Fender Vibro Champ

1966 Fender Vibro Champ.
Very cool practice amp and I am told its excellent to record with in the studio.
1 Channel, Switchable Tube Vibrato, No headphone jack.
I use this to practice in my computer room because it does not get feedback from the monitor.
Its got 6 watts of raw tube power and will run you out of a normal sized room.

I play a ESP KH-2 with dual EMG 81 humbuckers and it sounds great through this little amp!
It will play well all music styles and even sounds good with newer effects pedals through it.
It is dead quiet unless you turn on the vibrato then it has a muffled vibrato sound when you put your ear to it,
I made a really wild sitar sound mixing the vibrato and a Boss Phaser pedal!
The little guy starts to break up at about 6 or 7 and will play clear all the way to 10 unless your using a lot of bass strings.
With a distortion pedal at low to medium volumes it sounds brutal!

This was a gift from the original owner and I am still using the original tubes and speaker!

N/A

I have had this a little over a month now and plan on selling it on eBay to buy a Marshall half stack. That sounds crazy don't it?
I love everything about it but I am poor and need a better Metal amp to play out of.
I wish I had the original pedal with it.

My Vibro Champ was built in 1975 so it's a "Silerface". It's in excellent condition. One channel/Two inputs/Volume/Treble/Bass/tremolo Speed/tremolo Itensity/On-Off switch/Pilot lamp with red jewel. 5Y3 rectifier tube/12AX7 preamp tube/12AX7 tremolo tube/6V6 power tube/RCA footswitch jack for tremolo/6 watts/8" EH replacement speaker. I suppose one could call the Vibro Champ a classic.

Can we agree that these are some of the best sounding small-format low-wattage tube amps ever? I absolutely love this amp. I scored it from a friend who gave it to me for bailing him out of jail. A few years ago I got an inexpensive but surprisingly decent Electro-Harmonix replacement speaker from Elderly Instruments to replace the (no joke) 8" woofer frankensteined from a home stereo speaker that was in the Vibro Champ when it was bestowed upon me. I'm thinking about replacing the EH with a Weber. Probably not a bad idea. I've experimented with a number of different tubes. I currently have a Sovtek 12AX7WA (the lowest power 12AX7 in the Sovtek line) as the preamp tube. It sounds ok, however I would never recommend it to anyone else. It was the only thing at my local guitar store and it sounded better than the Ruby tube I had in there before. I like EH tubes in the pre and power sections, but I'm waiting for delivery of my new JJ/Tesla tubes which I believe will be big time keepers. Also considering using a 12AU7 tube for the Tremolo section. Even with all my tube experiments this amp retains a quality of sound all it's own. When it starts overdriving, it's like eating a buttermilk biscuit. I imagine when I get around to ordering the Weber speaker, it'll be like biscuits n' gravy. I was just commenting to my wife the other day how great the Vibro Champ sounds with just my Tele plugged into it. It's rather odd for me because I'm kind of known for my inclination to plug into a lot of pedals. I'll say it again, I LOVE THIS AMP!

This baby stays at home. The only time it travels is to another studio for session use. It's the only amp I use for recording. Anyone who plays or has played live understands these are not appropriate amps, in most circumstances, for live work. That's not to say it couldn't work.

There are so many damn resources out there for tube amp owners. Things you can't do yourself, it's pretty easy to find a qualified technician. Plus most manufacturers don't support 30 year old equipment, duh!

I think if you've made it this far in my review you already know this has been a Vibro Champ lovefest!

I have a 1976 Fender Vibro Champ (Silverface) all-tube amp. The amp features a 6V6 power tube, a 12AX7 preamp tube and Vibrato (Tremelo) tube, and a 5Y3 Rectifier tube. The original Oxford 8" speaker has just been replaced by a Weber Signature Series ALNICO 8S. Controls are volume, treble, bass, speed and intensity (of the Tremelo), On/Off switch and a standard Fender jewel light. No headphone jack, effects loops or other nonsense to foul up that tone (more on this later). I use this amp for playing around the house and for occasional jams with my buddy. It's not loud enough for much else, unless you mike it at gigs.

What a fool I've been. I've owned a few tube/solid state/digital amps in my time. I thought they sounded great, and to my ears at the time, they did. Then I brought this sorry little amp home and it literally gave me a clinic on what a good tube amp should sound like. Hit an open low E, and it sounds like a piano. That "swirl" that people associate with tube amps is there. It wasn't in my other amps....I thought it was...I didn't know what I was talking about.

