72' Fender Vibro Champ BLOWS UP!! Pt.1

A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to have the chance to own a piece of Texas Rock and Roll History...
Texas Rockabilly Legend, Matt Hole was in the process of liquidating some of his long time vintage gear, and as soon as I saw the ad, I KNEW I had to have something! I mean, I grew up listening to Matt Hole and the Hot Rod Gang at local clubs, and venues. Besides having one of the most bad ass names I've ever heard, it is not unusual at all to see crowds of women on stage singing background vocals while Matt tears it up!
This gem in particular is a 1972 Fender Silverface Vibro Champ. Typically, amps of this age will need a cap job among other things, but we sat down with it after a retube, and speaker replacement to see how it sounded...
it was AWESOME!
until it went silent and popped... and then came the smoke...
Pt 2 coming next week!

[@jeramyashlock]

Your reaction was priceless! 😂 You let the magic smoke escape.

[@nicero870]

I’m so glad fender just released the Vibro Champ reissue. I was close to buying a vintage one several times and decided against it because I don’t want to deal with all that.

[@gclaytony]

Yea, that’s what tube electronics are good for. Grew up testing tubes in my dad’s shop as my first job when I was six (62 now). Tubes are degrading from the day they start to run and degrading the components connected to them. Still sorta ok, until you start making repairs. The new tubes are running ‘at spec’, but all the caps, resistors, chokes, and transformers have gotten used to the lower outputs from the old tubes. Now faced with new ‘hot’ inputs, the other components start to fail. As the population of old tube TV sets aged, we started to let repaired sets run for a few days to reduce the number of ‘call backs’ as other old components would fail. It wasn’t all of them, and not every time. But it was often enough it was necessary to keep customers happy. If reliability is an absolute must, tubes are nit for you.

[@gpower]

My '78 did the same thing shortly after I got it.. I had to replace a resistor, coupling cap and output tube. Now it's getting noisy so I ordered a complete cap kit for it.

[@TheAVJ2]

huh i didnt even know it was that awesome

[@lionhead7497]

HAHAHAHAHA! That was hilarious. Ive got one to and have had this happen to me twice now. Still worth every bit though, they are awesome.

[@babydaddy8224]

Oh god, I just watched it again, that end is heartbreaking lol

[@lowered18]

i have the same amp, ive had it for two years so far, i have not turned past five, i have a new speaker, but afraid to change, it sounds amazing, i am afraid of it blowing up, , thank you for sharing

[@kinsmenmusicofficial]

thanks for watching!!

[@biffleonetti5298]

It's so much funnier when it's somebody else's amp poppin' & smokin'

[@mrkite89]

They sound at their best just before exploding, nothing new! ;)

[@dimitrisaivaliotis5616]

Hhhhaaa.. boom

[@isaacjohnson.]

Oh man! I feel for you, that literally smoked out of the inputs. Sounded so so good though.

[@kinsmenmusicofficial]

its back! and rockin! but wow my heart burst when it happened lol

[@Christofficer0317]

All of your videos need the Tom Petty and Sheryl Crow treatment 😁

[@SurJones]

9:01 We call those smokin' barrels

[@babydaddy8224]

Dude that totally happened to my 74 vibrolux reverb a week after purchase, I feel the pain

[@kinsmenmusicofficial]

babydaddy oof! Hoping it was a quick fix for ya!

[@babydaddy8224]

kinsmen this was years ago back in the 90s, but yeah, I think I picked it about two days later and cost around 100$ if memory serves. I still have it actually, but I barely play it because it is LOUD!! I’ve actually been politely asked to leave before at a smaller gig one time in a bar because we scared the patrons away with our volume! Which is why I was watching this vid in the first place, because you can crank these little amps. Was thinking about picking one up

[@bmwilson79]

So what happened? Did the power transformer blow? Replacing caps is supposed to prevent that.

[@SDPickups]

I bet you didn't change the filter caps?

[@kinsmenmusicofficial]

did try the caps, but think there could be some other issues as well.. sending out soon for propper checkup.

[@co20ca05]

a couple smoke rings came out XD

[@kinsmenmusicofficial]

lol

[@dnantis]

Well, this does not happen to Fenders only, I have a 1984 Peavey tube amp, which I did no used for years, and after 30 mins at reasonable Volume it started smoking but turn it Off while still making sound ..... and still have not fixed it yet because it is a VIRGIN tube amp and over here, I don't trust any amp tech to fix it ! I am gonna try to fix it myself or send it to a qualified amp guitar tech ! .....yes no worries, now I know ALL about the LETHAL currents inside these tube amps thanks to ALL YT techs ( THANKS TO ALL OF THEM) , so I will work on it using a huge isolation transformer !! Plus other precautions too !

[@fishpotpete]

Excellent vid! Great playing and the Champ sounded perfect until...

[@deegz]

Great video!! Too bad it blew up man. Would you happen to have the details for the Weber speaker you installed? I was thinking of putting in a Weber 8A125 in my '68 Vibro Champ but wasn't sure about the ohm or watts All the Best! Carlos

[@kinsmenmusicofficial]

deegz hey Carlos! Thanks for watching! The Weber was actually meant for the champ! So the ohmages are lined up and correct! Really cool, breaks up beautifully and doesn’t get fizzy or buzz saw-ish. A little dark but not in an unusable way. There’s a second video with it all tuned up if you’d like to see it’s on our channel!

[@deegz]

kinsmen Thank you for the reply. I did watch both parts and the amp sounds fantastic. The reason I asked is because Weber offers 3.2ohms and 4ohms. They also have the option to go with a 20watt or 30 watt speaker. All for the silver face champs of course. I was just curious what the specs were on your particular speaker. All the best!!

[@mikefromusa6902]

Hahaha! I would have left it alone. I wonder if it was the correct impedance/different wattage rating with the new speaker (?). I have had this happen before and that was the issue.

[@kinsmenmusicofficial]

There was really no way, the entire amp has been redone because of previous damage. The speaker needed complete replacing unfortunately. thanks for watching!

[@user-hi6uh8sb3m]

I think the speaker you took out to replace wasn’t even the original speaker for that amp

[@kinsmenmusicofficial]

It was a replacement made specifically by warehouse speakers for vibro champs.

[@bobbyoneill2323]

@@kinsmenmusicofficial looked like a Weber speaker not a Warehouse

[@kinsmenmusicofficial]

@@bobbyoneill2323 oops my bad!

[@SurJones]

FREEE BIRRRRRDDDD!!!!

[@kbkman7742]

Exploding cap?

[@kinsmenmusicofficial]

still not sure, no one's been able to fix all the problems yet...

[@yakacm]

I wonder if that has had any circuit mods, cuz mine doesn't sound anything like that, it hardly starts to break up even at 10.

[@alexanderkuhn2298]

I work on these a lot and you should get clipping starting after 4-6 on the dial on these depending on some things. 10 on the volume should sound pretty overdriven. The Vibro Champs are cleaner than the older one knob ones but they certainly will break up if you push them. I see a lot of these on my bench that are clean up to 10 and the majority of them have drifted or leaking components in the preamp or some other issue.

[@andymarshman9546]

most likely the 6V6 died while he played full volume and the bias resistor died with it.

[@kinsmenmusicofficial]

turns out that the tube sockets were loose the whole time.

[@frederickelectrick6137]

🎶🔥

[@deepwater2652]

Buh-bye!