Silver face Fender Guitar Champ gain enhancement Modification offered D-lab Electronics New life

Рет қаралды 6,035

2 жыл бұрын

Is your Champ suffering from low gain, unresponsive tone controls, well I have the answer. D-lab electronics can bring new life to your 70's vintage Fender Champ or Vibro champ. A little fully reversible modification. The initial design was to keep the amp clean/quiet. Not sure why they decided to do this, but to appreciate the full capability of your Champ, I have the solution. My modification by itself will improve performance. However for ultimate performance, a complete capacitor replacement is recommended. So, send your Champ to my shop. I will ensure it is performing above original specifications.

Пікірлер: 45

@Retro.Studio 2 жыл бұрын

At the beginning i told to myself..this Champ screams for a Jensen C8R..and there it was 👍🏼

@rupertcrighton4107 2 жыл бұрын

Terry, I restrung my guitar and tried my Champ out finally since receiving it this week after your refurb. It sounds better than new with a sweet and gritty Fender tone. Thank you so much. Rupert

@garypannone7755 9 ай бұрын

Wow that Jenson worked wonders.

@youren8 5 ай бұрын

I have a 73 Champ and it totally rocks. No mods.

@rciancia 2 жыл бұрын

Terry, you are the master of Fender amps..... great difference here.

@tomk1tl39 2 жыл бұрын

Terry, definitely put the Fender sound back into that Champ....another great job......I did the mod to my home built 5F2A and it made a big difference....I will swap out the 8' speaker to a 10" !

@voxpathfinder15r 2 жыл бұрын

That old Jensen just needs a solid recone.

@ojaisherpa 2 жыл бұрын

Nothing wrong with a stock Champ. cmon now

@chriscimino7854 2 жыл бұрын

Very good Terry. Can I tell you what I did. A long time ago I got a schematic of a Marshall Super Lead. I can't remember the year it was made but it was late 1960s. I wired the preamp and driver the same as in the schematic except the phase inverter and output. The phase inverter was a 6c4 and the outputs were 2 50L6 radio tubes and were DC series string heaters. It was line operated without a power transformer with a polarized plug. I wired a voltage doubler that put out 360VDC and had the typical filter network. Now the max.plate voltage of a 50L6 is 200 volts but it seemed ok with 360 with enough negative grid bias. I was really surprised at how much power and sound quality it has. My professional guitar friend came over and tested it and he said it sounded just like a 50 watt Marshall with 20 watts and had lots of gain for hard rock and had a mid scoop, presence, bass, mid, treble, master and overdrive all part of the preamp and driver. I mounted the circuits in an old stamped steel bathroom light fixture and drilled the holes for the tube sockets and electrolytics switches pots..etc...the output transformer is a Hammond 20watt. The speaker is a 10" Celestial. The whole assembly is mounted in a carpeted speaker enclosure that normally goes in a car. I cut an opening in the enclosure for the pots and switches and cut an opening in the back to mount the chassis inside. I won't sell it because its line operated and I only use it in my house where I know the wiring is correct

@pickholder6189 2 жыл бұрын

Think I liked the stock sound quite honestly. If you want more gain add a pedal onto the front end. Maybe D Lab should do a ECC83 preamp pedal?

@amoruzz 10 ай бұрын

1996, I had my Champ modded by who was a heavily advertised amp guru at the time who offered an overpriced "tweed" mod which involved a cap and resistor. When I got it back it sounded much better, but unfortunately a few weeks later it quit working. I opened it up and the cap on the board that he added had exploded, so I acquired a schematic and put it back to stock silver face specs. Works fine, but sounds tired for lack of a better word. Fresh tubes and all.. I have a reissue two tone Champion 600 with a mod I did and put a replacement "Weber VST" alnico speaker in it and you wouldn't know that it was the same amplifier! Incredible tone and volume.

@franky2shoes660 2 жыл бұрын

I just got around 3 watts outta a 6dt6 radio tube at about 11000 ohm plate load (6v6 transformer 2x8ohm speakers in series at 230ish volts) awesome!

@brentstewart59 2 жыл бұрын

Still pretty brittle... it's an improvement for sure but still not quite there yet... I suspect this would sound much better with some tone stack tweaks to smooth it out. On something like this you can't have too much gain... run it dimed and roll back the guitar's volume pot to clean it up some

@haggismacphee2005 2 жыл бұрын

Hey good morning! You re-built my champ a few years ago seem to have twice the volume and power awesome job but I blew the 1A 120 V fuse! Do you carry/sell those? Thought it would be easy but can’t seem to find locally. Thanks!