I play 2 varieties of Stratocaster - A Japanese Squier Strat from around 1984 that is my favorite, a US Made Fat Strat Texas special from around 2002, and I also spank a really sweet recent Squier Standard Telecaster. I'm a single coil kind of guy, although the Fender has a humbucker, I rarely use it.

My musical style is blues & rock with a heavy emphasis on blues. when I first brought the amp home, the stock Oxford speaker was pretty damn tired. It farted out at anything above 4 on the volume. After much research and hand-wringing, I ordered a Weber 8S online and installed it. To my surprise, the good tones were still there, and the farting-out gone for the most part - it's controllable. Now I can open the amp up to 10 and use the volume on the guitar to clean it up to my liking. Very nice. The breakup is very blues-friendly, and I will probably use my TS808 clone (Jeckle & Hyde) to coax rock sounds out of it, if I care to. There's not a whole lot of clean headroom, although there's more than I expected after I changed the speaker.

Sounds? You can get SRV sounds out of this, as well as James Gang "Funk 49" sounds, Clapton "Layla". As for me, I get really good Jay Northrop sounds out of it, and that's all that matters.


I rate this a 9 because of the still-somewhat-present farting.

It's a 30 year old amp. It's got point-to-point wiring, and a very simple circuit. Any tech whose brain hasn't been damaged due to sniffing glue can fix it.

I bought this from a shop in Lemoyne, and it appeared to have a problem with cutting out, but when I got it home the problem dissapeared. The dude at the shop gave me a nice price on it...knocked about $75 off. I'll buy more stuff off him. ;-)

HA!

I've been playing since 1981. I own 3 other amps; a Fender Hot Rod Deville 4x10, an Epiphone Valve Special, and a Vox Valvetronix AD30VT. This amp blows them all out of the water, along with any other amp I've ever owned, which includes an Early US made Fender Blues Jr., a Johnson Millennium 150, and various other amps I thought were all that and a bag of chips when I owned them. There is a quality of sound that is lacking in all of my other amps. It's got me thinking about investing in every one I can find until I have a wall of them. The Hot Rod can get somewhat similar sounds, but it's just not the same. The Vox, a great amp in it's own right, can get close, but it's just not the same. The Epi, which is supposed to be a Champ circuit, sounds dark and sparkle-less...it's just not the same. I don't know what the difference is...but thank goodness for it.

I have two of these, one from 1972 and the other 1980. Obviously both are silverface with oxford speakers. Simple, the way I like it. Wish I could have gotten them for less money but overall fits me perfectly. Completely original on both except the 1980 has a new 12ax7 tube and the 1972 a new 6v6. Both had the original tubes when I bought them but they needed to be changed. Also one of the resistors was replaced. My amp tech changed some wiring or something and made the 1980 set up like a blackface from the sixties. They do SOUND different from one another. The 1972 is thinner, clearer, with more bite and the 1980 is thicker, lower tone, with more umph! The 1980 is much louder than the 1972 also. The 1980 was made for Europe with a voltage switch and special plug. Much heavier than the other one. I think this is due to the transformer being much larger.

I love these amps. I use two stock American Strats and one stock American Tele. Clear sounding yet thick when needed. I run through an MXR Dynacomp, Ibanez TS9, and a Electro Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man. The amps work great with and without effects. I love the tremelo on the 1972 but the 1980 is a little fast for my taste. I don't plan on changing the caps though as options are good.
I use these amps in church and slap a shure mic in front of them. We use in-ear moniters so stage volume / competition is not an issue. I just started daisy chaining them together and found I can have more than enough volume with these puppies. Alone they need to be mic'd to be heard on stage, together, you can hear yourself in just about any band situation. Plan on putting a Jensen P8r vintage reissue speaker in one of them to see how it works. Problably the 1980 one since it does tend to "fart out" past 4 on the volume.

Like I said, I've had them both looked at by a tech and he loves these amps. Simple to work on , Class A, straight signal, pure sound. Hand-wired and solid. These amps are used 4-5 times a week and haven't had an issue for the year I've owned them. I owned a Blues Junior and it sounded good but not as good as these. It also had an issue due to the printed circuit board shorting out where the tube plugged in. Not a problem with these. Built better.

