Please write Fender and ask them to reissue this or a 5-watt full-featured head or 5 watt rack-mount power amp.
If I recall correctly, for a looser, vintage sound with a silverface Champ, you might want to lift the feedback resistor from the speaker to the output stage -- check the old good Champ schematics vs. the CBS silverface schematics.
The Super Champ was more like 12 or 15 watts.
When I bought my silverface Champ I discovered that some parts were blown up. Someone wanted more volume, which I think is stupid (just buy a bigger amp), so they replaced the tube rectifier by a solid-state rectifier. The power amp couldn't handle the increased wattage, and blew up. I unmodded this poor amp.
VibroChamp user comments
several more user comments
regular old Champ user comments
In Guitar Player Nov 1988, R. Aspen Pittman describes the Champ as 3 1/2 watts RMS into a 4-ohm load. 1 6V6, 1 12AX7, 1 5Y3. Someone else told me the early Champs were "4 watts". So how come I hear about 5 watt and 6 watt Champs?
Fender 1967 VibroChamp [1967 might be model, not year]
$135, used, fine condition
Features: 1 channel. Volume, bass, treble. Vibrato, speed and intensity. On/off, no standby. 6 Watts RMS. 3.2 Ohm 8 inch speaker.
Warm and creamy overdrive. Plays very clean below vol=5 and so is an excellent practice amp, or to use when playing with acoustic musicians. It's very quiet throughout the volume settings.
No headphone jack or a 4 or 8 ohm speaker output.
"I like vintage, when I can afford it, and the V-Champ is affordable. The store where I bought it had a silverface Champ for $125 that sounded almost as good as this one. I routinely see V-Champs for $200-250, which is still reasonable for a tube practice amp, one that will likely not depreciate, either."
Tim Stearns
"Ron Traweek"
Amptone.com ultra gear-search page
>You can buy a simple used s/f Fender Champ, or one of the many
>Champ copies, any day of the week for about $150. One preamp tube, one power tube, one
>rectifier tube, about 5 watts into one 8 inch speaker - it's as simple as an amp can get, and
>it sounds fantastic from 5-10 on the volume scale. Buy a reverb pedal if you must, and you
>have a cheap, low sound-level amp. You wouldn't want to be rocking your baby to sleep next to
>one cranked to 10, but you're not going have the police knocking on your door either. I have
>no idea why many people buy 50-100 watt amputators for home use - I suppose it's the power of
>marketing - but I do know the answer to the problem of cranked tone at low volume, and it
>awaits you in the nearest used music store.
>Tim
Are the 5-watt Champs really so easily available? I've been in used music stores a number of times and the only one I've seen was $400, filthy, and not really great sounding.
I'd rather that all guitarists could buy mass-produced 5 watt amps new at any music store. Kendrick makes a 6-watt amp. Hi-Mu makes a 7 watt amp.
Either you exagerrate the number of 5 watt Champs out there, or you just happen to live near an unusual concentration of good used amp stores. And $150? I think you are exagerrating.
>Which way would the exageration go? Around here (West Alabama) Silver face
>Champs go for 100.00 to 125.00. For 150.00 you can get a good clean Vibro
>Champ.
>Ron
Are the silver-face Champs 5 watts, or 15 watts? Are those CBS amps? I heard a harmonica player through a silver-face Champ. It was the fattest tone! I had an almost mint-condition silver-face Champ for a while. I paid $200. It was blown when I bought it. Someone put diodes across the rectifier socket! I restored it to dignity.