Fender Vibro Champ XD Vintage Modified Guitar Combo Amplifier (5 Watts, 1x8 In.)
No longer available at zZounds
Get that great vintage tube tone with a low output. It's a great practice amp for beginners and pros.
Overview
The Vibro Champ of the 1960s and '70s was an upgraded version of the venerable Fender Champ amp. Its no-nonsense styling, small size, low output, and great tube tone (including "Vibrato" effect) has been enjoyed by countless guitarists...beginners and seasoned pros alike. The Vibro Champ XD amplifier takes the vintage formula into a new era by combining a real tube amp with up-to-date "extras" like versatile amp voicing and effects. The inclusion of solid-state overdrive and distortion eliminates many of the preamp tube problems that plague tube lovers, while providing tones for blues, rock, country, jazz, metal, and more. Recording and practice sessions come alive with the Fender Vibro Champ XD.
Vintage Modified Series
The Vintage Modified part of the equation for this amp are the two great modifications done to the vintage Vibro Champ. First it's now a 5-Watt Class "A" Tube guitar amplifier with one 6V6 power tube, one 12AX7 preamp tube, an 8 inch Special Design speaker. Fender makes it so that the preamp tube isn't used to create high gain distortion, this increases tonal versatility while tube reliability is improved. It also makes it perfect for recording and practice. A 16-position "Voicing" knob with a myriad of clean and distorted preamp voices provides the quality and reliability in tone for that great overdriven sound at lower volumes.
The second difference is this:
The original Vibro Champ had only tremolo...this amp has Tremolo, Reverb, Delay, Chorus, Vibratone,… read more and combinations! Which makes it a lot more fun to explore different possibilities of combination effects. The 16-position VOICING knob provides clean, overdrive, and distortion tones for blues, rock, country, jazz, metal, and more.
Features
5 Watt tube "Class A" power amp
One 6V6 output tube
One 12AX7 preamp tube
8 inch Special Design speaker
Voicing knob with 16 different amp voices delivering various clean and overdriven tones for any style of music: blues, rock, country, jazz, metal, and more.
16 effects (Vibratone Slow; Vibratone Fast; Delay 130ms; Delay 300ms; Delay 450ms; Large Room Reverb; Concert Hall Reverb; Classic Fender Spring Reverb; Reverb+Delay; Fast Chorus; Deep Chorus; Chorus+Delay; Chorus+Reverb; Tremolo Low Speed; Tremolo Medium Speed; Tremolo High Speed)
External speaker output allows use with external speaker cabinet
Line output read less
Vintage Modified Series
The Vintage Modified part of the equation for this amp are the two great modifications done to the vintage Vibro Champ. First it's now a 5-Watt Class "A" Tube guitar amplifier with one 6V6 power tube, one 12AX7 preamp tube, an 8 inch Special Design speaker. Fender makes it so that the preamp tube isn't used to create high gain distortion, this increases tonal versatility while tube reliability is improved. It also makes it perfect for recording and practice. A 16-position "Voicing" knob with a myriad of clean and distorted preamp voices provides the quality and reliability in tone for that great overdriven sound at lower volumes.
The second difference is this:
The original Vibro Champ had only tremolo...this amp has Tremolo, Reverb, Delay, Chorus, Vibratone,… read more and combinations! Which makes it a lot more fun to explore different possibilities of combination effects. The 16-position VOICING knob provides clean, overdrive, and distortion tones for blues, rock, country, jazz, metal, and more.
Features
5 Watt tube "Class A" power amp
One 6V6 output tube
One 12AX7 preamp tube
8 inch Special Design speaker
Voicing knob with 16 different amp voices delivering various clean and overdriven tones for any style of music: blues, rock, country, jazz, metal, and more.