Great vintage, tube sound, with lots of presence, and life. I get many compliments from folks for the quality of my sound. Now if I could just get complimented for my playing ability! Great for recording and home / living room use but must be mic'd and run through monitors for stage use unless you get two of them and daisy chain them. I know they don't want super high scores for stuff but I have tried MANY amps / equipment and have to stay within reason budget wise. These amps work great and they are the best I've ever used. If you are always using a sound system to project your sound into the audience, you don't need a half-stack. Just get good sound from a small amp and let the system do its job. Works for me.

Its a pretty straightforward little early silverface. It has just volume, treble, bass, speed and intensity controls from left to right. Its single channel, single 8" amp puttin' out a whopping 6 watts. It really has a cool country twangish sound without the scooped mids. Mind you, that i did get rid of the two 7025 tubes that were in the preamp section and put in a 12AX7 and a 12AT7 to clean things up a bit. As far as service, i couldn't ask for a better practice amp and possible recording amp, and as for the power, its sats6 watts, but its a loud 6 watts. The trem is really nice too withthe tamed preamp, too and, playing mostly country and a little contemporary christian, it serves well as either a great clean tone or a good starting point for a few pedals.

I play mostly twin humbucker style guitars....read as les paul and SG, with an occasional strat thrown in for those Alan Jackson moments when super twang is in order. It does get dirty with the distortion when cranked, but its all power tube grind (Super high gain is a no-show here...just classic OD.), and i control it with guitar volume. It feally suits what i play well. As i mentioned before, it has that twang built in from the factory. the first time i played it, i was supprised at how well my LP knock-off "put on its boots and hat". The bends really did sound good. As for those adverse side effects of an aged tube amp, none were there. The thing sat for 20 years... under its cover. Even if there were issues, we all know what they are and how to avoid and/or fix 'em. the only thing i plan on changing is the speaker. its showing effects of the cone getting a little worse for wear....Voice coil rub and a little rattle. A repro jensen of a eminence 875 will most likely be the replacement.

Its a fender...they're built like tanks. i did have 1 tube go out, but it wasn't one of the originals. It was one i put in to replace and save an original. As soon as i put a the new one, it fired up and kept going....no suprize there.

customer support is a non isue for this one...never needed it, but in the past between fender reps and the website i counld get what i needed. just not at lightnening speed for the oddball stuff

great little practice and recording amp that you can taylor to your tastes with tube and/or speaker changes with gret fender clean tone tha is good alone, but is just as a good base for "pedaling up" your sound. the only thing i wish it has was reverb, but electro harmonix has my favorite something to fix that.

A vintage guitar amp repair dude said it was made in 1977.
I play mostly rock and blues on this amp. It can do both easily. You could play any kind of music with this amp really.
It has one channel and 2 input jacks and tremolo. Wish it had reverb but I use a Boss RV-3 for that which is a great reverb pedal.
I use this amp mostly as a practice amp since it's a teeny 6 watt thing, but I've used it a few times in church: worship music. We rock out as much as we can! It can really put out, however, if you crank it up. I absoutely love the tube sound. Can't beat tubes for musicality in a guitar amp. Nice and warm.

I play a Gibson ES335, Les Paul custom, Eric Clapton signature strat, a 1976 strat, and acoustic guitars with pickups on them. I am mostly a bluesman, but also rock. It is not a noisy amp nor a quiet one. You'll get some buzzing from stage lights thru a strat, for instance, at higher volume levels. It has a kind of boxy thinnish sound to it...not a chunky solid sound like my Fender 65 Reissue Twin Reverb. You can make a lot of different sounds with it, however. It does have range. I haven't played it distorted at high volumes yet..I'll have to give it a go. I have a Boss distortion pedal I use instead of cranking the amp to distortion.

I bought it in 1993. In 1999 during a worhip music gig at church, smoke came out of the input jacks which puzzled me and looking back is hilarious: flaming out my amp in church! The amp was 22 years old at the time, and I doubt it'd ever been serviced. I was very lucky to have a vintage guitar amp guy who is very good at his trade who fixed it and gave it a good going over for $78.71. It's been fine ever since. It has this funny thing it does where one of the tubes just falls out every now and then..lose in the socket...I should get that fixed soon...but you just pop it back in and away you go! I like the simplicity of this little amp. That's very appealing.

Not an issue since the amp was 16 years old when I bought it. It was repaired by a vintage guitar amp specialist in 1999.

