I primarily use it as a practice amp at home, typically at lower volumes, and I’d love to get tones similar to a Fender Tonemaster. Is that possible?
Produced between 1987 and 1992, the Fender Champ 12 is a 12-watt, 1x12 combo with a single 6L6 power tube and a pair of 7025 preamp tubes. Photo courtesy of telecaster.com
Hi Jeff,
I have a Fender Champ 12 from the late ’80s that I’m curious about. The input jack is
broken, and it has never been re-tubed or probably even serviced since it was new. I’ve
given up on trying to get any useful, adjustable gain out of it, and the reverb is pretty
much just full on or off. I primarily use it as a practice amp at home, typically at lower
volumes, and I’d love to get tones similar to a Fender Tonemaster. Is that possible?
Thanks,
Leonard
Hi Leonard,
When a customer brought his Champ 12 in
for service years ago, a couple of this amp’s
unique “innovations” had me scratching
my head. There are aspects of the electronic
design I’ve not seen in any other Fender amp.
The Champ 12 I repaired had multiple problems: Its output was low and distorted, and it wouldn’t switch channels. Before pulling a schematic on the unit, I took a few minutes to troubleshoot it. Sure enough, the output looked very bad on the oscilloscope, and there was no low voltage for the switching circuitry. When I started tracing the wiring associated with the switching circuitry, it unexpectedly led me to the output stage! I figured this can’t be right—someone must have already gotten their inexperienced, grubby little paws into the amp and moved some wires.
It was then I realized what was actually going on. The amp had been designed to tap voltage off of the cathode circuit in the cathode-biased output stage as a low-voltage source for the switching circuitry. Wow, I hadn’t seen that before. I checked the resistors in the cathode circuit, and then replaced one that was way out of tolerance. That was it—the switching circuitry now had voltage and the output of the amp was great. Okay, I won’t forget that the next time a Champ 12 comes in with the same set of problems. But let’s move on to your amp and see if we can address some of your concerns.
The first thing I’d suggest is to re-tube the amp, especially if that has never been done before. You may hear a noticeable improvement. Also, be sure to have the cathode resistors in the output stage checked, as we already know what kinds of problems they can cause. I’d also recommend having the broken input jack replaced. It’s generally the number 1 input jack that breaks and typically that’s the most useable input for guitar.
Being a 10–12 watt amp, the Champ 12 is, of course, never going to sound as big and bold as the 100-watt Tonemaster, nor will it have that kind of distortion unless the entire circuit is completely rebuilt. So what I’m shooting for is to bring the amp’s tone closer to the Tonemaster.
We’ll start with the tone stacks, as they’re noticeably different in these two amps. Locate the three main capacitors in the Champ’s tone circuit—C3, C4, and C5. Replace the 250 pF ceramic cap (C3) with a 150 pF with at least a 250V rating. Next, replace the 0.1 μF (C4) with a .047 μF 400-600V. Feel free to use the original C5 cap here, as C5 will be replaced by a 0.022 μF 400-600V cap. This should set up the tonal characteristics to be closer to the Tonemaster.
You mentioned the amp didn’t have much gain adjustability. This may be due to the type of “shunt-to-ground” volume controls (something I generally don’t care for) used in the Champ 12, but if you’ve found the gain is a bit too loose and broken up, I’d suggest changing the value of C1. Using a 25 μF capacitor on the first gain stage can sometimes provide too much amplification of the lower frequencies, which can muddy up the overdrive. I’d suggest switching the locations of C1 (25 μF) and C8 (0.68 μF). Install the 0.68 μF capacitor in the cathode stage of V1A and the 25 μF capacitor in the cathode stage of V1B.
Another option would be to switch the locations of C1 and C12, instead of C8. This would place the 25 μF cap one stage further down the line.
You mentioned that the reverb is delivering all or nothing, but this may be due to an incorrect adjustment. The reverb in these amps is the other unique “innovation” I mentioned earlier. It’s actually driven by the signal going to the speaker!
I had seen this done before in early amps from a different manufacturer, but not in a Fender. It seems this unique design requires the proper adjustment of an internal pot to work properly. I won’t go into the procedure for this because you can find it on Fender’s supplied schematic for this amp. If you have this adjusted properly, it may make your reverb a bit more useable, although I wouldn’t expect full reverb bliss from this frugal design.
Last and definitely not the least, I’d encourage you to change the speaker. The Tonemaster came stock with either a Celestion Vintage 30 or Celestion G12- 80, both of which would sound substantially different from the stock Fender blue-label speaker currently in your amp. I hope these suggestions make your amp a real Tone Champ!
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The National New Yorker lived at the forefront of the emerging electric guitar industry, and in Memphis Minnie’s hands, it came alive.
This National electric is just the tip of the iceberg of electric guitar history.
