Fender Champion 600

This thing is a tube freak's dream:



I bought one after playing it for 45 minutes in a quiet room, with Relic Strats, Teles, and Les Pauls....I could clearly hear the differences between the guitars. I A/B'ed it to a Class A Marshall hand wired (which had to be cranked up 5x as loud to achieve the a similar overdriven tone). I instantly feel in love with it. What an incredible little amp! It's sounds like a little Badcat! You can easily overdrive it simply using the volume knob on a guitar with the Champs volume on full...I'm sure with a Tube Screamer you can get a killer heavy lead tone out of this puppy. Both clean and when overdriven, it keeps that that Class A sparkle that makes handwired amps so desirable....and it's still relatively quiet on full blast (probably has loud as normal listening volume for a home stereo). It's perfect for mic'd recording.

I paid $200 tax included.

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I made a quick and dirty recording of the Champ with three of my guitars:

Here it is.

The first guitar is my Line6 Variax modeling a Les Paul (Lester). The second is a Fender Telecaster Nashville Power with the Texas Specials, and the last is my Fender American Deluxe with the Vintage Noiseless pickups.

What is blowing me away about this amp is the tube warm and sparkle at a very moderate volume (my wife slept through the recording in the next room).

FYI, I simply mic'd the amp with a Rode NT5 condenser mic through a Joemeek OneQ (totally flat) and recorded into Sonar at 16bit/44.1 with no effects.

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I'm listening to your recording as I type this and the amp sounds great. I really like the way you can get it to break up, yet sound clean when you back off on your attack. I thought the amp really performed when you played your tele and strat.

I just bought a Vox Valvetronix AD30VT yesterday and I'm totally blown away by this amp. The problem is, I can't record it. What would be the best way to get set up (affordably) to record at home? I have a relatively new I-Mac that includes Garage Band software -- can I mic the amp and record into Garage Band?

Tom

Yeah.... I agree with you on the Tele/Strat vs. the Les Paul. Single coils tend to sound brighter through this amp. The Les Paul sounds a bit too dark & rounded fully over driven and too plain at the cleaner volume.... but for $200, I can't complain. It's a reason not to crank my Boogie and drive everyone in the house out!

You certainly can record into Garageband. All you need is an audio interface with a mic pre-amp & a microphone....although most audio interfaces come with good software now a days. Guitar Center has a deal going right now with a DigiDesign MBox Mini, a condenser mic, and Protools LE software for ~$400. You could go cheaper (like a Line6 interface & a SM57) for about $200, but I think this extra $200 is worth it for a condenser and genuine Protools "Professional" software. You could go even cheaper and just get the newer USB microphones (with the audio interface built-in) and record right into Garageband.

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Gorgeous... sounds fantastic, looks fantastic, and it's smaller than hell.

Perfect.

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egr :: guitar spoken here

dammit! In aus, it's AU$439!

hmm, the Epiphone Junior seems to be a similar deal, 5W tube amp, and a lot cheaper here in aus than the fender ... anyone tried one?

Matty, I've never tried this amp but it has received a LOT of attention, and my understanding is that the amp sounds good out of the box, but sounds great after it's been modded -- I believe there is a company called Mercury that offers a Valve Junior mod kit with a better transformer and other improved components. Supposedly for the price of the amp + the mod kit, you get a really kick-butt amp for a great price.

Does the tiny speaker sound tinny in a large room? Would an amp like this sound better through some larger speakers? Or would mic'ing it be good enough?

EDIT: found this mod page for the epiphone ... WAY out of my leauge! Valve Junior Mods Part III

Depends on the room... I've played in cafe's with this amp that were fair large (seats 50) and it sounded great (granted, I was just doing lead embellishments over an acoustic amplified guitar.

It will sound good mic'd, but you'll have to rely on the monitors to hear yourself in a large room.

Again, after SERIOUS research, if you want to buy only one amp for the rest of your life, get a BadCat....anything else if a stop gap measure. If I were in my twenties, the investment would be a no brainer.

I'll add that I've probably had more than 10 amps in my many years of playing, and if I add up what I paid for each one of them at the time (Boogies, Fenders, Roland, Marshalls) I could have bought a high end Badcat today. And yes, a Badcat is noticeably better than my class A Mesa Boogie at producing both clean and dirty tones...(that's what happens when the other guitarist in your band has one). A Badcat is the best guitar amp I've played through, bar none....only a handwired Vintage Marshall comes close (and yet only produces one of it's tones). A Badcat is what the original Vox & Matchless inventor/designer has refined to be the perfect amp.

That said, the Champion (volume set to 12) is the only amp I know of that sounds really close to the Badcat but at a much lower volume.

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