I've played guitar for 41 years. I got "you name it"...Marshall JCM 800 full stack, Marshall 8080 stereo Valvestate amp, Digitech GSP 2101 Studio Tube Preamp w/ 100 effects, Fender 65 Reissue Twin Reverb (sweet!), Yamaha 5050 solid state hissy sucky amp! If this amp were lost or stolen I'd be might pissed off! I'd probably get a vintage tube Princeton w/ reverb and tremolo if it got lost or stolen. What I love about this amp is it's tiny and easy to lug around, doesn't bother the neighbors, it's a very polite amp, and that fab tube tone..can't beat it. I do wish it had reverb, like everyone else who owns one. I recommend this amp to anyone who likes little tube amps. It's sweet.

Awesomely Simple!
Only Volume, Treble, Bass, and Vibrato!
No more headaches!

This is where it's amazing.

I'm a session player in New York. Last week I was doing a session at studio in Brooklyn. Of course, they had every amp you could ever want: blackface deluxe, super reverb, pro, and a variety of marshalls.

It's not very often you can have a whole line of these types of amps in a row, to compare the sounds.
To my ears-none of them sounded better than my simple vibrochamp.
It's a tone machine!
Of course, the super reverb is beautiful, but try bringing it on the subway!

I've been using it at gigs and rehearsals. It always keeps up- both volume wise and tone reliability wise.

Amazing!
Their amps are so good you dont even have to call customer support!

Amazing!
Phenomenal!
WOW!

this is a great rectifier tube amplifier, it not only has tone but plenty of volume for just 6 watts! it is a very reliable amp, i got mine at a flea market for 100 bucks and are very happy indeed!! i highly recommend this amplifier!!

i play a 68 strat with stock pickups and find if definitely sounds like a great fender amplifier!!

this a highly reliable amplifier and i trued to overdrive its ass off but it still works!!

it may never be needed

i ve been playing 30 years and it is a good all around amplifier

Very great all tube small amp. Many features that are not available on many of todays smaller amps such as tube rectification or all tube Vibrato. The one major thing it lacks is reverb and I hear a lot of people complaining about this so I found a place that will install true fender reverb http://www.torresengineering.com/. I highly recommend Torres. I am going to have torres do a overhaul on the one I recently purchased and if I decide to have the reverb installed I will post a future review on the amp after the mod.

Better then the sound of many 1000$+ amps I've played. Great clean tone but also able to achieve a wonderful tube break up that is very unique. I do recommend builing a second cab of similar size to the current one with a all pine construction, finger joints, a 10" alnico Weber speaker, and matching grill cloth. That in combination with a speaker switcher (Radial Tonebone) you can switch between the two speakers for the different styles you may need.

****Note**** I highly recommend doing your homework before attempting this. Dropping the Ohm load on a amplifier to low is not good and can harm your amplifier to a point that could be very costly. If you use caution, common sense, and do research you will be greatly rewarded.

The vibrato sound amazing but I have to complain about the sensitivity of the controls. Even the slightest nudge made changes in tempo of up to 30 to 40 cycles a minute (timed it with a metronome). I think I can correct by having the pots replaced. If this is not a issue related to the age of the pots I will look into other solutions to have a finer controll over the speed without sacrificing the wide range it has.

Stock as is .... Not a chance in hell would this survive the road but with proper service, caps, speakers, and tubes on hand I'd take this thing everwhere because of its sound. Maintaining this amp is not as bad as a full blown 100W all tube head since the tubes are cheap and a single trip to Torres Engineering for a overhaul will keep it going for another 30 years. If anything restoring and moding this amp just slighty to your tastes will actually make you trust it more and even give you a sense connection to the amp personally.

Well lets look at this from a standpoint of support from end users, owners, parts suppliers (weber), amp repair shops (Torres), and forums like this.

The customer support is endless because so many people adore these little buggers .... and for good reason. These amps are much easier to work on and not as dangerous as working on a 150W Mesa Tripple Rectifier. You still need you use caution when working with any amplifier but with these the danger is much less then that of a higher power amplifier. The knowledge base of info on these amps is endless and if you want to know something all you have to do is a little searching.

If you are not a do-it-your-self person then any qualified amp repair shop or Torres Engineering will have absolutly no troubles helping you out. I recommend getting your hands dirty though if you have even the slightest desire because you will be greatly rewarded every time you play this thing.

For the money you'd have to be stupid not to take a look at this. This amp is not for everyone though as it is not as versitile as some larger multi-channel amps today but if you realise it place in your setup you will love this amp.

