Fender Champ | gringopig.com

1981 Fender Champ

A very late silverface Champ with the exact same AA764 circuit as the post tweed models from 1964 onwards. A 6W handwired all valve amplifier which is a gem to be picked up!

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I have had this amplifier for almost as long as the Twin Reverb. Many years!

Sharing the same circuit as the blackface era amplifiers, the exact same circuit, this amplifier can still be found today relatively cheaply and is worth buying on sight.

It has a single 6V6GT, a single ECC83/12AX7 and a 5Y3GT rectifier and a small 8" speaker. Not the greatest speaker it has to be said but it works fine and the amplifier sounds full. It can get ragged quickly at volume with a humbucker equipped guitar and the speaker can start ripping and sounding quite bad if pushed really hard but at lower volumes it's fine. I have thought about a speaker swap or even an extension cabinet for this or even a custom cabinet. A head and cab arrangement maybe?

I mean look at this!

It would mean just removing the chassis and popping it in the head. A future project maybe?

It's strange that the fascination for 'mojo' blinds some players to the reality that the silverface Champ is exactly the same as one from '66, say. The exact same circuit and you can pick these ones up for considerably less than the '60's equivalent.

I have mine after Time travel Audio did a restoration on it as seen in the slideshow above after the photos taken recently. It didn't sound bad, in fact was perfectly fine but lurking inside was a warped board and leaky capacitors, so TTA effectively rewired the thing after baking the eyelet board straight and replaced the cap can with individual capacitors on the board side. The original cap can containing the filter caps is still there but out of circuit.

I have a JJ 6V6GT in at the moment and a Mullard in V1 but have NOS valves in reserve. I did pop the last JJ after a journey with the amp in the boot. Turned it on and there were actual sparks inside the valve!

Tip: always give your amp the back seat treatment with seatbelt too! Much less likely to vibrate the thing to death.

Thanks to Time Travel Audio for the great job they did on this and for the renovation record above.

You can find them in Leith adjacent to Edinburgh and on their website here: Time Travel Audio