@michaelinglis567 4 ай бұрын

I'm guessing this mod was removing the negitive feedback loop (or maybe that was not all of it but some of it)? I built my champ to have a switch to add the negative feedback loop or remove it. When the NFB loop is active the amp is unsurprisingly cleaner but has less high end and doesn't get as raspy. Without the negitive feedback loop it's brighter and livlier for sure. I like both but if I had to have one way or the other I'd go no feedback loop or a better implemented one. I also built mine with a 6V6 and an EL84 option for the power section. I added a switch to select one or the other power tube. I got the idea from the old mesa blue angel amps. I basically just looked up the schematic for the blue angel and that told me just enough to figure out the rest, well that and asking lots of questions on the forums lol. The switch basically just lifts the cathode of one tube while keeping the other connected to ground. Doing it like this hasn't resulted in any noticeable cathode stripping issues etc that some people worry about with this method. Infact my power tubes have lasted a little bit more than a year and a half of fairly regular, intensive use. I used a JJ ECC83 for the preamp, a Soviet era NOS 6N6C (reasonablly priced NOS 6V6 equivalent) and a JJ EL84. All three tubes are going strong. But I go to crazy lengths to get my tubes to last as long as possible with as much as they cost now days. For example I have line voltage in my house that fluctuates -16v to +13v throughout the year with swings of more than 10v some days being common. So I bought a variac and modded it with a digital readout display and I use that to supply all my amps with exactly 120v. And I meticulously bias my fixed bias Marshall regularly to keep it from drifting and straining the tubes. I'm about to build a display I can add to the Marshalls chassis to always give me a bias read out for each tube pair. And for the cathode biased champ I didn't reply on what works for most people. Instead I took readings from the amp when it's supplied with a consistent 120v and chose a reasonable resistance that will allow to amp to have all the tone without putting anyore strain on the tubes then nessesary. Before I did all that I was burning a whole in my pockets buying tubes that would barely last a year (if that made it a year I was thrilled lol). But now I'm finally getting at least a year and a half out of my power tubes which I think for the price is the bare minimum they should last. Anyways, how's that for a ramble!?

@harunkurhan2725 2 жыл бұрын

👍👏😊

@jordanharzke9643 2 жыл бұрын

Does this include the champion 40 and 100?

@kengevers8738 2 жыл бұрын

C'mon Terry, show the guys what you're doing. If you keep the repairs a secret 😉, then we don't learn. 🤪

@d-labelectronics 2 жыл бұрын

This was covered in a few vids back, VibroChamp

@kengevers8738 2 жыл бұрын

I know what you did, but there are fellas who want to learn. Just saying!

@kengevers8738 2 жыл бұрын

Terry, as you are well aware, there CAN be issues in the Champ amp. Hum, motor boating and gain structure. You made that amp sound pretty good. It would be nice for someone like you to go through some of those issues to make the Champ a beast that it should be. I think the f/e filtering ground should be rerouted to the f/e as well. Anyway, you're doing great stuff. We appreciate it. Happy Easter 🐣

@ross3818 2 жыл бұрын

@@kengevers8738 but you said "we".

@wayshot 2 жыл бұрын

IIRC, he changed the 12AX7 plate load resistors from 100k to 220k and the 6V6 grid leak resistor from 220k to 560k.

@timmooney7528 2 жыл бұрын

Guitarists like Brian May used what was a called a boost pedal instead of a distortion pedal to get a little more gain without making it muddy. The same can be done with an EQ pedal, and just crank up the pedal's output going into the amp.

@sfmag1 2 жыл бұрын

Hey that old jensen had a fatter warmer sound.

@stevem.1853 2 жыл бұрын

I've heard that Fender had a vested interest in not making their cheap amps sound to good... I think fender thought of the champ like think of their cheap amps that you now get with a squier strat pack (guitar+amps package)

@cchavez248 2 жыл бұрын

Dumb idea of CBS Fender, the cheap amps don't cost that much more to make them sound better, like the Tweed Champs. Thinking like that just makes room for your competitors to fill the gap you leave. In fact, Silverface Fenders were a bit of a dumb move for CBS, rock and blues players drifted over to Marshalls as many Silverface Fenders became too trebly and clean for anyone other than Jazz and Country players.

@stevem.1853 2 жыл бұрын

@@cchavez248 fender definitely lost their way in the 70s. Have a silver face twin reverb. I don't know what they were thinking when they added the master volume pull boost... How to make a Twin sound like 🤮-smh

@cchavez248 2 жыл бұрын

@@stevem.1853 Lol, I bet I can beat it's sound with my tweed champ miced through the P.A.! 😂

@stevem.1853 2 жыл бұрын

@@cchavez248 undoubtedly 👍👍👍

@cchavez248 2 жыл бұрын

@@stevem.1853 I think it's hilarious how we have so many people trying to get good guitar sounds at lower volumes but they seem to overlook the fact that they can just carry a tiny champ to any gig and mic it through any decent PA and smoke even the best modeler!