Fender Champ 12

FOR WHAT I USED FOR IS MORE VERSATILE THAN MY FENDER DELUXE. I MAINLY PLAY IN THE HOUSE AT LOW VOLUME AND CRANK ON IT WHEN THE WIFE LEAVES.

I'M VERY NEW AT THE ELECTRIC GUITAR BIZ, BUT THIS LITTLE TUBE AMP SOUNDS MUCH BETTER THAN THE ONES THAT THE KIDS ARE PLUGGING IN THE GUITAR STORES NOW DAYS..(TWICE THE PRIST)

I BOUGHT IT USED FOR 160 AMERICAN DOLLARS, AND ONLY HAD IT FOR A COUPLE OF MONTHS. IT LOOKS THAT THE PREVIOUS OWNER DID NOT GIVE IT TOO MUCH USED.

N/A

I HAVE ONLY BEEN PLAYING FOR TWO YEARS. I OWN TWO AND A HALF ELECTRIC GUITARS, ONE IS A DELUXE STRAT, AND MY BABY A WHITE ASH TELE WITH NEW NOISELESS PICKUPS THAT I INTALLED' "THANK YOU VERY MUCH", THE HALF GUITAR IS A DANELECTRIC CONVERTIBLE THAT SEENS TO SOUND THE SAME WITH ANY AMP, AND EVEN UNPLUG.

Small all tube combo amp with 4 stages of 12AX7 & 1 single ended (true class A) 6L6 power tube. The speaker is a 12" Fender special design that barely fits in the cabinet. This amp is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It has a blackface style clean channel, reverb, and a nice bluesy to hard rock overdrive.

This amp absolutely sings with a strat. It does that great 3-dimensional fender clean, like a good old blackface. A humbucker based guitar makes this baby growl nicely. The overdrive channel is nice for blues or hard rock, but you have to back off the bass, pull out the treble knob (for mid boost), and set the gain at 5 or above to get high octane Boogie sounds. The reverb sounds very nice. It isn't quite as dramatic as a deluxe reverb, but it beats the hell out of boogie & blues junior verbs. The only negative thing about this amp is that you can't set the tone controls for both a great clean & high gain sound. You have to pick one & compromise on the other (of course this isn't a problem in the studio). Your best bet is to dial in a great clean & use the gain sparingly on the overdrive channel. This will give you sweet clean & blues sounds. You'll have to add a pedal to achieve a third (high gain) sound. This is one of the best sounding small amps around - it's a 10 for studio work!

It's over 10 years old & has never failed me. For insurance just bring 1 spare fuse, 2 spare 12AX7 tubes, & 1 spare 6L6 tube - it's a very low maintainence amp.

Never needed

If you can find a used one then grab it! This is the smallest big sounding amp around. It has over 10 watts of sweet, powerful class A tone.

previous reviews mention this cleary, this amp is loaded!

i play alt rock, with a strat with lace sensors, like billy corgan.
this amp has the sound i like at low volumes. the clean sounds are great too, but don't use that much , as i like the distortion so much! some people say it osunds like mesa. i've never hear d mesa, but i know crunch, and this things has it! reverb isn't loud, but i don't use it anyway amp has lot of mids, like tweed champs.
i've heard of a mod for this amp for better distortion. if i could find where it is ,i'd get it, though i doubt it would improve it much!

i smahsed some tubes a couple of times. and that made the fuse go. but i seems sturdy. haven't had it too long tohugh, so it's gets and 8

no email, very limited contact. i guess it's hard being a huge company.

i played a marhsall jcm combo that i wanted for a heavy sound. this amp get that sound, but much better cleans too. and it was cheap, and it's light and looks killer!

cd input, headphones, reverb, two channels, handwired, 12 inch speaker, class a.. wow!

mini boogie in fender clothing. really! better clean though. a very overlooked amp! have to try that torres kit though, as it already sounds great for recording and prctice, even some rehearsals!!
reverb atmospheric, if dim. not newarly as awful as blues juniors though. sounds more like subtle outboard than traditional fender...

mine really needs new tubes, but these are fenders, like a rock!

no contact, but since these are handwired with a small pc, i'm sure most techs could fix a problem. ( don't see why there would be a problem though!! unless you threw it!)

snag one while they're cheap! blows the blues junior out of the water!!

I use 2 of these with my 54 key Fender Rhodes for strereo fx...they sound great. The distortion works well for keys but sounds a bit thin for guitar. You cant argue with the features to $ ratio! A good buy for small clubs and home studio recording.

Input jack have gone on me twice...all other stuf works great.

From Fender?? R U kidding me???!

Probably less esoteric & classy than the older champs...but better workhorses & louder....A decent choice!

A 10 watt tube amp with a 12? speaker AND reverb! What more can I say? I?d heard of the Champ 12, but until I found this at a garage sale, I had no idea it was a tube amp. I was looking for an inexpensive low wattage tube amp for years and this one fell into my lap. It has a clean channel, overdrive channel, REVERB, CD/Tape input jacks and headphone jacks.

