Fender Champion 600 5W 1x6 Combo Amp

Anyone play one of these Amps?......They sure look cool!....

Search "Champion 600" in this and other forums. There are a few monster threads about them and mods for them. I own one myself and it's a great amp for around the house and recording without a doubt.

As mentioned, there are lots-o-threads here about the little Champ 600, accessible with a search.

That said, I got one a few months ago as my first tube amp. It succeeded in being a nice practice amp in its own right and it also succeeded in it sinister ulterior purpose of hooking me on tube amps in general. So I now have one of the Champ's bigger cousins (heavy-duty components, 12" speaker, oversize cabinet, hand-wired) and on balance I think the little one does not suffer overmuch in comparison.

The biggest limitation sound-wise is the 6" speaker in a very small enclosure. When you push the limits of its volume it tends to either get a boxy sort of compressed sound or the speaker sells out with a rather unpleasant breakup that's best avoided in my opinion (some people probably like it). But in the clean to preamp-distortion range it has a very friendly sound and works great at low volumes with an overdrive pedal. There is also, of course, next to no real bass response and the sounds gets a bit muddy if you try and force it to produce significant volume on low-E string notes. But there's really no way around it if you want something in such a small, cute form factor.

The Champion 600 is very living-room friendly. It sits unobtrusively on a table (and sounds much better than on the floor IMO) and has a warm, retro look about it about that seems to be wife-approval-friendly. Mine was quite reliable but I immediately discarded the Chinese no-name 12AX7 preamp tube. Seriously, that is the one compromise for price that was inexcusable. Any time I drove the amp hard enough to not be squeeky-clean the (early) breakup on that crummy tube was ear-stabbing. Maybe with single coils and no pedals you could get by with it but I'd recommend going ahead and putting a $9 Electro-Harmonix or better yet a $15 JJ brand 12AX7 in there from the get-go. Ultimately, I found a used Japanese near-NOS quality preamp tube on eBay for under $10 that really sweetened up the sound of mine but a JJ or some other quality modern tube will do the trick for under 20 bucks. The power tube sounds pretty good as is and I wouldn't replace it right off.

I own one that use as a backup for harp. I toss it behind my seat. I also use it for some practice and jams. I had some fun getting the amp to where I like it. First thing was to replace the cheapo tubes, it changed the quality immensely. Next I removed the fixed tone stack, and replaced the coupling cap with a .1 This really opened up the tone and increased the total volume of this little amp. I finally switched the crappy stock speaker with a nicer 8" Magnavox speaker from my supply of parts. By changing the grill cloth at the same time , it allows better sound and looks sort of cool too. I was at first totally unimpressed with this amp, but now it is one of my favorite little toys.

http://harmony.demont.net/myharmonies/Jaybird/champ600new.jpg
http://harmony.demont.net/myharmonies/Jaybird/Champ600Grill.jpg

Before I bought my Epi Valve Jr combo, I tried the Champion 600 and also the Peavey ValveKing Royal 8.

The Royal 8 looked good on paper, feature wise, with gain/master, tone control and headphone out. However, it sounded worst of the three, i.a. with fizzy distorsion and "rubbery" speaker.

The Champion 600 sounded better, but IMO a bit thin and anemic as compared with the VJ, probably due to the small speaker.

I quite like the clean sound of the VJ, which has some "edge" to it. However, it's way too loud to achieve power stage breakup at home volume.

Klas

Klas,

In my experience, the Champ 600 is way too loud to get any power-tube distortion before that little cheap 6" speaker packs up, leaves the room and passes gas in my general direction on the way out.