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Joined:
October 2005
Posts: 4026
Location: Utah | Finally, pulled the trigger on a new amp. After digesting a lot of great suggestions, I went with the Fender Super Champ XD. I played a lot of amps with my Hamer and this one is the shiz for the money. Its a hybrid amp that sounds great. The Fender Princeton Recording amp and Blues Jr. sounded great, but at 4x and 2x the price.
Even better, our local GC hasn't raised their prices on Fender amps yet. They are still getting stock at the old list, so they are selling it for the old price!
The XD has an analog solid state JFET based tone shaping front end then a tube amp with a 12AX7 preamp into a long tail phase splitter and two 6V6 power tubes. The tube circuit looks a whole lot like a Princeton Reverb minus the reverb and tone stack (moved to the solid state front end). It even uses a tube rectifier (for the purist who buys a hybrid?).
The tone really is nice, and the different amp tones are quite good. The only complaint is that there is a hint of hum and hiss at higher volumes, but nothing that isn't typical of tube amps. One oddity is that plugging into the line-out jack doesn't mute the speaker. The versatility and good quality of sound will make it a fine gigging amp for the kinds of things I play.
Getting real tubes has reignited my interest in building an amp, so now I'm on the road to designing and building the ultimate tube amp. It'll be in the 15 watt range, designed for excellent touch sensitivity, classic Fender clean or crunch, effects loop, basic treble and bass controls, tube driven reverb, switchable output to low power (5 watts), 12" speaker. |
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Joined:
December 2006
Posts: 6268
Location: Florida Central Gulf Coast | Congrats on the new amp! 
Sounds like you and Vic should collaborate on an 'Oltimate' tuber. |
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Joined:
March 2006
Posts: 1634
Location: Chehalis, Washington | The line out isn't a "headphone" type jack, but rather powers an external cab. My Blues Jr has the same system, which does NOT work to run into a PA, but will work nicely with a 2x12 cabinet placed under it...if you needed the volume for some reason. |
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Joined:
October 2005
Posts: 4026
Location: Utah | There are two output jacks on the XD. One is an 8 ohm speaker out, which the built in speaker is plugged into. But there is also a line out which the owner's manual says is for plugging into "your sound reinforcement system". The schematic shows it as coming off of an op-amp buffer with some filtering which presumably emulates a speaker and isolates the ground. This line won't drive a speaker. |
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Joined:
January 2006
Posts: 5881
Location: Colorado Rocky Mountains | When I pick up a new amp, I just plug it in, hook up a guitar, and crank it. I know which ones have tubes and which ones don't, and I know the speaker size and can usually figure out the features, but the schematics sheets are intended for those higher up the food chain than me. If there's a problem, I go see the amp doctor. |
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Joined:
May 2003
Posts: 4389
Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | https://taweber.powweb.com/weber/hpa50.htm |
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Joined:
May 2003
Posts: 4389
Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | That's if you want to headphones. I think it'll work. |
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Joined:
October 2005
Posts: 4026
Location: Utah | AN, that's a great website and it's been bookmarked. Lots of cool stuff and ideas over there. |
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Joined:
September 2006
Posts: 347
Location: Reno, NV | That's great you were able to get it at the original price. I was really tempted to get one at $279, now that they are listed at $389 Im not so tempted. Fender is going crazy with their price increases. The highway one strat I bought for $599 is now listed at $899. Its a nice guitar for $599, but for $899 Im not so sure it's worth it, same thing with the SuperChamp. |
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Got a new amp. Nice little tube job.