16 effects (Vibratone Slow; Vibratone Fast; Delay 130ms; Delay 300ms; Delay 450ms; Large Room Reverb; Concert Hall Reverb; Classic Fender Spring Reverb; Reverb+Delay; Fast Chorus; Deep Chorus; Chorus+Delay; Chorus+Reverb; Tremolo Low Speed; Tremolo Medium Speed; Tremolo High Speed)
External speaker output allows use with external speaker cabinet
Line output read less
Specs
Output: 5 Watts RMS into 4 ohms
Speakers: One 8 inch, 4 ohm Special Design speaker (pn 007-3857-000)
Channels: Single channel with 16 "Voicing" selections offering various clean and distorted tones
Controls: GAIN; VOLUME; VOICE; TREBLE; BASS; FX LEVEL; FX SELECT
Covering: Black textured vinyl covering
Weight: 23 lbs (10.4 kg)
Dimensions (H x W x D): Height 14 in (35.5 cm) Width 17 in (43.2 cm) Depth 8.7 in (22 cm)
Power Handling Tubes: One 6V6 output tube, One 12AX7 preamp tube
Shipping Weight: 28 lbs (12.7 kg)
Speakers: One 8 inch, 4 ohm Special Design speaker (pn 007-3857-000)
Channels: Single channel with 16 "Voicing" selections offering various clean and distorted tones
Controls: GAIN; VOLUME; VOICE; TREBLE; BASS; FX LEVEL; FX SELECT
Covering: Black textured vinyl covering
Weight: 23 lbs (10.4 kg)
Dimensions (H x W x D): Height 14 in (35.5 cm) Width 17 in (43.2 cm) Depth 8.7 in (22 cm)
Power Handling Tubes: One 6V6 output tube, One 12AX7 preamp tube
Shipping Weight: 28 lbs (12.7 kg)
Reviews
Reviewers gave this product an overall rating of 5 out of 5 stars.
(28 ratings)
Submitted May 11, 2010 by a customer from uncc.edu
"A geezer loves this amp."
This review has been selected by our experts as particularly helpful.
Gee, that's a hard one. I buy guitar stuff all the time and dream of tweaks on a regular basis. I think this is part of the arsenal for a while. It makes me want a serious delay box, though.
Sound
The amp is very, very good. I bought it as a practice amp and after two weeks remain quite pleased. The effects range is impressive. It may take a while your way through to any real understanding of the voices (16) and f/x (also 16) but the range is pretty interesting. In particular, the acoustic voice is surprisingly good. I plugged in my Gibson L130 (LRBaggs pickup & pre-amp) and was greeted with a fully natural sound (tube warm, to boot!), albeit without enormous volume. I was pleasantly surprised. My electric is a new telecaster and it matched the sound of larger amps quite well in the setting of my practice space (a large living room with wood floors & high ceilings. Is has enough volume in many of the voice combinations to practice with others (if the drummer holds back). The jazz voice (#15) is also clean. I suspect some will find a few of the voices redundant or over-similar, but the range is reasonable.
Features
No accessories (it's an amp). The voice and f/x knobs are its real feature set. I set gain, volume, treble and bass at the middle position (5) for all my test run. I found myself with enough intermediate control on the guitar. As some of the voices are "overdriven" amps, volume changes between adjacent… read more voices can be extreme (up & down). I'm not sure that's a flaw but it seems less than ideal. On the whole the f/x are nice samples. However, if effects are your thing, I suspect you will want to use your own stomp boxes (hence the 9). I have yet to use speaker out but the line out took the sound to a PA without trouble. I am 59 and have been playing guitar for 47 of those years. For the past 35 of them, I have been entirely an acoustic bluesman. It has been fun getting back into the electric.
Ease of Use
Like I said above, all of the combinations of voice & f/x can be daunting (256 possible). However, as a group it really amounts to about thirty five combinations, the rest are really ranges within those. You can get in the ballpark of a particular kind of sound pretty quickly. refining it is a bit of trial and error tweaking. I have not minded though as it is also a fair amount of fun. The f/x knob is somewhat hard to read (one reason for the 9), however, it has proven easy enough to find a useful range to practice with. You will probably want to copy the voice & f/x select page and have it hand for a week to get used to it. The sequence is not intuitive at first blush until you read it and twiddle the knobs to hear it (the other reason for the 9). For me and a few friends it has proven great fun in the short run.