I play mostly blues and blues based rock with my 82 Gibson Les Paul Custom or my Fender 62 reissue Stratocaster. When I first plugged this amp in it sounded pretty good, but since I got it so cheap I had some upgrade ideas in mind. I replaced the original tubes with (2) Electro-Harmonix 12AX7s and (1) Svetlana 6L6GC. At the same garage sale I bought a Celestion Alnico Blue, 12 inch, 8 ohm, 15 watt speaker in the ORIGINAL box for $30 dollars! After I made those simple upgrades the tone of this amp went from pretty good to AWESOME! The power also seems to have increased with the upgrades as well. I?m not sure if it?s because the speaker or the tubes, but it now has enough volume to jam with my drummer. The clean channel is very smooth and sweet. The overdrive channel is great for everything except metal. This amp is perfect for me.

I?ve only had this amp for a month. It?s a pretty simple amp, so reliability shouldn?t be a problem.

out-of-production model

I?ve been playing for about 20 years. My other amps are a Fender Hot Rod Deville 4 x 10 and a Marshall Artist 4203. If this amp was lost or stolen, I?d probably cry. There?s no way I?d find a Fender Champ 12 and a Celestion Alnico Blue, both in brand new condition for $80 again! It wouldn?t be worth trying to duplicate this. It would just be too expensive. This amp sounded pretty good before I upgraded it. I would have been more than happy with it in its stock condition. Fortunately the guitar gods were kind to me when I stopped by the garage sale and found this amp and the Celestion speaker. The list price for the Celestion Blue is $295. I?ll bet that?s more than this amp sold for when it was brand new. I wish the reverb was better, but to even have reverb on a small 10 watt tube amp is great. This is an awesome little amp! It?s small, light and has great tone. What more can you ask for?

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Just a note to all who believe the Champ 12 was designed by Paul Rivera....it wasn't. Read about it in the book 'Fender Amps: The First Fifty Years'. This was one of the first tube amp efforts of the POST- CBS era Fender. If you have any doubts, email Paul himself at Rivera.com. He'll tell you he had nothing to do with the design of the Champ 12. FYI & caveat emptor!

Two channels, dual inputs, 1X12 in a cabinet not much bigger than 12 inches. Footswitchable between channels only (no reverb on/off). Heasdphone jack, etc.

I play an Ibanez Artist (1980), Gibson SG-90 and a Fender Mexicaster. The amp responds as one would expect between single coil and humbuckers. The Strat makes for some nice jangly tones, but has enough punch to get raunchy and feedback quite decently. I can get a fairly good saturated raunch with the humbuckers, taking into considertion the amp's size. The clean channel is good for some blues, but will not hold its cleanliness at higher volumes in a jam/gig setting; but again, remember the wattage. If you are looking for some versatile crunch to raunch in a small combo, this amp will perform fairly well in a jam or small gig.

Same input jack problems as stated elsewhere. One input is not functioning and the other will sometimes cut out if the cord isn't hanging just so. Hopefully this is easily remedied when I get around to it. Otherwise, no complaints

I was looking for an amp that I could easily carry around to basement jams (I also have a Fender Concert that can be a bit of a beast to lug around). I bought this used out of the classifieds from a guy who wanted an acoustic amp and had this baby sitting around collecting dust. It is in mint condition (not a scratch) and when I test drove it and saw that it was a tube amp, I forked over the $100 Canadian no questions asked. I have been very happy with this amp and so has my back!!

I bought this amp with the original warranty-certificate etc. This amp has, according to Fender, only 10 watts RMS, not 12 what everyone here suggests. I think 12 is for the size of the speaker.

This is a 12 watt, single 6L6 valve combo. It's very light and portable.I bought it primarily to do studio dates where I needed something small and versatile. It's a good wee amp, but not loud enough to play alongside a medium-muscle drummer. I've used it mic'd up on bigger stages, however, with reasonable results. There could be more in the way of tonal versatility, but basically it's all there.

This amp, ironically (are you listening, Alanis?) sounds better with Gibson than Fender guitars. The latter sound slightly thin; you have to wind the treble control way back for a balanced tone. Gibsons sound absolutely the business with this amp. The dirty channel sounds poor until you really wind the volume up. Could the dirty channel on this amp actually be a solid state stage? that's what it sounds like sometimes. For a killer bluesy sound, plug a 335 into a Boss cs2 compressor with the gain full up and the compression somewhere below halfway and plug into the 'clean' channel up full. For a fab funky rhythm sound, try pickups 1+2 on a good strat into the above compressor and turn the 'clean' sound down to halfway. Add a Boss acoustic simulator to the above and try the neck pickup for extra sonic transparency and funky righteousness.

It's never failed me.

N/A

I've been a guitarist for nearly 30 years, and own Rivera, Boogie, Marshall and Laney amps in addition to the inevitable (and nowadays indespensable) Pod. This amp is a useful tool, but losing it wouldn't be the end of the world. I like the weight, I hate the buzzy distortion channel at low volume. I have effects pedals which do that stuff far, far better. It has that 'small' slightly boxy sound so accurately modelled by Line6 in their 'small tweed' setting, which is very easy to place in a mix.