My PAR was just returned. It looks like the Army took a hated, poorly structured professional military educational requirement, and made compliance more difficult. For 2027, all ILE Phase 1 "in person" TASS classes are canceled for FY27. For all Army Reserve officers, Distance Learning is the only option available.
My Deger II broke, so after keeping it around as a paper weight for almost half a year, I emailed Mr. Deger and asked him to fix it. I mailed it in, and come to find out the humidity is so bad in N. Carolina that the internal electronics corroded. Anyhow, he gave me the option to fix it for 120 euros or upgrade the internals to his new release for and additional 130 euros over the repair cost. I opted for the upgrade, so for under 300 euros, I think I got a good value.
Overall use: The Deger III is built like its predecessors; solid, with high quality components. I'm in the military and have taken mine literally all over the globe. It plays reliably in almost any condition. If your hands are really dry, the contacts may not active though so keep that in mind.
Built in Speaker: It's definitely a worth-while upgrade just for the built in speaker. Yes, you can get a little speaker with a 3.5mm jack, and I did that before, but with it built in, you have one less thing to remember, one less thing to lose, and it just looks better.
Instruments: This is a little murky. There is a change in the available instruments and my best guess is that the available instruments are: GHB, SSP, Uilleann Pipe, Medieval Marktsack, and the Gaita. If you look at Jim McGillvray's website, the Deger 2 instrument choices were GHB, Spanish Gaita, and two SSPs. So, there is a change to instruments, but as you will see, we aren't sure what the new instruments actually are.
Deger doesn't indicate the order of instruments in the manual or specifically state what instruments there are. In the new Deger III manual, there is instructions on how to access different scales for different instruments: GHB, GHB Standard, GHB Enhanced, Medieval Marktsack, Shepherds Pipe, and Baroque. Unfortunately, the fingering charts don't match: there is a chart for GHB Standard, GHB Enhanced, Medieval Marktsack, Shepherd' Pipe, Gaita, and Gaita Enhanced. On Deger's website, he mentions that there is an addition of the Uilleann pipe but in the user manual, the word Uilleann isn't mentioned at all. NOT ONCE.
I gotta say though, the Uilleann Pipe sounds great- I'm a pretty poor Uilleann piper, having only been working on this instrument IRL for about 3 months, but I do have the real thing to compare to and Deger did outdid himself.
MIDI upgrades: The biggest change that matters to me is that now your MIDI can run through a USB-C port- no need for a firmware update.
Other upgrades: There are other upgrades that I'm not competent enough to speak on. Mostly, I use my eChanter to practice in my office and to supplement my finger work for actual GHB, though I occasionally record digitally. Go to his website if you'd like more info: deger.com/degerpipes-iii.html
As a final note, I read on other forums that Manfred Deger is unresponsive to repair requests. I did not find that to be true. He was pretty responsive to my emails, very professional, reasonable in pricing, compassionate. I think it is important to keep in mind that Manfred not a native English speaker but makes one of the best known digital bagpipes in the world- he has a small business so I recommend giving him some grace for any misunderstandings in the user manual.