Fender Champ (Miniamp)

Table of Contents

  1. About
    2.
  2. Building
    3.
  3. Contacting
    4.

About

The Fender Champ was an amplifier designed and built by Fender. Introduced in 1948, the amp was designed with only a single power vacuum tube and a single-ended class A circuit. The amp used only five watts. Since its controls were simple and the amp could produce a variety of tones with such minimal input, the amp was used easily and widely in recording studios throughout much of the 20th century. It was discontinued in 1982.


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What's the plan?

The plan I have with my father is to rebuild an amp like this!

We recently bought the Tweed Champ electronics kit from Mojotone, as part of their "American Vintage" series IIRC. This kit is one of the closest in terms of design and materials that one can get to an actual Champ amp as they would have been made 50+ years ago. I mean, even the wires that come with the kit are cloth-covered! That's just cool =)


Electronics kit Holding clothed wire from electronics kit

"Combo" amps like the one being built here consist of two parts. The first part is the input and electronics of the amp, known as the "head", and the second part is the cabinet holding the speakers (or the body of the amp itself), known as the "cab".


Building the Cab

So in order to build the cab, we are going to be following the design plans drawn up by Joe Rogers (for? at?) Dualtone Amps. They look like so:


Cab design plans

The materials call for:

  1. 3/4" Solid pine
  2. 1/4" Solid pine [- for the front "narrow" panels]
  3. 1/4" Baltic Birch plywood [- for the back panels & speaker baffle]

We ended up using:

  1. 1x10 Pine [from New Zealand of all places]
  2. 1/4" x 3" x 4' Poplar
  3. [plywood TBA]

Contacting

Email me: <epark0332@westada.org>