Learning about modifing, maintaining, and repairing this amp has taught me a huge amount about the side of the signal chain that often gets neglected, amplifier input to final change of electric signal to knetic energy that comes from the speaker. It really puts you in the loop on the fact that every pass through something in the signal change effects the final resault of your sound .... including the speaker.

Finally got around to doing a review of the Vibro Champ. Probably not going to add anything hugely profound to the preceding ten million reviews but, hey sometimes you just have to throw your $0.02 in, don't you? (Even though I'm in Britain).
I've got two of these, a '65 and a '68. Both in great condition. Both sound different but the same, if you see what I mean. I actually dig the early silverface cosmetics more than the Blackface. It's just that phrase "Vibro Champ - amp" and the aged turquoise thread grill cloth. But the blackface is kind of classic so, they're both nice, whatever.
Tubes are 1 x 6V6GT, 2 x 12AX7, and a tube rectifier - "GZ" something. Output 6 watts, two channels, 8" speaker in a floating baffle (on the early ones), solid pinewood cabinet, Vol/Treb/Bass/Intensity/Speed, bags of mojo. ah, yes doesn't get much better than this. The reason I and other people play these is their tone, pure and simple. Raw, complex, pure sound. You can hear wood and glass and it's gorgeous.

OK, I'm playing a '52 reissue Tele with antiquities, a Natural Ash US Tele with Joe Bardens and a Koa Gibson '61 reissue SG with a WCR Filmore set. It responds to everything well, even the SG, which surprised me as I thought small Fenders like these would prefer single coils. The amps are dead silent, I mean DEAD silent at reasonable volume levels (up to about 6) with a very slight amount of background tube hiss past that. Nothing noticeable.

The interesting thing is the differences between them. The Blackface is actually slightly louder, with a more versatile tremolo which goes from sl-o-o-o-w to helicopter. The Silverface, on the other hand is a cleaner sounding amp with a more subtle but actually more interesting tremolo. It has a sort of spooky, ethereal shimmer. Both sound different yet equally amazing. The Vibro Champ tremolo is superior generally as it's a tube tremolo. It produces a deep mesmerising pulse that's better than any optoislator trem.

Sounds ranging from rich, spanking Fender clean to the most raucous overdrive you've ever hear can be had either by playing with the amps controls or using the volume/tone controls on your guitar. The thing I really love is the way you can hear so much wood come through and, although I'm using good guitars with great pickups, I feel these amps would draw the best out of anything you put into them. The sounds from these amps make me tingly. What more can you ask than that?

Interesting factoid: the physical characteristics of the small speaker cones in 8" speakers are such that they produce kind of throaty roar that larger speakers don't. True? Search me.

Now, the one criticism I could make about the Vibro champ is it's stock speaker, both tinny crappy utahs in my case. I switched these out for Weber sig 8's and never looked back. At $24.00 a piece, you can't go wrong with them (although I think the price may have gone up to $45.00 now :>( ).

There's no point taking the volume over about 8. It doesn't sound any better and it punishes the little chap for no reason. I read somewhere that "tube amps don't owe you anything before 2 or after 8 on the volume dial". This would seem to be true of the VC.

Responds to effects incredibly well. I've used the following with fantastic results: BOSS DM-2 analogue delay, Big Muff, BOSS CS-1 Compressor, EH Small clone, Small Stone. Looking forward to trying a Keeley Katana Boost on this.

There simply nothing to go wrong, or at least nothing I couldn't fix. The great thing about such a small amp is it's lowly tube compliment. Less tubes = less headaches. It also means you can afford to keep it stocked with the best.
These Vibro Champs have been going for 35 - 40 years and show no signs of slowing down.
Obviously they have to be maintained (I replaced the filter cap cans (these can be had from Vibro world or Antique electronic supply if you need them) and upgraded the cathode bypass caps rom 25uf/25v to 25uf/50v)). Rest assured any love you show it will returned tenfold.

Irrelevant for two amps that are knocking 40.

This isn't a honeymoon review. I've had them both for about seven years. Please note that the glowing "ten" reviews are WITH maintenance and replacement speakers. If you buy one with run down electrolytics and a stock speaker it might not sound that great. When running right, though, I don't believe there's anything that can touch them. I just wish Fender would see the light and start producing an all tube, single ended, pine boxed, hand wired tone monster like the Vibro Champ again.