Fender Vibro Champ XD

I got a PV C30 for gigs and even a Vox AC4TV for smaller living room size gigs. These perfectly fit my needs except for that classic blackface sound I miss every now and then for certain styles. Having two amps -not mentioning bass an acoustic amps – I never felt like investing into anything more than Fenders cheapest tube amp series. Out of the two Champs I’ve chosen the smaller Vibro-Champ that I kinda regret now. Not for the lesser power. 5 watts would be perfectly enough to my home and studio needs, or drumless jams, and I prefer to set the volume to middle to crank the amp a bit, instead of fighting with Fenders infamous logarhytmic volume range between 0 and 1. Neither I miss the extra weight and size of a 15 watter amp. The problem is that the Vibro-Champ HAS the weight and size of a 15 watter amp, which misses almost all the benefits of having a 5 watter amp. Another feature I realized I miss from the SC after purchasing its little brother, is the switchable channels and effects on/off. Not that I’d use much of the effects, I’m happy with just a touch of reverb and maybe the shortest of delays. The trem sounds right too, pity that you cannot merge it with reverb, unlike chorus or delay which I hardly ever use. One may be attracted by the non-voiced channel option on the SC-although I’m pretty sure that is also voiced, but it surely extends the versatility of the amp having a switchable channel with a separate volume control. As for the voicings – I’d stick with voice 1 if it would have been the most natural default, but it seem to have an unwanted compressor element, so I tend to oscillate between Voice 4 (clean blackface) with a hint of reverb and voice 2 (Tweed bassman) with the shortest delay, both with gain at 3 and FX level 4. The rest of the voices are useless to me, but these two are capable of producing decent sounds from the most transparent and yet twangy clear to a pleasantly greasy saturation, with the gain knob providing access to several shades of both. The only reason I would rather choose the Super Champ now, is the option to switch between these two, and dim the dsp effects for song or part changes. Ok, too much complaints, it’s still a great sounding amp and a great value for this price.

3 thoughts on “Fender Vibro Champ XD”

smog

January 22, 2015 at 1:30 am

Versatile, durable, portable, affordable. It has an 8″ speaker. Useful too. Slight hum. It’s not a Princeton Reverb nor cost$1k. 8″ speaker. I have put about 15 hours a week on my XV for the last 5 or 6 years and has never needed service of any sort. I’ve never dropped it or leaved it anywhere I wouldn’t leave an animal. Never played through it during a power outage or a CME.. so so far so good. Of my 6 small combos, it gets the majority of my awesomeness. In fact.. Enough writing. My amp is jealous of the lap-top and demands my immediate attention, to which I cannot deny.
The mighty Smog has spoken.
Big G

September 3, 2016 at 5:36 pm

Amen to that! I’ve had mine since 2008 and it’s still going strong! Moved up to a Eminence H820 speaker and a Classic Tone output transformer to give me 4 AND 8 ohm options. Studio and small gig ready. Uh, very small gig.
Fabio

July 8, 2018 at 1:00 pm

I got a PV C30 for gigs and even a Vox AC4TV for smaller living room size gigs. These perfectly fit my needs except for that classic blackface sound I miss every now and then for certain styles. Having two amps -not mentioning bass an acoustic amps – I never felt like investing into anything more than Fenders cheapest tube amp series. Out of the two Champs I’ve chosen the smaller Vibro-Champ that I kinda regret now. Not for the lesser power. 5 watts would be perfectly enough to my home and studio needs, or drumless jams, and I prefer to set the volume to middle to crank the amp a bit, instead of fighting with Fenders infamous logarhytmic volume range between 0 and 1. Neither I miss the extra weight and size of a 15 watter amp. The problem is that the Vibro-Champ HAS the weight and size of a 15 watter amp, which misses almost all the benefits of having a 5 watter amp. Another feature I realized I miss from the SC after purchasing its little brother, is the switchable channels and effects on/off. Not that I’d use much of the effects, I’m happy with just a touch of reverb and maybe the shortest of delays. The trem sounds right too, pity that you cannot merge it with reverb, unlike chorus or delay which I hardly ever use. One may be attracted by the non-voiced channel option on the SC-although I’m pretty sure that is also voiced, but it surely extends the versatility of the amp having a switchable channel with a separate volume control. As for the voicings – I’d stick with voice 1 if it would have been the most natural default, but it seem to have an unwanted compressor element, so I tend to oscillate between Voice 4 (clean blackface) with a hint of reverb and voice 2 (Tweed bassman) with the shortest delay, both with gain at 3 and FX level 4. The rest of the voices are useless to me, but these two are capable of producing decent sounds from the most transparent and yet twangy clear to a pleasantly greasy saturation, with the gain knob providing access to several shades of both. The only reason I would rather choose the Super Champ now, is the option to switch between these two, and dim the dsp effects for song or part changes. Ok, too much complaints, it’s still a great sounding amp and a great value for this price.

3 thoughts on “Fender Vibro Champ XD”

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