Small tube amp for home: Champion or Class5?

Class 5 vs. Champion 600 the Class 5 will win and I am a fan of the stock C600's.

Where the Champion succeeds at is that its very easily mod-able and you can make it your own for very little money. $50 Weber Alinco speaker, $30 in tubes and a couple bucks in grill cloth and you have one sweet sounding amp that is all your own for less then a Class 5.

If your more interested in plugging into the amp and playing instead of playing with the amp, go with the Class 5.

 

Of the three choices, I think the BJ will work best in an apartment.

 

57 champ is my choice out of your 3, I would recommend however either building your own if that interests you. If not there are some terrific builders out there who make wonderful 5F1 clones at a fraction of the cost of fenders reissue, with better components and more faithful to the original circuit. If you are set on owning a fender then my suggestion is the EC vibro champ, same price as the 57 reissue, but has an attenuater and tremolo. I have owned a C5 and a champ 600, they both fall far short of the 5F1 Champ IMO.

 

For one fifth the price of the C5, I'm forced
to stay with the Champ 600.

I can hook it up to a 1X12 and it has that
personality. Or I can hook it up to my 1X15
with a vintage JBL D140F and it is delicious.



Or, I can just tote it around by it self,

Tabdog

 

You would be surprised what the 600
sounds like when running an efficient
1X12 and 1X15 at the same time.

It's big and loud,

Tabdog

 

Go with the Marshall JTM1 or JMP1 (my favorite 1 watt model) you'll need the .1 watt mode for apartment jamming and that is what these amps do very well.

 

The Marshall C5 can be attenuated for home use to .5 watts by switching the rear selector to phones out, and plugging the speaker jack half way into this jack.

On the newer ones you dont even need to do that.

At low volumes, Ive found NMV amps to sound better. Especially in apartments.

 

I hated my class 5 at first but I liked it much better when I ran it into a 1x12 with a 25w Greenback. When I sold it I played it one last time before letting it go and had a bit of sellers remorse. Not what you would call a smooth warm overdrive. Nothing like the Marshall superleads and bassmans I've owned. More like a cutting vicious nasty rude type of sound but not necessarily in a bad way.

As far as using it in the living room. It takes 10 times as many watts to double the perceived loudness you hear. so The Class 5 is roughly half as loud as a 50 watt tube amp. I can attest to this. The class 5 is the loudest 5 watt amp I've owned. It seemed at least as loud as my 12 watt Traynor Darkhorse.