Quality
I have no complaints as of yet. Everything works fine and the amp has no manufacturing flaws that I can find. I did a pretty thorough look over when I bought it. It was a floor model, & I can't see that even that sort of use was much detriment to anything except the temporary paper label. My experience with Fender suggests there will be few surprises here.
Value
From my perspective this seemed and still feels like a great value. As someone who has spent equal amounts of cash on an acoustic pre-amp alone, This seems like a god value for a lot of sound options in a compact package.
Manufacturer Support
I have yet to contact Fender for any reason.
The Wow Factor
I bought it after playing it for about 15 minutes. I wanted a practice amp and the tube sound was terrific. Even if I barely understood the finer workings of the voice & f/x controls, I dialed in appealing sound quickly and couldn't wait to get it home and play for two hours. I still grin every time I see it on its stand.It may be small but it does the job.
Musical Background:
Serious amateur
Musical Style:
blues & avant-guard experiments read less
Sound
The amp is very, very good. I bought it as a practice amp and after two weeks remain quite pleased. The effects range is impressive. It may take a while your way through to any real understanding of the voices (16) and f/x (also 16) but the range is pretty interesting. In particular, the acoustic voice is surprisingly good. I plugged in my Gibson L130 (LRBaggs pickup & pre-amp) and was greeted with a fully natural sound (tube warm, to boot!), albeit without enormous volume. I was pleasantly surprised. My electric is a new telecaster and it matched the sound of larger amps quite well in the setting of my practice space (a large living room with wood floors & high ceilings. Is has enough volume in many of the voice combinations to practice with others (if the drummer holds back). The jazz voice (#15) is also clean. I suspect some will find a few of the voices redundant or over-similar, but the range is reasonable.
Features
No accessories (it's an amp). The voice and f/x knobs are its real feature set. I set gain, volume, treble and bass at the middle position (5) for all my test run. I found myself with enough intermediate control on the guitar. As some of the voices are "overdriven" amps, volume changes between adjacent… read more voices can be extreme (up & down). I'm not sure that's a flaw but it seems less than ideal. On the whole the f/x are nice samples. However, if effects are your thing, I suspect you will want to use your own stomp boxes (hence the 9). I have yet to use speaker out but the line out took the sound to a PA without trouble. I am 59 and have been playing guitar for 47 of those years. For the past 35 of them, I have been entirely an acoustic bluesman. It has been fun getting back into the electric.
Ease of Use
Like I said above, all of the combinations of voice & f/x can be daunting (256 possible). However, as a group it really amounts to about thirty five combinations, the rest are really ranges within those. You can get in the ballpark of a particular kind of sound pretty quickly. refining it is a bit of trial and error tweaking. I have not minded though as it is also a fair amount of fun. The f/x knob is somewhat hard to read (one reason for the 9), however, it has proven easy enough to find a useful range to practice with. You will probably want to copy the voice & f/x select page and have it hand for a week to get used to it. The sequence is not intuitive at first blush until you read it and twiddle the knobs to hear it (the other reason for the 9). For me and a few friends it has proven great fun in the short run.
Quality
I have no complaints as of yet. Everything works fine and the amp has no manufacturing flaws that I can find. I did a pretty thorough look over when I bought it. It was a floor model, & I can't see that even that sort of use was much detriment to anything except the temporary paper label. My experience with Fender suggests there will be few surprises here.
Value
From my perspective this seemed and still feels like a great value. As someone who has spent equal amounts of cash on an acoustic pre-amp alone, This seems like a god value for a lot of sound options in a compact package.
Manufacturer Support
I have yet to contact Fender for any reason.
The Wow Factor
I bought it after playing it for about 15 minutes. I wanted a practice amp and the tube sound was terrific. Even if I barely understood the finer workings of the voice & f/x controls, I dialed in appealing sound quickly and couldn't wait to get it home and play for two hours. I still grin every time I see it on its stand.It may be small but it does the job.
Musical Background:
Serious amateur
Musical Style:
blues & avant-guard experiments read less
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