On a summer day in 1897, a girl named Lizzie Douglas was born on a farm in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi, the first of 13 siblings. When she was seven, her family moved closer to Memphis, Tennessee, and little Lizzie took up the banjo. Banjo led to guitar, guitar led to gigs, and gigs led to dreams. She was a prodigious talent, and “Kid” Douglas ran away from home to play for tips on Beale Street when she was just a teenager. She began touring around the South, adopted the moniker Memphis Minnie, and eventually joined the circus for a few years.
(Are you not totally intrigued by the story of this incredible woman? Why did she run away from home? Why did she fall in love with the guitar? We haven’t even touched on how remarkable her songwriting is. This is a singular pioneer of guitar history, and we beseech you to read Woman with Guitar: Memphis Minnie’s Blues by Beth and Paul Garon.)
Following the end of World War I, Hawaiian music enjoyed a rapid rise in popularity. On their travels around the U.S., musicians like Sol Ho’opi’i became fans of Louis Armstrong and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, leading to a great cross-pollination of Hawaiian music with jazz and blues. This potent combination proved popular and drew ever-larger audiences, which created a significant problem: How on earth would an audience of thousands hear the sound from a wimpy little acoustic guitar?
This art deco pickguard offers just a bit of pizzazz to an otherwise demure instrument.
In the late 1920s, George Beauchamp, John and Rudy Dopyera, Adolph Rickenbacker, and John Dopyera’s nephew Paul Barth endeavored to answer that question with a mechanically amplified guitar. Working together under Beauchamp and John Dopyera’s National String Instrument Corporation, they designed the first resonator guitar, which, like a Victrola, used a cone-shaped resonator built into the guitar to amplify the sound. It was definitely louder, but not quite loud enough—especially for the Hawaiian slide musicians. With the guitars laid on their laps, much of the sound projected straight up at the ceiling instead of toward the audience.
Barth and Beauchamp tackled this problem in the 1930s by designing a magnetic pickup, and Rickenbacker installed it in the first commercially successful electric instrument: a lap-steel guitar known affectionately as the “Frying Pan” due to its distinctive shape. Suddenly, any stringed instrument could be as loud as your amplifier allowed, setting off a flurry of innovation. Electric guitars were born!
“At the time it was positively futuristic, with its lack of f-holes and way-cool art deco design on the pickup.”
By this time, Memphis Minnie was a bona fide star. She recorded for Columbia, Vocalion, and Decca Records. Her song “Bumble Bee,” featuring her driving guitar technique, became hugely popular and earned her a new nickname: the Queen of Country Blues. She was officially royalty, and her subjects needed to hear her game-changing playing. This is where she crossed paths with our old pals over at National.
National and other companies began adding pickups to so-called Spanish guitars, which they naturally called “Electric Spanish.” (This term was famously abbreviated ES by the Gibson Guitar Corporation and used as a prefix on a wide variety of models.) In 1935, National made its first Electric Spanish guitar, renamed the New Yorker three years later. By today’s standards, it’s modestly appointed. At the time it was positively futuristic, with its lack of f-holes and way-cool art deco design on the pickup.
There’s buckle rash and the finish on the back of the neck is rubbed clean off in spots, but that just goes to show how well-loved this guitar has been.
Memphis Minnie had finally found an axe fit for a Queen. She was among the first blues guitarists to go electric, and the New Yorker fueled her already-upward trajectory. She recorded over 200 songs in her 25-year career, cementing her and the National New Yorker’s place in musical history.
Our National New Yorker was made in 1939 and shows perfect play wear as far as we’re concerned. Sure, there’s buckle rash and the finish on the back of the neck is rubbed clean off in spots, but structurally, this guitar is in great shape. It’s easy to imagine this guitar was lovingly wiped down each time it was put back in the case.
There’s magic in this guitar, y’all. Every time we pick it up, we can feel Memphis Minnie’s spirit enter the room. This guitar sounds fearless. It’s a survivor. This is a guitar that could inspire you to run away and join the circus, transcend genre and gender, and leave your own mark on music history. As a guitar store, watching guitars pass from musician to musician gives us a beautiful physical reminder of how history moves through generations. We can’t wait to see who joins this guitar’s remarkable legacy.
SOURCES: blackpast.org, nps.gov, worldmusic.net, historylink.org, Memphis Music Hall of Fame, “Memphis Minnie’s ‘Scientific Sound’: Afro-Sonic Modernity and the Jukebox Era of the Blues” from American Quarterly, “The History of the Development of Electric Stringed Musical Instruments” by Stephen Errede, Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL.
In our third installment with Santa Cruz Guitar Company founder Richard Hoover, the master luthier shows PG's John Bohlinger how his team of builders assemble and construct guitars like a chef preparing food pairings. Hoover explains that the finer details like binding, headstock size and shape, internal bracing, and adhesives are critical players in shaping an instrument's sound. Finally, Richard explains how SCGC uses every inch of wood for making acoustic guitars or outside ventures like surfboards and art.
Featuring torrefied solid Sitka Spruce tops, mahogany neck, back, and sides, and Fishman Presys VT EQ System, these guitars are designed to deliver quality tone and playability at an affordable price point.
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