Thank you for calling out the 15K in the tone stack of the Champs. I replaced the 15K with the 6.8K resistor and swapped out the 8" speaker for the Warehouse G8C that you you used on a recent repair. What a great sounding low power amp. My '69 Vibro Champ sounds amazing. Have you considered running for President? You have my vote.

The charm of the Champ is the 8 speaker. I did the MojoTone 10 cab and swapped it back,

I love Champs and Vibro Champs! I love them even more through my 2x12 cabinet! Great demo, Lyle.

the 8" is way more chimey and beautiful. the 12" actually has more midrange honk.

First amp I built was a blackface Champ circuit in a head cabinet. I ran it through my 2x12 loaded with Celestions and it sounded huge. I made a 1x12 combo cab for my tweed Champ clone, and it's a monster with a Weber 12F150A in it. And still light.

I reconed my champ's 8in speaker. Really puts out now, and handles loud volumes much better than in its previous condition.

Speakers are so underated :)

Great demo, thanks Lyle. I've never heard a Champ through a proper speaker before! You might have tempted me to build one.....

I built a new cabinet, covered it with tolex and installed my 1979 Vibro Champ chassis, 2 x 10, 8 ohm speakers, wired for 4 ohms. It has plenty of volume and range of tones, and is still light enough to carry around. Of course I kept the original cabinet with the stock AlNiCo 8 inch speaker just in case it ever is sold (when I'm gone).

Having seen this a couple of weeks ago, I bought an inexpensive cabinet on Etsy from a guy who makes them in Utah and put in it a reissue Jensen ceramic speaker. Huge improvement

Sounds decent with the 8" to be fair. They are made for practice/recording and tone was not as important as volume back in the day. Now we are greedy and want both 🙂

Awesome!

I play mine through a 1955 jensen p12r in a rather deep open back cab and its night and day compared to the original 8”. Very lush bottoms and a stunningly chimey top end.

I might be the only one that thinks the actual champ speaker sounds much better. It is an effect. And by using the 1x12 it basically sounds like you hooked the guitar into effects unit that's simulating a champ.

Lyle - Hope your Excalibre pieces and parts make it into your shop with no issues or shenanigans. I'm definitely looking forward to hearing that Top Boost, Excalibre Part Deux veraion :)

Neat one, Lyle. I put a WGS AlNiCo into my 64 VC and it sounds wonderful - much MUCH better than the orig. CTS AlNiCo. Then I made the "mistake" of hooking the amp up to a Webber P12N and my jaw dropped. As usual, your point is well taken.

I built a champ circuit that used 6SL7 instead of a 12AX7. I run it through a 2-12” speaker loaded with Celestion Blues. It’s sounds glorious. The cabinet is switched for series and parallel.

I have a 5 watt Princeton head clone built by second chance amps (got it off reverb) and it sounds SO good through my milkman 2x12 cab with Jupiter ceramic speakers. They also make a champ clone head I am thinking of purchasing.

I recently built a Champ with solid state rectification and a switch to select either a 6V6 or an EL84 for the output section. It sounds really great and with the mid boost push pull and bright push pull it works great with single coils and humbuckers (the humbuckers sound really great with the 15k mid resistor and the bright cap selected). I really couldnt be happier with how it turned out but im considering adding a choke a la 5E1 lol. I added a Hammond 194G choke to my Marshall DSL100HR and put in on a switch with the stock resistor so you can select one or the other for a different feel and i really love the way it feels and sounds with the choke but being able to get a less full/immediate feel by selecting the resistor instead is really nice. But thats a 100watt push pull amp so a choke is going to make a bigger difference in it than i imagine it would in a class A single ended amp like a Champ. But it might help to make the amp even quieter i would think. I added an artificial center tap to my build so its already really quiet unless you turn the volume up really high. Chokes are just so cheap and easy to install so i feel like i might as well lol. For a company selling thousands of units i can see chokes being a excessive cost but for a single amp/single choke its only about $15-$20 for a quality hammond choke. But i have a big problem fixing things that arent broke so maybe i should just leave well enough alone lol.

I had a silver face Champ back in the ‘70s, when they were just used, not vintage. I never liked it until I plugged it into a 12’ speaker. As you see here, it sounds completely different, and much fuller.

Champs have a very pure signal path that translates into really awesome tone. When you really push an amp like this with a small speaker, you don't get a big clean sound with a lot of dynamic range. That's not what these amps are good for. What you get is amazing touch sensitivity, chime, and growl at a modest volume. Also, a really big part of the sound is the sensitivity and distortion of the small speaker. When you substitute with a larger speaker the amp is not powerful enough to give you the punch or the speaker distortion of a smaller speaker, and you lose a lot of the magic.

I had a similar experience with the Vox VBM-1 (Brian May "Deacy" copy) when I first got it. Through its internal speaker, you get a very nasal, mid-focused tone, like many of Brian May's leads (unsurprisingly). However, into a 2x12 or 4x12, you get a much bigger, ballsier sound that's almost like a 5150.

I started using a 12" Jensen with my 5F2A and it really came alive. It was like getting a completely different amp.

That looks like my second amp (first one didn’t work) I got in 1980. I love running my Swart Junior and running it through my 2x12 with golds!

i run my champ into a 1x12 cab with a 8 ohm evm12L it sounds great . i was told the ohm mismatch wasnt bad enough to hurt the amp , its a full big fat sound

I put a warehouse g8c in place of the no name junk it had when a friend gifted me a 74 champ even my picky Amp tech at the Amp hole shop likes it but a extension cab with 12 sounds good I'm gonna try it thanks 😊

I run an Eminence 820H hemp cone alnico in my 69’ champ which is extraordinarily better than the stock speaker. I’d buy it again. Sounds beautiful and no external cab.

I’ve a Clark Lil Bit 5f1 tweed champ I got in 2005. Came with a 8” Weber Alnico Classic speaker. Tungsol 12ax7, NOS RCA power, NOS RCA 5y3. I mostly play Gibson guitars with p 90’s. Crank the amp and use the guitar tone and volume controls. I get tone like howling rabid she wolves in heat at midnight. I can go from Keith Richards to Billy Gibbons just using my pinky. The tweed champ is the sound of rock and roll.

the major prb of Champ is not the 8" speaker (unless it is defective of course) but the small Out Transformer. The Tiny Champ OT cuts bass and middle frequencies, they tried to compensate it with the 15kohm mid resistor, but that is not enough, tiny OT = tiny sound. Moreover, the one power tube Single Ended topology of the Champ requires a bigger OT compared to OT of a PushPull power stage in order to reproduce the same bass response. Said that, 4watt tube amp is too loud at home and not enough loud for gigging

Thanks, I bought a 1971 original Fender Champ speaker and reconed it to replace an aftermarket speaker in my 1976 Champ. I put a video up comparing what was in it and the '71. I think I'm going to try a 4 ohm 12" speaker after watching this. ?? What should the speaker's wattage be since it's a 6 watt amp ?? 🎸 thank you

I love the champ with a 12” speaker I will find another one some day

0:59 1:18 quick comparison for people

I thought the original 8 inch sounded beautiful.

I am a Champ freak..got a bunch of them--I use the Weber speakers 8 inch 4 ohm and they sound great! use them on jazz duet gigs w/an upright bass player and also in the studio,pretty much on every session..

I’ve put an alnico Jensen 8 now if I put it past 2 it’s mega load it has a voltage control on back so can use anywhere in world.

Please, which 12" 4 ohm speaker might you recommend? - I'm going to follow your leas and slot my '61 blackface Champ into a RawCabs 1x12 cab. Thank you!

I run my 5F1 clone through a Celestion V30 and its glorious.

Most of us have home studios and DAW recording platforms with way too many options for guitar or bass tones and settings. The Champ can't play any gigs, it's a sweet little tube amp but has no application these days. Clapton and many early artists used these in the studio because they could get great sustain from these little guys, not so now. My amps are all Fender vintage from 15 to 40 watts all tube which are great for gigs. The price for Champs is off the hook in my opinion, people are listing these from $600 to beyond a $1000. All I can say is the Fender Champ is a cute little amp. Maybe for a collector. Still learning to play but have been at it for more than 50 years now. Opened for many major artists, still having fun. Peace Los Angeles

That lick even sounds sweet through an old broken shitty speaker!

I built a couple of tweed princeton copies; a 5f2a with an 8 inch speaker and a 5c2 with a 10. The 5c2 sounds way better, but until now I mostly chalked up the difference to the octal preamp tube. Neither speaker is anything to write home about (warehouse g8c and celestion 10 30 respectively,) but the difference seems a whole lot more than 2 inches of cone could account for.

I have a 5f1 champ. It's got enough low end to use a bass speaker for a bass player!

Regardless of any speaker I connected to my Vibro Champ, that included an eight inch Warehouse replacement, an Eminence Red Fang Alnico and a few others, it always lacked range. Comparatively, my Princeton Reverb with a Celestion 10" Greenback or an Eminence blue frame alnico provided a very usable sound not achieved with the Champ. Sold the Champ and don't miss it.

I don’t know what fender put in these things, but I can tell you a Vox Pathfinder 15R 8” speaker can sound massive! I even installed a vintage Jensen C8R that had been reconed with a hemp cone - oh my god! Saying 8” speakers are small sounding is just a cop out - there are 8” speakers that sound huge, WGS makes one, Jupiter makes one, etc

Joe Walsh said he recorded “Funk 49” with a Telecaster through a Champ.

Unfortunately 4 ohm 12" speakers are impossible to come by in Australia, shipping costs are insane

It was good enough for Clapton.

A champ might be suitable for Joe Walsh if a guy wants to make hit records with a tele. Just saying.

How much are these worth these days?

that champ has not much gain, if the volume was at 7!? my vibro-champs start to break up at around 4 and have a great classic rock sound at 7. there are new 8" speakers, that sound pretty good. most of my small amps have new speakers, as the originals blew at some point. I use them with a 2x12 too, if I want to play louder. I like 8" and the 2x12...

Computer speakers themselves are hardly a legitimate point of reference.

Isn't it an 8 ohm 10 inch? It is on my super champ. No less than 8 ohms.

Champs shouldn't have bigger speakers. Buy a bigger amp if you want that. A good 15-20 watt Weber Alnico speaker and you'll have a great sounding amp. Lugging an extra cabinet around or taking up space at home is defeating the purpose. I